suspect involved in well exploitation arrested

(CNN Spanish) — Mexican authorities arrested a person allegedly involved in the exploitation of the well in which 10 miners were trapped due to a flood at the beginning of August in the municipality of Sabinas, Coahuila, the Attorney General’s Office reported this Sunday in a statement. (FGR).

The detainee, identified only as Cristian “S”, has been accused of “illegally exploiting an asset belonging to the Nation, located in the ‘El Pinabete’ mine, in La Agujita.”

Although the FGR did not identify his role directly, it previously announced that arrest warrants had been issued against the person who ran the mine and two associates.

According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the suspect was presented at a court hearing in which a judge ordered preventive detention and was transferred to a prison in Arizpe, Coahuila.

CNN tries to find out if the detainee has legal representation and how he pleads in the case.

The miners were trapped on August 3 when the shaft collapsed due to flooding. Although the Government of Mexico has never directly announced that they are dead, the authorities have said that they have reached agreements with the families of the victims to compensate them. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador informed at a press conference on the 28th of that month that they were analyzing with international specialists the way to “rescue the bodies of these miners.”

Two days later, in another conference, the president added: “And we are not going to stop working on the rescue, the rescue is not going to stop, it has not stopped. We continue extracting water from the wells, we continue working there. And now A procedure is going to be started that the technicians are recommending in order to have better results. So, when we rescue the miners, then we would talk about the memorial.”

Ivette Retana contributed to this report.