Man extradited to Mexico over border murders

A MEXICAN citizen who allegedly confessed to killing at least 10 women in the violent border city of Juarez is back home in his country to face justice.

Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz was extradited to stand trial for aggravated homicide in a string of slayings of women, the US Justice Department said. He is expected to appear before a Mexican judge next week.

Granados de la Paz, 30, allegedly acknowledged to Mexican and Texas authorities he killed at least 10 women near Ciudad Juarez from about 1993 to 2006 as “offerings to Satan”.

In April 2006, Granados de la Paz was sentenced to more than three years in prison for immigration violations in the US.

The extradition request was granted last year and focused on Granados de la Paz’s alleged confession to stabbing Mayra Juliana Reyes Solis in 2001.

During the decade that ended in 2003, more than 100 women disappeared in Ciudad Juarez. Many of them were young women last seen in the city’s downtown area or after boarding buses. The victims’ bodies were often dumped in the desert outside the city.

Activists in Ciudad Juarez said they were not convinced Granados de la Paz was involved in the killings, mostly because previous investigations of the killings had been botched.