Sept. 23 (UPI) — Mexican authorities said Tuesday they had found the bodies of a pair of Colombian musicans days after the country’s president pleaded for their return, blaming drug cartels and the United States for their disappearance.
Prosecutors in Mexico City announced they had found the remains of Bayron Sanchez, known as B-King, and DJ Jorge Luis Herrera Lemos, known as Regio Clown, after they had been missing for a week, reported El Pais.
Officials have not offered any explanation for the deaths of the musicians who had just played one of their first international concerts. But Colombia President Gustavo Petro suggested in a post to X Sunday that “multinational mafias” had a role in their disappearance.
Petro also wrote that the mafias are growing in South America because of the “rampant drug consumption in the US,” which he called a “decadent society” lacking in love.
The Trump administration has had a fraught relationship with Colombia under the leadership of Petro, a former Marxist guerilla turned left-wing politician. President Donald Trump has accused Petro of not fulfilling his country’s counter-narcotic obligations. Trump administration officials also raised concerns about the assasination of conservative Colombian politician Miguel Uribe Turbay.
“It is a source of second-hand embarrassment to see a Head of State behaving in this rude manner, blaming the United States for the disappearance of two of his citizens in Mexico,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau wrote in a response to Petro on X.
In his post, Petro appealed to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum for help and stated that the musicians disappeared after a performance in the Mexican state of Sonora. However, the artists were last see at a gym in Mexico City’s upscale Polanco neighborhood, reported Parriva.
Sheinbaum, for her part, said Monay that the Mexican Foreign Ministry had been in touch with Colombia and that investigations into the musicians’ deaths were underway, the news outlet reported.