Alleged massacre mastermind re-arrested

Authorities on Sunday said they re-arrested the alleged mastermind of a 1997 massacre of 45 men, women and children in southern Mexico.

Antonio Santiz was detained Saturday — the 10th anniversary of the killings — on charges he participated in a series of violent robberies in the days leading up to the Acteal massacre in the southern state of Chiapas, police said in statement.

Chiapas Justice Minister Amador Rodriguez Lozano called Santiz the presumed "intellectual author" of the killings and said he is believed to have provided many of the weapons used in the massacre.

His arrest was an important step in an ongoing investigation into the massacre, now being supervised by a special prosecutor, Rodriguez said.

Santiz had been arrested for his alleged involvement in 2000, but a judge threw out the charges in 2001, ruling there wasn't enough evidence.

Pro-government villagers armed with guns and machetes slaughtered the 45 on Dec. 22, 1997. At the time, Chiapas was deeply divided between supporters of the Zapatista rebels — fighting for greater autonomy and respect for indigenous groups — and backers of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for seven decades.