Mexico City, May 27 (teleSUR-RHC)-- As Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) opens an investigation into the recent events in Tanhuato, Michoacan, where 42 people were apparently executed, new witnesses' accounts surface suggesting that once again federal authorities have lied manipulating official information.

“By how the bodies were found, some of them undressed, this appeared to be more of a massacre than a police operation,” the Mayor of Tanhuato, Jose Ignacio Cuevas, told Mexican news outlet Animal Politico.

The local official also said that the ranch El Sol (The Sun) were the events took place had been abandoned for years, but that about 18 months ago activity could be observed within the property, adding that tractors were again operating, corn and alfalfa were being cultivated and packaged for trade.

Cuevas accounts suggest there were no illegal activities going on at the ranch and the people working there were executed and not killed during a shootout as federal police had reported. However, the National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido rejected that police executed the 42 people and said that the names of the 41 federal police that first entered the ranch have been handed over to the CNDH so that they can be questioned regarding their participation in the Tanhuato case.

In the meantime, the CNDH said it would send investigators to the ranch and that it has called on officials to render detailed accounts as to what happened May 22, when 42 people and one police officer died.

As part of their investigation, the CNDH said photographic evidence and witnesses' accounts have been collected to be evaluated along with official reports. “The investigation has been opened because it is necessary that all Mexicans act within the law and with respect to human dignity,” the CNDH said.

The human rights organization also called on the government to carry out their own investigation into this case and the January 16th case where federal police have been charged for executing 16 people in Apatzingan, also in Michoacan.

Witnesses told investigative journalist Laura Castellanos that police stormed a peaceful demonstration by self-defense forces yelling “kill them like dogs.” In this case, federal authorities had also initially reported that federal police had been attacked by members of the self-defense forces and that they then engaged in a shootout with them.