Activists march in Mexico City in support of missing rebels

MEXICO CITY: Hundreds of leftist activists marched through downtown Mexico City on Wednesday to demand the government provide information on the whereabouts of two members of a rebel group who went missing in May, purportedly after they were detained by security forces.

The government has denied it ever held or detained the two men, who had links to the leftist People's Revolutionary Army, or EPR, the guerrilla group that claimed responsibility for several recent bombings of gas pipelines.

The EPR has said in communiques that it will continue the attacks until the two men, Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Raymundo Rivera Bravo, are released. While the marchers distanced themselves from the EPR and its methods, they said the men had to be released in order for the attacks to end.

"The kidnappings themselves are generating the violence," said Hermenegildo Torres, who was once a member of an older rebel group known as PROCUP, widely viewed as a precursor of the EPR. "If they (the men) don't reappear, the bombings are going to continue."

Torres, like several other former members of the PROCUP — which was blamed for several bombings in the 1980s and early 1990s — said they are now involved in non-violent social development project.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene estimated the number of protesters at about 500.

The government has formed a special anti-subversion task force in response to the Sept. 10 and July 11 attacks claimed by the EPR, which affected gas and oil deliveries and cost businesses hundreds of millions of dollars (euros).