A MEXICAN campaigner demanding justice for 43 murdered students has been assassinated.

Miguel Angel Jimenez was found riddled with bullets in a car outside the village of Xaltianguis in Guerrero state over the weekend. His funeral was held there on Sunday.

Mr Jimenez, a member of the Union of Peoples and Organisations of Guerrero (UPOEG), organised search parties for the bodies of 43 teaching students who disappeared in September.

Prosecutors insist that corrupt local police in the city of Iguala turned the students over to members of a drug cartel, the Guerreros Unidos, who killed them and burnt their bodies.

But the searches Mr Jimenez led into nearby mountains found the unmarked graves of many other people.

On Monday, UPOEG leader Bruno Placido confirmed his death and said Mr Jimenez had received threats, which may have come from the drug gang.

Mr Jimenez fled to his hometown of Xaltianguis to be safer.UPOEG also organises local armed self-defence groups in the state.Mr Jimenez was instrumental in involving in the searches hundreds of Iguala residents whose relatives disappeared during the cartel’s reign of kidnappings and killings.

While he played less of a role after November, he continued to supply information and said he had new leads.

In an April interview with Kara Andrade, a US PhD student, Jimenez said he had been threatened by “people who are involved in things and whose interests I have impacted.

“They’ve chased me, in my town they’ve tailed and followed me from place to place.”

• Investigators are to question the governor of Veracruz state about the murder of photojournalist Ruben Espinosa, the mayor of Mexico City said on Monday.

Mr Espinosa had fled Veracruz, where 14 journalists have been killed since governor Javier Duarte took office in 2010.

He was found murdered in his Mexico City flat on July 31, along with three flatmates and his housekeeper.

One suspect, a convicted rapist, was arrested last week.