CHILPANCINGO, MEXICO – Two Indian human rights activists kidnapped nearly two weeks ago have been found dead in Mexico's southern Guerrero state, officials said.

The bodies of Raul Lucas Lucia, 39, and Manuel Ponce Rosas, 32, both members of the Organization for the Future of the Mixtec People, or OFPM, were found Saturday in Las Cazuelas, a town some 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero, the state Public Safety Secretariat said.

The activists' bodies were partially buried and had been stuffed into trash bags, the secretariat said, adding that relatives identified the men.

The men appeared to have been tortured and were apparently killed on Feb. 16, the secretariat said.

Lucas was shot twice in the head and Ponce was beaten to death, according to the autopsy report.

The two Mixtec activists were kidnapped by a group of gunmen on Feb. 13 in Ayutla de los Libres while attending an official event in the city.

Guadalupe Castro, an Ayutla council member and Lucas's wife, said her husband was abducted by four individuals who appeared to be soldiers at an event attended by the city's police chief, Luis Jose Sanchez Hernandez.

"The public safety secretary (Sanchez Hernandez) got a phone call on the day of the event attended by my husband and Manuel Ponce," he left a few minutes later and a group of armed men arrived "and detained my husband along with Manuel, people saw it, but they didn't do anything," Castro said.

Human rights groups in Guerrero and Amnesty International called for the activists' release.

The two Indians, who were survivors of the army massacre of 11 suspected guerrillas in El Charco in 1998, had defended human rights in their communities.

Guerrero Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca said in a press conference Monday that the activists' killings were not a "crime of state," as the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center labeled it in a statement.

"This crime embarrasses us," Torreblanca said.

Aurora Muñoz, human rights secretary of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution in Guerrero, said the activists were killed to "silence the voice of defenders of the human rights" of Indians. EFE