A court in Mexico has overturned the sentences of a group of pro-government indigenous activists convicted of involvement in a massacre two years ago, in which forty-five people were killed for allegedly supporting Zapatista rebels.

The court in the southern state of Chiapas ruled that the original charges were unsupported by the evidence.

Those convicted, a former mayor and twenty-three other government supporters, had been sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.

The ruling means that they could go free or receive lesser sentences.

A total of eighty-eight people have been jailed for the massacre in the village of Acteal, which provoked international condemnation.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service