Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo said Tuesday he has extended an apology to the people of Japan over Saturday's stoning of a group of tourists by some 500 Mayan villagers that left a Japanese tourist and a local tour bus driver dead.
Portillo said he has asked Akira Urabe, Japanese ambassador to Guatemala, to convey his condolences and apology to Japanese citizens for the incident, which occurred in a mountainous village near the Mexican border.
Tetsuo Yamahiro, of Yono, Saitama Prefecture, and the bus driver, Edgar Castellanos, were stoned to death. They were both 39.
Yamahiro's relatives, who had arrived in Guatemala earlier, cremated his body at a facility in Guatemala City on Tuesday night.
After arriving in two buses, the group of 19 Japanese tourists was attacked while touring a morning market in Todos Santos Cuchumatan, about 150 km northwest of Guatemala City.
The attack began after a woman reportedly screamed, "My child was stolen," followed by the shouts of another woman who exclaimed that the Japanese tour group was stealing local children.
Rumors abound in some Mayan communities that foreigners come to the area to abduct children to sell their internal organs.
Five other Japanese tourists and two policemen were injured in the attack.
Of the 18 surviving Japanese tourists, three decided to cut their trip short and left for Japan on Tuesday, while the remaining 15 have decided to stay in Guatemala until Saturday.
The three, accompanied by employees of Saiyu Travel Co., a Tokyo travel agency that organized the tour, are expected to arrive at Narita airport on Thursday afternoon following a stopover in the United States.
Guatemalan police have obtained arrest warrants for 12 suspects and are considering obtaining warrants to arrest seven more people. The arrests of the suspects are expected Wednesday at the earliest, local police sources said.