Guadalajara (Mexico), Jan 20 (IANS/EFE): Mexican authorities have arrested four teenagers for their alleged role in the deaths of four youths and a middle-aged man whose bodies were found buried at a student group's office in this western city.

Jalisco state Attorney General Tomas Coronado said the detained minors were aged 17, 15 and 13 while the fourth suspect was 19-year-old Gerardo Godoy Solano.

In December, authorities said they found five bodies - four students and a father of one of the youths - buried in clandestine graves at the headquarters of the Federation of Guadalajara Students, or FEG.

The state attorney general said Godoy acknowledged that he was a "bodyguard and assistant" of the FEG's president, David Castorena, who allegedly witnessed the burials.

The suspects said they coordinated the FEG's activities at area high schools and confessed to helping dig the two graves where the five bodies were deposited, he added.

Coronado said the victims went to the FEG's offices Dec 9 to demand that the student group lower the fee they were charging Armando Gomez, a vendor and the oldest victim, for permission to sell different snacks outside a school.

According to the suspects' statements, the vendor and his son, Francisco Ismael Gomez Saucedo, got into an argument with an individual identified as "El Tatuado" at the FEG president's office, where they were shot and killed, Coronado added.

"El Tatuado" then ordered three other students waiting outside to be dragged inside the offices, where they were stabbed to death.

The FEG, which comprises students at Jalisco public schools, has frequently been accused of demanding payments from street vendors in exchange for the so-called "derecho de piso", or right to set up shop outside the schools.