Mexico ‘alien’ bodies: Criminal probe launched by Peru into how ‘mummies’ left country

Jaime Maussan, 70, a journalist and long-time alien enthusiast with a history of making dubious claims, sparked widespread surprise, disbelief and ridicule on social media after presenting the two alleged extraterrestrial corpses during the congressional hearing last Tuesday.

The purported mummified remains — which had a greyish colour, a human-like body form and elongated heads with three fingers on each hand — were brought by Maussan, who claimed they had been found in Cusco, Peru in 2017.

On Monday, doctors conducted tests on the remains in a livestreamed event on Maussan’s YouTube channel, concluding that they had found “no evidence of any assembly or manipulation of the skulls”, seemingly proving the remains were not human-made.

But the Peruvian government maintains the bodies are likely pre-Hispanic objects, with Culture Minister Leslie Urteaga announcing this week officials were investigating how the corpses came into Maussan’s possession and left Peru, adding that a criminal complaint had been filed.

Maussan has not revealed how he obtained the bodies but insists he is innocent and will reveal all “at an appropriate time”.

“I’m not worried,” he told The Telegraph. “I have done absolutely nothing illegal.”

Prior claims

In 2017, Maussan was involved in a documentary making similar claims about mummified aliens.

The film by conspiracy theory video platform Gaia.com claimed a three-fingered mummy was discovered in the Nazca region of Peru.

“Independent scientists and universities are currently analysing findings, with initial examinations suggesting the possibility of material that is unlike anything found in the fossil record,” the website said.

“Could this be a primitive human with an intentional or developmental deformity, or undeniable evidence that a non-human species exists?”

Maussan, who led the Gaia filmmakers to the Nazca mummy, had two years earlier been a key organiser of what the Skeptical Inquirer magazine dubbed “UFOlogy’s biggest black eye”.

The so-called “Roswell slides”, containing a picture of what was claimed to be a dead alien, were unveiled in front of a worldwide online audience at a 2015 event called “Be Witness”.

It was later revealed that the photo was of the mummified body of a Native American child.

The humiliating revelation sparked apologies from most of those involved but Maussan refused to concede defeat, telling Mirror Online the saga was “far from over”.

He said it “could be true” that the body was actually a dead child.

“But there are so many anomalies that is impossible that this is a human being,” told the outlet.

Doctors test bodies

Scientists examined the two latest specimens at the Noor Clinic on Monday, with José Zalce Benitez, the director of the Health Sciences Research Institute in the secretary of the Mexican navy’s office, saying the studies proved the alleged aliens belonged to a single skeleton and were not assembled with human objects.

“[They] belong to a single skeleton that has not been joined to other pieces,” he said.

He also said his team found that one “was alive, was intact, was biological and was in gestation”, pointing to large lumps inside the alleged ET’s abdomen — which he suggested could be eggs.

But his testimony is unlikely to convince critics due to his long association with Maussan.

Mr Benitez, who appeared alongside Maussan during his congressional testimony, was one of the lead researchers on the debunked Roswell slides and also appeared in the 2017 Gaia documentary.

In the video, he could be seen claiming the three fingers “makes us think that this does not belong to a human species”.

According to the Associated Press, a report by the Peruvian prosecutor’s office in 2017 found other bodies claimed by Maussan to be aliens were actually “recently manufactured dolls, which have been covered with a mixture of paper and synthetic glue to simulate the presence of skin”.

The report added the figures were almost certainly human-made and that “they are not the remains of ancestral aliens that they have tried to present”.

‘1000 years old’

During his testimony last week, Maussan said the corpses were between 700 and 1800 years old, adding they had been analysed through a carbon dating process by Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

“These beings are around 1000 years old,” he said.

The university’s physics institute confirmed in a statement that it had carried out tests but only to determine the age and not the origin of the specimens. Its laboratory “distances itself from any subsequent use, interpretation or misrepresentation made with the results it issues”, a statement said.

“It’s the queen of all evidence,” Maussan claimed during the hearing, saying scientists had determined more than 30 per cent of the specimens’ DNA was “unknown”. “That is, if the DNA is showing us that they are non-human beings and that there is nothing that looks like this in the world, we should take it as such.”

Maussan described them as “non-human beings”. “We don’t want to call them extraterrestrials because we don’t know,” he said.

He claimed the purported bodies were found fossilised in mines in Cusco, in a layer of diatomaceous earth, or ancient phytoplankton algae.

“These aren’t beings that were found after a UFO wreckage,” he said.

“They were found in diatom mines, and were later fossilised. Whether they are aliens or not, we don’t know, but they were intelligent, and they lived with us. They should rewrite history… We are not alone in this vast universe, we should embrace this reality.”

‘It’s terrible’

The session was called by ruling party lawmaker Sergio Gutierrez, who defended the event as being in the “public interest”.

During the hearing, Mr Gutierrez asked the speakers to swear to tell the truth. He said Maussan requested the session after a US congressional committee in July was told by a former intelligence official that humans were not alone in the universe and American authorities were covering up the evidence.

In May, the US space agency NASA held its first public meeting on the issue, and urged a more rigorous scientific approach to clarify the origin of so-called unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).

Scientists have widely rubbished Maussan’s claims.

“With the experience that all the researchers who have worked with pre-Columbian mummies have, especially from the Nazca area, it is very clear to us that these mummies, the large ones, are pre-Columbian human beings that have been modified for commercial purposes, and the supposed ‘small mummies’ are structures that have been put together,” physical anthropologist Guido Lombardi told the El Comercio newspaper, as reported by Wired en Espanol.

Physicist and astronomer Julieta Fierro told the publication the Peruvian ambassador should have been invited to the hearing.

“You can imagine what it means to display ‘extraterrestrials’ unearthed in that country and bring them to Mexico, and not invite representatives from Peru, it’s terrible,” she said.

“How did they get through customs? Besides, if they were aliens, the first thing you should do is to isolate them. Because what if it brings a virus from somewhere else and causes a terrible pandemic?”

‘Huge step backwards’

Many UFO researchers slammed Maussan, accusing the journalist of discrediting the subject at a time when more credible revelations were gaining traction.

Ryan Graves, a former US Navy pilot and executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace (ASA), was among the witnesses who testified before the Mexican congress — but slammed the presentation of the corpses as an “unsubstantiated stunt”.

Mr Graves, who had previously testified before the US congressional UFO hearing in July, said Maussan’s claims put a huge dent in his serious work on UAPs.

“Unfortunately, yesterday’s demonstration was a huge step backwards for this issue,” Graves said in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“My testimony centred on sharing my experience and the UAP reports I hear from commercial and military aircrew through ASA’s witness program. I will continue to raise awareness of UAP as an urgent matter of aerospace safety, national security, and science, but I am deeply disappointed by this unsubstantiated stunt.”

John Greenewald Jr., founder of the The Black Vault website, said the “alien” body story was being covered by “the entire world”.

“But given the history of the promoter behind the root of it, is that a good or bad thing?” he wrote. “And does the UFO conversation really need that baggage front and centre?”

Harvard professor Avi Loeb, who has been on the hunt for crashed extraterrestrial materials on the floor of the Pacific Ocean north of Australia, also presented at the Mexican hearing prior to Maussan.

Prof Loeb declined to comment when reached via email on Wednesday.

In June, a former intelligence official turned whistleblower claimed the US government had secretly retrieved craft of non-human origin and alien bodies.

David Grusch, an Air Force veteran and former member of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), made the wild claims in a series of bombshell reports in The Debrief and NewsNation.

The following month Mr Grusch testified at the UFO hearing alongside Mr Graves and David Fravor, a former high-ranking US Navy fighter pilot who claimed to have chased a “Tic Tac”-shaped UFO off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

frank.chung@news.com.au

— with AFP