A note on the Manin-Mumford conjecture

In the article [PR1] {\it On Hrushovski's proof of the Manin-Mumford conjecture} (Proceedings of the ICM 2002), R. Pink and the author gave a short proof of the Manin-Mumford conjecture, which was inspired by an earlier model-theoretic proof by Hrushovski. The proof given in [PR1] uses a difficult unpublished ramification-theoretic result of Serre. It is the purpose of this note to show how the proof given in [PR1] can be modified so as to circumvent the reference to Serre's result. J. Oesterl\'e and R. Pink contributed several simplifications and shortcuts to this note.