Mexican authorities confirmed today that a federal lawmaker was killed and set on fire after being abducted in broad daylight, shocking his ruling party amid government assurances that violence is down.
Deputy Gabriel Gomez Michel was driving to the airport in the western state of Jalisco on Monday when several cars intercepted his sport-utility vehicle, authorities said.
The 49-year-old former pediatrician's body was found early yesterday in the neighboring state of Zacatecas inside the charred remains of his SUV alongside the burned corpse of his assistant.
The Jalisco prosecutor's office said forensic experts positively identified the bodies of Gomez Michel and Heriberto Nunez Ramos.
In a statement, the office said authorities were investigating who was behind the "double homicide."
The chief prosecutor of Zacatecas, Arturo Nahle, said the murder resembled the "modus operandi" of organized crime.
Gomez Michel's home state Jalisco is a bastion of the New Generation drug cartel, one of the country's most powerful gangs, which have killed tens of thousands of people in turf wars since 2006.
Local politicians have often been the targets of attacks or threats during Mexico's drug war, with at least 30 mayors killed since 2006, but attacks against federal officials or lawmakers are less common.
In March 2013, Jalisco's tourism secretary was shot dead when he was traveling in his SUV in Zamora, a popular tourist spot on the Pacific coast.
Gomez Michel, who was mayor of El Grullo in 2010-2012, belongs to President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and his kidnapping comes at a time when the government says that violent crimes have fallen nationwide in the past year.
Pena Nieto said yesterday that murders had slipped by 29 percent in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2012, the year he took office.
Gomez Michel's murder stunned the political class.
"It is difficult to express the sorrow and indignation that the murder of our colleague Gabriel Gomez Michel has left," said Manlio Beltrones, coordinator of the ruling party's congressional deputies.
Jalisco's attorney general, Luis Carlos Najera, said Gabriel Gomez had not received any threats prior to his abduction.
"He had never expressed any fear or problems of this type," Najera said yesterday.
