Mexico sentences two of María Villar's kidnappers to 80 years in prison

FGR

The Mexican Justice this week sentenced two members of the gang of kidnappers that kidnapped, tortured and murdered María Villar four years ago to 80 years in prison.

The Spanish executive, who was 39 years old at the time, was the niece of the former president of the Spanish Football Federation, Miguel Ángel Villar, and her case shocked the Spanish community residing in Mexico but also Spain, which was watching in astonishment towards a country and a capital that seemed to have shaken the tragedy of the daily kidnappings of the nineties.

Mexico for many outside its borders became once again the center of the horror of violence.

This week, four years after what happened, a federal court ruled with one of the highest prison sentences for aggravated kidnapping, related to organized crime, against Óscar Saúl Roldán Rodríguez - who withdrew money from the victim's account and made negotiation calls—, and Moisés Estañón Nájera, who drove the vehicle in which the victim was deprived of liberty.

The two criminals were arrested shortly after the body was found, following the international scandal that had led to their abduction.

"This sentence means taking another step in the search for justice," his widower, the Brazilian Cristiano do Vale, who attended as a witness in the trial with the rest of the family, told the Efe agency, due to the restrictions travel imposed by the pandemic.

Do Vale regretted the delay in the judicial process and the obstacles he faced in finding justice.

Although in Mexico, this sentence after four years is almost a milestone.

Impunity is close to 90% of the cases, according to official figures, and the prisons are full of prisoners who serve preventive prisons without a conviction for decades.

"During this journey there were many Mexicans, many foreigners, who told me to leave it, to give up, that it was not going to go anywhere," he said.

"Today the truth that fills me with satisfaction to see that, despite everything that is said about the country, with which we fell in love and chose to live a few years ago, has a judicial system that I trust," he added to the Spanish agency Do Vale.

According to the police reconstruction of the kidnapping, the Spanish IBM executive left on September 13, 2016 at 9:20 p.m. from a shopping center in Santa Fe, a business area on the outskirts of Mexico City, and he boarded a cheat taxi on his way home.

The car pretended to be part of a taxi rank.

Villar, a resident of the Mexican capital for three years, came to call her husband to tell him that he was on his way to his home, in the wealthy Polanco neighborhood, but as soon as he hung up a taxi door opened and the nightmare that would end in the worst possible end.

A friend of the driver got in and Villar, realizing that she was being kidnapped, struggled with him to try to escape.

She could not go beyond the handcuffing because they immediately immobilized her with shocks from an electrical device and once they had her undone they put handcuffs on her.

From there they drove out of the city, in the direction of the State of Mexico, and stopped at an ATM to start emptying their cards.

Villar was hidden in a safe house and the next day the kidnappers contacted her family to ask for ransom.

Supported by specialists in liberation negotiations, her husband, the Brazilian Cristiano do Vale, and his cousin Gorka Villar reached an agreement to make a payment that they made in a humble neighborhood of Mexico City.

The family, in some interviews with Spanish media, then declared that they had paid the ransom that was asked of them in full: 90,000 euros, about two million pesos.

Before and after the payment, the criminals gave proof that María Villar was alive.

From there, a new withdrawal of money was detected at an ATM and nothing more.

The criminals stopped communicating with the family and the police were unable to regain contact with them.

A day later, September 15, two after the kidnapping, Villar's body was found.

She had been tied up and her head was covered with a bag.

His body had been dumped next to a stream.

The Spanish commotion over the crime reached the Spanish judicial apparatus.

And a few days after what happened, a chief prosecutor of the National Court, a body dedicated to the investigation of major crimes such as organized crime or drug trafficking, opened an investigation into the kidnapping and death of the Spanish expatriate at the hands of her captors.

The Court requested information from the Mexican Prosecutor's Office, which accelerated its investigations as it did not happen with other national crimes and detained the two suspects who from now on, if an amparo in their favor does not prevent it, they will spend the rest of their days in prison and Villar's crime will have found a hole in Mexican justice.