The former mayor of Iguala (southern Mexico), already implicated in the investigation into the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, was sentenced Wednesday, May 17 to 92 years in prison for the kidnapping of six people in 2013, according to judicial sources. José Luis Abarca, 62, was convicted of the May 2013 kidnapping of six social leaders in his municipality. Among them was Arturo Hernandez Cardona, a leader of a peasant organization who was found dead a few months later.
José Luis Abarca was still mayor at the time of the disappearance, on the night of 26 to 27 September 2014 in Iguala, of 43 students of the Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College, a case that has not yet been fully clarified and has provoked widespread international condemnation. José Luis Abarca was arrested in November 2014 for his alleged responsibility for the disappearance of the students. He has been behind bars ever since.
Shot dead and burned in a landfill
The students disappeared while trying to commandeer buses to travel to Mexico City to participate in protests. According to the first official investigation, the youths were arrested by the local police in cahoots with the Guerreros Unidos gang, then shot dead and burned in a landfill for reasons that remain unclear. Only the remains of three of them could be identified.
The report of the "Ayotzinapa Truth Commission", set up by current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, concluded in August 2022 that the Mexican military also had some responsibility for this crime. A Mexican court had issued 2022 arrest warrants in August 83, and at the end of March, nine police officers were arrested for their alleged responsibility.
