Kidnapped Mexican congressman’s burnt body found, organised crime suspected

Mexico City: Mexican authorities have confirmed that as per forensic tests results, the two completely burnt bodies found this week in an SUV are those of a kidnapped congressman and one of his assistants.

Officials in the western Mexican states of Jalisco and Zacatecas said DNA tests confirmed the identity of Gabriel Gomez Michel, a member of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and his assistant, Heriberto Nunez, the prosecutors’ offices in the two states said on Wednesday.

The burnt bodies of the abducted congressman and his aide were found on Tuesday inside the lawmaker’s SUV on the border between Zacatecas and Jalisco.

Gomez Michel was kidnapped on Monday as he drove to the airport in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco, that state’s Attorney General (AG) Luis Carlos Najera Gutierrez said on Tuesday at a press conference.

Prosecutors in Zacatecas contacted their counterparts in Jalisco early on Tuesday to inform them of the discovery of “a burned vehicle… in which two bodies were found and had tags corresponding to the vehicle of the lawmaker who was deprived of his liberty”, the AG said.

Jalisco authorities have not yet determined a motive for the double kidnap-murder, although they said it bore the hallmarks of organised crime.