Kidnapping: Mexican ex-mayor sentenced to 92 years

A former Mexican mayor was on Wednesday sentenced to 92 years in prison for the kidnap of six civil society leaders in 2013, judicial sources said.

Jose Luis Abarca, 62, was also fined 920,700 pesos (about $52,000) for the abductions in the city of Iguala in the southern state of Guerrero.

The victims included an agricultural leader, Arturo Hernandez Cardona, who was later found dead.

Abarca is also accused of involvement in one of Mexico’s worst human rights atrocities — the disappearance of 43 students in 2014 when he was mayor of Iguala.

He was arrested that year and is being held in a jail in central Mexico.

The students at a teacher training college had commandeered buses to travel to a demonstration in Mexico City before they went missing.

Investigators say they were detained by corrupt police and handed over to a drug cartel, though exactly what happened to them is disputed.

One theory is that cartel members targeted the students because they had unknowingly taken a bus with drugs hidden inside.

Last year, a truth commission tasked by the government to investigate the case branded it a “state crime” involving agents of various institutions. Punch