Mexican AG’s Office to Probe Congressman’s Murder

MEXICO CITY – Prosecutors in the Mexican states of Zacatecas and Jalisco have handed over to the federal Attorney General’s Office all the information they have collected in the murder of congressman Gabriel Gomez Michel, officials said Thursday.

Authorities in both states are working with the federal AG’s office to expedite the probe, Zacatecas state Attorney General Arturo Nahle told MVS radio.

Gomez Michel was kidnapped on Monday as he drove to the airport in Guadalajara, Jalisco’s capital.

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

Zacatecas has already provided federal prosecutors with the autopsies and all forensic evidence found at the scene, Nahle said Thursday.

Also turned over were the statements taken from Gomez Michel’s brothers, “who have no idea about where this brutal aggression might have come from,” Nahle said.

Authorities in Jalisco relayed the results of their investigation of the daylight abduction in Guadalajara.

“There are still many questions awaiting a response,” Nahle said.

Gomez Michel, a physician, represented part of Jalisco in the Mexican Congress.

The armed assailants who seized and ultimately killed the lawmaker and his assistant were not after a ransom, Nahle said.

“We’re not talking about a kidnapping, strictly speaking,” he said. “They grabbed them, they killed them, the burned them and they dumped them there on the border of Zacatecas with Jalisco.”