A Mexican court on Tuesday sentenced 10 men to more than 140 years each in prison for killing one person and disappearing two others in a cartel-run recruitment and training compound in the western state of Jalisco.
The case had shocked the nation and underscored the ruthless methods Mexico’s criminal groups use to abduct, train and kill young recruits. The 10 men were also ordered to each pay nearly $70,000 in reparations for the victims, officials said.
The men were arrested in September at Rancho Izaguirre, a remote property about six hour’s drive west of Mexico City, after the authorities responded to reports of gunfire. At the site, officers were met with gunshots and discovered one person dead and two others held captive, state officials said.
In March, six months after the arrests, the site generated national headlines after volunteers searching for their missing relatives found what they called underground cremation ovens, burned human remains, hundreds of bone shards and discarded personal items inside the ranch.
Mexico’s attorney general later said that there was no evidence the ranch had been the site of human cremations, but that the property had been used by a major cartel as a training hub.
The volunteer searchers did find apparent evidence of victims, however. Photos taken at the abandoned ranch, in the small community of Teuchitlán outside Guadalajara, the state capital, showed hundreds of shoes piled together and heaps of clothing, including a blue summer dress, a small pink backpack, pieces of underwear and what seemed to be bone fragments.
In a country seemingly inured to episodes of brutal violence from drug cartels, the images shocked Mexicans and prompted outraged human rights groups to demand that the government put an end to the violence that has ravaged the nation for years.
The authorities published photos of more than 1,000 personal items found at the site — a chilling hint at the number of people who might have died there. The photos set off a frantic search across Mexico by families who scoured the images, desperately searching for signs of their missing relatives.
The case also renewed pressure on President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government to address the crisis of forced disappearances. More than 126,000 people have been forcibly disappeared in Mexico since such record-keeping began in 1962, according to official data. Human rights groups and collectives of volunteers searching for missing relatives have said that the number could be higher.
Hector Rodolfo Flores González, a member of Luz de Esperanza, a search group based in Jalisco, applauded the sentences and said that he expected the convictions to lead to more information that would help explain what had transpired at the Izaguirre ranch.
“We still don’t know what happened there; we still don’t know the whole truth,” he said. “And the victims and victims’ families deserve to know that truth.”
Still, he expressed hope that such convictions, with long, though symbolic, sentences, could serve as a powerful deterrent and send a clear message to other criminal groups that such crimes would not go unpunished.
“Forced disappearance must stop being the perfect crime,” he said. “If more and more people are convicted and receive exemplary sentences, it could create fear among those who commit these crimes, and that could reduce this criminal behavior,” he added.
A month after the grisly discovery, Ms. Sheinbaum announced a series of measures to streamline the chaotic bureaucracy surrounding the search for disappeared people. Among them were legal reforms aimed at unifying the nation’s fragmented identification records — including case files and biometric data held by state prosecutors and forensic services — to allow for more effective cross-checking of information.
Deep ties often exist between criminal groups and the local authorities in parts of Mexico under cartel control, security experts say, and successive governments have struggled to tackle the widespread corruption.
Before the sentencing, the mayor of Teuchitlán had been accused of colluding with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a major criminal group known as C.J.N.G., to run the recruitment and training center. In May, the mayor was charged with organized crime and enforced disappearance, an accusation he has denied.
Others arrested in connection with the case included four former police officers and a police chief, as well as a cartel leader identified as José Gregorio Lastra, who, the authorities say, oversaw the training center.
Mexican officials say that Mr. Lastra has described his group killing, beating and torturing people who resisted training or tried to escape from the ranch.
Search groups in Jalisco state have said that young people are being lured by criminal groups like the Jalisco cartel with false job offers and promises of attractive salaries. The victims are taken to places like the one in Teuchitlán, the groups said, where they are either trained in crime — or killed.
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