Mexico: dead deputy identified

On Wednesday, forensic experts identified the body of Chamber Deputy Gabriel Gomez Michel, 49, and that of an assistant named Heriberto Nunez Ramos. Police in the state of Zacatecas had found the two bodies Tuesday inside a charred SUV that belonged to Gomez Michel, a deputy in the lower house for Mexico's ruling neoliberal Institutional Revolutionary Party. He had been kidnapped Monday in neighboring Jalisco.

"At about five in the morning (1000 UTC) we had the first positive result from the DNA tests and a few hours later the results regarding the identity of the deputy's assistant," Zacatecas Attorney General Arturo Nahle told Mexican radio.

On Monday, Gomez Michel's wife told authorities that the abductors had seized her husband en route to the Guadalajara airport. Officials said "several vehicles" had intercepted Gomez Michel's SUV in the outskirts of the capital of Jalisco. Security cameras had captured the abduction, showing cars stopped in front and to the side of the lawmaker's SUV as a man in a red shirt points at a window.

Organized crime

Police have not determined whether the men were killed in Jalisco or Zacatecas, where the truck was found roughly 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the site of the kidnapping. Officials said the crime resembled the "modus operandi" of drug cartels, which frequently kidnap and kill their victims.

"Everything points to the responsibility of organized crime," Attorney General Nahle said on Wednesday, adding that one possible lead involved the "Jalisco New Generation" cartel, which just last week took credit for the murders of six people in the neighboring state of Michoacan.

Authorities said that Gomez Michel, who had worked as a pediatrician for 18 years and served as the mayor of the town of El Grullo from 2010 to 2012, had not received any threats prior to his kidnapping, nor was any demand made for ransom. Local politicians have often been the targets of attacks or threats during Mexico's drug war, with at least 30 mayors killed since 2006, but attacks against federal officials or lawmakers have been much less common.

Mexico's government claims that violent crime has fallen nationwide in the past year. The country of 112 million people recorded 121,613 murders from 2007 to 2012, a period that coincided with the reign of former President Felipe Calderon, who launched a war on drug cartels upon taking office in 2006. President Enrique Pena Nieto, who assumed office in 2012, has taken a different tack in the drug war.

mkg/kms (Reuters, AFP, dpa)