Guadalajara – A Mexican court on Tuesday sentenced 10 cartel gunmen to 141 years each in prison for murder and kidnapping at a suspected training camp, in a case that shocked the country.
The men were arrested last September at a ranch authorities say was used as a forced recruitment center for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the country’s most powerful criminal gangs.
Two captives were freed and a dead body found when the military raided the property in the western state of Jalisco following reports of gunfire, according to authorities.
“The defendants were each sentenced to 141 years and three months in prison” for one count of homicide and two counts of kidnapping, according to a statement from the Jalisco prosecutor’s office.
The Guerreros Buscadores collective, a group dedicated to locating missing relatives, reported in March that charred bones as well as hundreds of objects and items of clothing had been found at Izaguirre Ranch, allegedly belonging to people who had been forced to join the cartel.
However, the government said that there was no evidence that the ranch was an “extermination camp” as the group alleged, but rather a cartel training center.
Since March, about 15 other people, including a mayor and police officers, have been arrested in connection with the site.
The case has received significant press coverage in a country where criminal violence has left more than 120,000 people missing, mostly since the government launched a war on drug cartels in 2006.
According to the government, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the drug trafficking groups designated terrorist organizations by US President Donald Trump, lured recruits to Izaguirre Ranch with fake job adverts.
They were given firearms and other training there, Security Minister Omar Garcia Harfuch said in March, based on the testimony of an alleged cartel recruiter who was arrested.
“They even took the lives of people who resisted the training or tried to escape,” he said.
The United Nations Human Rights Office has called for “thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigations” into the crimes committed at the ranch.
Disappearances, many of them thought to be linked to forced recruitment by cartels, have soared in Mexico since the government deployed the military against drug trafficking groups almost two decades ago.
Around 480,000 people have been murdered in a spiral of violence since then.
