A former mayor was sentenced yesterday to 247 years in prison for his role in the murder of 10 young men in Michoacán in July 2016, while four municipal police officers received 300-year terms for the same crime.

Juan Carlos Arreygue Núñez, ex-mayor of the Michoacán municipality of Álvaro Obregón, and the police who were under his charge at the time of the homicides were found guilty of the crime in July.

Investigators found that municipal police detained the 10 men on orders of Arreygue, who had personal differences with one of them.

They were shot dead on a property in Álvaro Obregón before being burned inside a pickup truck on another property in the neighboring municipality of Cuitzeo.

At the public hearing in the state capital of Morelia, the court also ordered the five guilty men to pay just under 3.7 million pesos (US $191,000) in reparations.

The Michoacán Attorney General’s office said in a statement that the sentences are subject to appeal but also stressed that “there will be no impunity.”

Arreygue, who was elected mayor under the banner of the Labor Party (PT), had been suspected of having ties to the Caballeros Templarios criminal organization before winning office.

Source: El Universal (sp)