Founder of vigilante groups in Mexico gets 1-year sentence for kidnapping

Hipolito Mora Chavez, the founder of the vigilante movement in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, has been convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to one year in prison, judicial officials said.

The court found sufficient proof of Mora’s involvement in the disappearance of a young man in the municipality of Yurecuaro in 2013, they said Thursday.

The defendant, however, accused Michoacan state Attorney General Jose Martin Godoy of pressuring the judge to hand down a guilty verdict in a case that otherwise would have been decided in his favor.

Mora, a native of the village of La Ruana, and a group of peasants took up arms against the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) drug cartel on Feb. 24, 2013, and succeeded in driving the gang out of that hamlet.

President Enrique Peña Nieto subsequently sent troops and Federal Police units into Michoacan in January 2014 to suppress the conflict between the Templarios and the vigilantes.

In statements to EFE, Mora said he was informed Wednesday by the court in Apatzingan, where La Ruana is located, about the oneyear sentence and a 6,377peso ($383.50) fine.

But the vigilante leader said the victim’s family members testified in court that they did not recognize him as the person responsible for the young man’s disappearance and that the original complaint filed with the state AG’s office named a man from Yurecuaro as the suspect.

“The judge asked the woman, ‘How many times have you seen Hipolito Mora?’ And she said it was the first time and that someone had altered the complaint to substitute the name of the real culprit for mine,” he said.

Mora said he was willing to undergo a thousand more “careos” a procedure in Mexico that allows a defendant to confront his or her accuser facetoface to demonstrate his innocence.

He said his lawyer had already lodged an appeal and that he was confident of reversing the verdict.

Godoy earlier accused Mora in the deaths of two members of a rival selfdefense group and the killings of suspected drug traffickers in an armed clash, but the vigilante leader demonstrated his innocence on both occasions and was released from custody.

Mora has asked for the intervention of Peña Nieto, saying he is being politically persecuted by Godoy and accusing the prosecutor of acting on behalf of drug traffickers.

“There’s something sinister going on, (they’re) trying to kill me,” Mora told EFE, vowing to continue the struggle for Michoacan.

“They won’t silence me, not unless they fill me with lead.”