A Mexican federal lawmaker was killed and burned after being abducted in broad daylight, authorities confirmed Wednesday, shocking his ruling party amid government assurances that violence is down.
Deputy Gabriel Gomez Michel was driving to the airport in the western state of Jalisco on Monday when a clutch of cars intercepted his sport-utility vehicle, authorities said.
The 49-year-old former pediatrician's body was found early Tuesday in the neighboring state of Zacatecas inside the charred remains of his SUV, alongside the burned corpse of his assistant.
The Jalisco prosecutor's office said forensic experts positively identified the bodies of Gomez Michel and Heriberto Nunez Ramos.
In a statement, the office said authorities were investigating who was behind the "double homicide."
The chief prosecutor of Zacatecas, Arturo Nahle, said the murder resembled the "modus operandi" of organized crime.
Security cameras captured the abduction, showing cars flanking the lawmaker's SUV as a man in a red shirt points at his window on the road outside Guadalajara. His wife had called the authorities to report his disappearance.
Gomez Michel's home state Jalisco is a bastion of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel, one of the country's most powerful gangs, which have killed tens of thousands of people in turf wars since 2006.
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 lawmakers are less common.
PRI lawmaker Moises Villanueva was killed in 2011. El Universal newspaper documented attacks against five other federal legislators since 2006, and a foiled plot against a senator and his congressman brother last year.
In March 2013, Jalisco's tourism secretary was shot dead when he was traveling in his SUV in Zamora, a popular tourist spot on the Pacific coast.
- 'Sorrow and indignation' -
Gomez Michel, who was mayor of El Grullo in 2010-2012, belongs to President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Pena Nieto said Tuesday that murders had slipped by 29 percent in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2012, the year he took office.
Gomez Michel's murder stunned the political class.
"It is difficult to express the sorrow and indignation that the murder of our colleague Gabriel Gomez Michel has left," said Manlio Beltrones, coordinator of the ruling party's congressional deputies.
Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong indicated that federal prosecutors would take over the case.
Jalisco's attorney general, Luis Carlos Najera, said Gabriel Gomez had not received any threats prior to his abduction.
Javier Oliva, a politics and security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the fact that a congressman was abducted and killed "demonstrates the vulnerable situation that some parts of the republic face" despite the drop in homicides.
"It's a worrisome indicator of the general situation," he told AFP.