The follow-up hearing against several people involved in the murder of Uruapan mayor Carlos Manzo has revealed some details about the planning of the attack. This Saturday, the judge ordered preventive detention for Jorge Armando N., alias El Licenziato, identified as one of the alleged masterminds of the murder. He was arrested days ago. The seven bodyguards arrested this Friday for “qualified homicide due to failure to provide guarantor” will also remain in preventive detention, according to sources close to the investigation consulted by EL PAÍS.
Among those in uniform is the officer who shot Manzo, Víctor Ubaldo, a 17-year-old teenager who managed to push his way through the crowd attending the Candle Festival in Uruapan’s central square until he reached the mayor with his gun. In this Saturday’s court hearing it emerged that the policeman who shot Ubaldo, when he was already immobilized, did so with the same weapon used in the mayor’s crime and who shot him at the neck, as reported by the television channel. Millennium.
The prosecution was investigating security personnel who accompanied the municipal president to the Day of the Dead celebrations for shooting Víctor Manuel Ubaldo, the teenager who pulled the trigger, when he was already immobilized. The Secretary of Security, Omar García Harfuch, had already reported that the suspects were municipal police officers who had escorted Manzo that night.
Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, governor of the state of Michoacán, had hypothesized days ago about the role of the mayor’s bodyguards on the night of the murder, when they found the young man who had opened fire on the politician. “They arrest the murderer and a few moments later there is a struggle and there is a single shot that kills the murderer,” he told the media at a press conference. “The fields of investigation are open in every sense,” he added.
The hearing will resume next Wednesday at noon, as the defense asked for more time to gather evidence. In the hearing this Saturday, in which the prosecution presented its evidence, it was also mentioned that the leaders of the Jalisco New Generation cartel offered two million pesos for the murder of Manzo and that the crime had the complicity of a person close to the municipal president of Uruapan who shared information about his habits.
The capture this week of El Licensed served to reach the upper echelons of the CJNG, revealing with names and surnames who its leader is. Ramón Álvarez Ayala, alias R-1, was the creator of the instructions dictated in the chat in which Manzo’s murder was orchestrated and is now in the sights of the authorities, deployed throughout the State of Michoacán with the aim of weakening the cartel. R-1 had already been arrested in 2012 and, after spending ten years in prison, was released three years ago.
