Ten Mexican cartel gunmen were sentenced to 141 years each in prison Tuesday for murder and kidnapping, the public prosecutor’s office said, 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 hundreds of objects and items of clothing had been found at the 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.
The case has received significant press coverage in a country where criminal violence has left more than 120,000 people missing since the government launched a war on drug cartels in 2006.
