Mexican judge gives 60 years to killer of top cop

MEXICO CITY – A judge sentenced a man to 60 years in prison for the 2008 murder of Mexico’s acting federal police chief Edgar Millan Gomez, federal prosecutors said Saturday.

Alejandro Ramirez Baez was convicted of homicide and possessing restricted weapons, the Federal Attorney General’s Office said in a statement. A second man was sentenced to one year in prison for illegal arms possession. Both were found to be part of a cell of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, the statement said.

Millan, one of the highest ranking police officials killed by drug cartels in recent years, was attacked in his Mexico City home in May 2008. The Sinaloa cartel had been a key target of operations led by Millan prior to his death.

Also Saturday, Mexican troops discovered 1½ tons of methamphetamine stored in water tanks and buried in the ground in the northern state of Coahuila, the Defense Department said. Eleven kilograms (24 pounds) of heroin were found in the same spot after a patrol found dug-up earth in the municipality of Castanos, a Defense Department statement said.

Mexican troops have conducted three other seizures this month in Coahuila, across the border from Texas. Most have been weapons seizures, the most recent one allegedly belonging to the brutal Zetas cartel. Coahuila is one of several northern Mexican states where the Gulf and Zetas cartels are fighting for control.

In the northern state of Durango, a 70-year-old farmer and his two grown sons were gunned down by unknown assailants, the state’s prosecutor’s office said Saturday. The men had been tending to cattle when they were killed. At least 100 empty shells from an AK-47 were found near the scene, the prosecutor’s office said.