An investigation is underway to determine whether a light aircraft that crashed and killed two pilots was brought down by a narco gang.
The plane, a Cessna 501 Citation I/SP, took off from Mexico’s Tepic International Airport at around 4:30 pm on Sunday (4 October).
Around 18 minutes into its journey to Aguascalientes, in the centre of the country, it changed course in what investigators believe was an attempt to return to Tepic.
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It disappeared from radar moments later.
The wreckage was found in a remote, hard-to-access mountainous area in the municipality of Ixtlán del Río yesterday afternoon (5 October).
Only pilot Óscar Quezada and co-pilot Ángel Ricardo Granados Vargas were on board. Both were killed in the crash.
Governor of Nayarit state, Miguel Ángel Navarro Quintero, who was not on the flight, had previously been known to use the aircraft.
The Nayarit State Prosecutor’s Office is now investigating whether the plane was deliberately brought down, as reported by Need To Know.
Authorities say members of organised crime groups had been monitoring the governor’s movements and knew his flight schedule in advance.
Weeks before the crash, an alleged member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel known by the alias “Talibán 2” was arrested.
Information about the governor’s and other officials’ travel plans was reportedly found on several devices seized from him.
Prosecutor Elvia Ludmila Heredia Verdugo said: “They had five phones and the governor’s flights were on them.”
The messages reportedly contained aircraft registration numbers, flight times and details of the people due to travel.
According to Heredia, arms trafficking and other organised crime activity have been detected in the Ixtlán del Río area.
She also said the fact that the crash was captured on video in such a remote area was another reason for suspicion.
Despite the attempted-attack theory, prosecutors are keeping other possibilities open.
Heredia said: “It could have been a mechanical failure or caused by the weather, but we don’t want to rule out the possibility that the governor was the intended target, given that he did occasionally use that flight.”
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