Vigilante Leader Hipolito Mora, 26 Others Arrested Over Michoacan Shootout Agence France-Presse
go to original December 28, 2014

Hipolito Mora, leader of a self-defense movement, stands at the entrance of Apatzingan, in the Michoacan state of Mexico. (AP/Marco Ugarte)

MORELIA - The leader of one of Mexico's first anti-crime vigilante groups was arrested along with 26 supporters over a shootout that killed his son and 10 others, authorities said.

Hipolito Mora was taken in on an arrest warrant Saturday for "probable murder" in the bloody December 16 episode with a rival group, said the central government's special commissioner for Michoacan state, Alfredo Castillo.

Another 26 vigilantes were also apprehended for their involvement, he said.

Farmers and other civilians in the state first took up arms to form the groups in February 2013 claiming that local police were too incompetent or corrupt to protect them from local criminal gangs, especially the cult-like Knights Templar drug cartel.

Mora put up no resistance according to prosecutors as he was arrested for his involvement in the shootout between the two vigilante groups that turned on each other in La Ruana, a small community of some 10,000 people in the western state on Mexico's Pacific coast.

Mora, a farmer who organized one of La Ruana's two groups, and the rest of the detainees were transferred to a prison in Morelia, the state capital.

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