MEXICO CITY: A husband-and-wife political power couple who were the current and ex-governors of the central Mexican state of Puebla died in a Christmas Eve helicopter crash, officials announced.
Mexico’s political class was stunned by the deaths of Gov. Martha Erika Alonso and ex-Gov. Rafael Moreno Valle, a prominent figure in the opposition National Action Party who had vied unsuccessfully for the party’s presidential nomination and its internal leadership. He was currently a federal senator for the party.
Two pilots and a third passenger also died.
The Agusta 109 helicopter fell about 10 minutes after taking off from an airport on the outskirts of Puebla on a flight to Mexico City, crashing about 3.5 miles (5.5 kilometers) north of the airport, federal Public Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo told a news conference.
Images of the crash showed a shattered, still smoldering aircraft on the edge of a scorched patch of cornfield.
Both federal and state officials said they had opened investigations into the cause — a potentially sensitive case because President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s Morena party had challenged the validity of Alonso’s election in July. She was sworn in 10 days ago after independent electoral authorities dismissed the challenge.
State spokesman Maximiliano Cortazar demanded a “transparent, impartial and independent” investigation.
Lopez Obrador expressed his “deepest condolences” via Twitter to the family of on Monday evening.
Moreno Valle governed the central state from 2011 to 2017 and was currently a federal senator. Opponents alleged that he had manipulated the election to hand power to his wife.
Government agencies and scores of officials, including former President Enrique Pena Nieto, also expressed condolences via statements and social media.
Mexican governor, senator killed in helicopter crash -reports
Mexican governor, senator killed in helicopter crash -reports
- The fact the accident occurred just days after Alonso took office triggered speculation of foul play on social media
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
