Mexican authorities say they are near to freeing Jose Manuel Mireles, a founder of the self-defence movement that rose up to fight an entrenched drug cartel in the western state of Michoacan.
The Attorney General's office says it is withdrawing an appeal to a petition filed by Mireles' lawyer to free him, essentially allowing his release.
Mireles, who became the face of the vigilante movement, has been held for a year after being arrested in an armoured vehicle carrying weapons and drugs.
His arrest came around the time that he refused to co-operate with the federal government's conversion of self-defence groups to rural police.
Michoacan's vigilante movement began in February 2013 after farmers and ranchers grew tired of the Knights Templar drug cartel's reign of kidnapping, murder and extortion.
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