Mexico arrests former attorney general in case of missing students

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Federal prosecutors said Friday they have arrested the attorney general of Mexico’s previous administration, apparently on charges of mishandling investigations into the 2014 disappearances of 43 students from a radical teachers’ college.

Jesús Murillo Karam served as attorney general from 2012 to 2015, under then-president Enrique Peña Nieto.

In 2020, the current attorney general, Alejando Gertz Manero, accused Murillo Karam of “orchestrating a massive media hoax” and leading a “widespread cover-up” of the case.

The arrest came a day after a commission set up to determine what happened said the army bore at least partial responsibility in the case. He said that a soldier had infiltrated the student group involved and that the army did not stop the kidnappings even though they knew what was happening.

Corrupt local police, other security forces and members of a drug gang kidnapped the students in the city of Iguala, in Guerrero state, although the motive remains unclear eight years later.

Murillo Karam, under pressure to quickly resolve the case, announced in 2014 that the students had been killed and their bodies burned in a dump by members of a drug gang. He called that hypothesis “the historical truth.”

But the investigation included cases of torture, wrongful arrest and mishandling of evidence that has since allowed most of the gang members directly implicated to go free.

The incident occurred near a large military base, and independent investigations have found that members of the military were aware of what was happening. The families of the students have long demanded that the soldiers be included in the investigation.

On Thursday, the truth commission investigating the case said that one of the kidnapped students was a soldier who had infiltrated the radical teachers’ school, but the army did not search for him despite having real-time information that kidnapping was happening. He said the inaction violated Army protocols for missing soldiers.

The Defense Ministry has not responded to a request for comment.

Mexican federal prosecutors previously issued arrest warrants for members of the military and federal police, as well as for Tomás Zeron, who at the time of the kidnapping headed the federal investigative agency, the Mexican detective agency.

Zeron is wanted on charges of torture and covering up enforced disappearances. He fled to Israel and Mexico has asked the Israeli government for help in arresting him.

Gertz Manero said that in addition to Zeron’s alleged crimes related to the case, he is alleged to have stolen more than $44 million from the Attorney General’s Office budget.

The motive for the kidnapping of the students is still the subject of debate.

On September 26, 2014, local Iguala police, members of organized crime, and authorities kidnapped 43 students from buses. Students periodically commandeered buses for their transportation.

Murillo Karam claimed that the students were handed over to a drug gang that killed them, incinerated their bodies in a garbage dump near Cocula, and dumped the burned remains into a river.

Subsequent investigations by independent experts and the Public Ministry, and corroborated by the truth commission, have dismissed the idea that the bodies were cremated in the Cocula landfill, although recovered burned bone fragments have been used to identify three of the missing students.

There has been no evidence that any of the students may still be alive.

SHARE: