Former Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo has been arrested in connection with the disappearance of 43 students in 2014. Murillo, who was the chief prosecutor at the time overseeing the investigation into the disappearance, is suspected of kidnapping, torture and obstruction of justice, it said. Mexican Public Prosecutor’s Office Friday.
The students, trainee teachers, disappeared from the city of Iguala in Guerrero state on September 26, 2014. They wanted to commemorate a student protest that had been crushed in Mexico City in 1968. Because they had no money for the trip, they hijacked two buses in the city of Iguala. They were apprehended by corrupt cops who shot and killed six of the students. They handed over the remaining 43 to the drug cartel Guerreros Unidos. Members later said they killed the students and burned their bodies. Only three bodies have ever been identified.
State crime
On Thursday, a truth commission appointed by the Mexican government concluded that the kidnapping is a state crime. The committee found no indications that the students are still alive.
According to the commission, which bases its conclusions on more than 41 thousand documents and 50 videos, senior Mexican authorities were involved in the disappearance. The government of the state of Guerrero, the Mexican army and the federal police all knew about the disappearance of the buses carrying the students. Soldiers stationed nearby also offered no assistance. Mexico’s previous administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto also hid information and obscured connections between authorities and criminal groups, the commission says.
Mexican Deputy Human Rights Minister Alejandro Encinas adopted the report’s conclusions at a press conference on Thursday evening. “The disappearance and execution were possible because of the acts and omissions of the authorities,” he said. The government also recognized for the first time on Thursday that the students are dead. Before that, the official position was that they were still alive.
Everything points to “this sad reality,” said Encinas. According to him, the relatives of the disappeared students were informed during a “difficult and painful meeting”, which also included Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. López Obrador vowed when he took office in 2018 that the case would be resolved. According to Encinas, the disappearances are still under investigation.
Mayor ordered
The disappearance sparked major student protests across Mexico in 2014. Family of the wife of the mayor of Iguala turned out to be part of the drug cartel. She gave a speech at a meeting the night of the disappearance and was afraid that the students would disturb it. That is why her husband ordered the students to be arrested and handed over to the cartel. During the investigation, there was no evidence that the students knew about the speech.
The state of Guerrero is considered one of the most dangerous areas in the Central American country because of rival drug cartels, where tens of thousands of people are killed by violence every year.
The investigation into the disappearance of the students has been criticized internationally for the many mistakes that were made and the lack of progress.
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