Prosecutors have arrested a former attorney general of Mexico in relation to the 2014 abduction of 43 students from the Mexican state of Guerrero, who are suspected to have been murdered by the cartel.
Additionally, 83 arrest warrants have been issued for 33 local police officers, 11 state police, 20 army soldier officers, and 14 gang members.
On September 26, 2014, 43 male teaching students from the small village of Ayotzinapa were kidnapped by corrupt police from Iguala on their way to a protest before being handed over to the Guerreros Unidos Cartel.
Jesus Murillo Karam served as attorney general under former President Enrique Pena Nieto from 2012 until 2015.
It is the first time in recent history that a former attorney general has been detained, and it is among the largest mass arrests of Mexican army troops by civilian prosecutors.
Murillo Karam was charged with torture, official misconduct, and disappearance, according to the office of the current attorney general, Alejandro Gertz Manero.
Gertz Manero stated in 2020 that Murillo Karam was involved in the crime by ‘orchestrating a major media scam’ and ‘generally covering up the case’
His arrest occurred one day after a panel established to investigate the incident concluded that the army was at least largely liable for the incident.
It was reported that a soldier had infiltrated the engaged student organization, and when the army became aware of the abductions, it did nothing to stop them.
In Iguala, Guerero state, corrupt local police officers, other security agencies, and members of a drug gang abducted the students.
Eight years later, the reason for the abductions is still unknown.
Bone pieces belonging to three of the pupils have been traced to their undiscovered remains.
Murillo Karam, who was under pressure to quickly solve the case, announced in 2014 that members of the drug cartel had murdered the students and burned their bodies at a rubbish dump in nearby Cocula.
Then, he asserted that the gang threw the bone shards into the river; he termed this theory “the historical reality.”
Independent and Attorney General’s Office investigations, supported by the truth commission, debunked the theory that the bodies were burned at the Cocula dump.
These investigations determined that torture, wrongful arrest, and inappropriate treatment of evidence allowed the majority of gang members engaged in the crime to escape free.
The incident occurred near a huge army base, and independent inquiries have determined that military personnel were aware of the events.
Long ago, the relatives of the missing students urged that military be included in the investigation.
The committee investigating the crime revealed on Thursday that one of the abducted students was a soldier who had infiltrated the radical teachers’ college, but the army did not hunt for him despite having real-time knowledge that the abduction was underway.
According to the commission, the inactivity breached army protocol for missing soldier situations.
The defense ministry declined to comment on the matter.
Yesterday, the arrest warrant for the remaining 83 suspects was issued. The troops, police officials, and members of the gang are charged with murder, torture, official misconduct, criminal association, and forced disappearance. Prior to modifications in Mexican law, the army was permitted to refer troops accused of misconduct to separate military courts. However, currently soldiers whose offenses affect civilians must be punished in civilian courts.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party, to which both Murillo Karam and Pena Nieto belonged, stated on its Twitter account that the arrest of the former attorney general was “more a matter of politics than action” and that “this measure does not help the families of the victims obtain answers.”
At the time of the abduction, federal prosecutors in Mexico issued arrest warrants for members of the military and federal police, as well as for Tomas Zeron, the chief of Mexico’s federal investigation agency.
Zeron is wanted on charges of torture and covering up disappearances by force.
Mexico requested the assistance of the Israeli government in capturing him after he fled to Israel.
Gertz Manero stated that in addition to the alleged offenses related to the case, there are allegations that Zeron stole about $44 million from the budget of the Attorney General’s Office.