MEXICO CITY (AP) – Federal prosecutors said Friday they have arrested the attorney general of Mexico’s previous administration, apparently on charges that he mishandled investigations into the 2014 disappearances of 43 students from a teacher training school radicals
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 huge media stunt” and leading the.
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MEXICO CITY (AP) – Federal prosecutors said Friday they have arrested the attorney general of Mexico’s previous administration, apparently on charges that he mishandled investigations into the 2014 disappearances of 43 students from a teacher training school radicals
Jesús Murillo Karam served as Attorney General from 2012 to 2015, under then President Enrique Peña Nieto.
In 2020, current Attorney General Alejando Gertz Manero accused Murillo Karam of “orchestrating a massive media stunt” and leading a “widespread cover-up” in the case.
The arrest came a day after a commission set up to determine what happened said the military was at least partially responsible in the case. He said a soldier had infiltrated the group of students involved and that the army did not stop the kidnappings even though it knew what was going on.
Corrupt local police, other security forces and members of a drug gang kidnapped the students in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state, although eight years later the motive is still unclear.
Murillo Karam, under pressure to quickly resolve the case, announced in 2014 that the students had been killed and their bodies burned in a garbage dump by members of a drug gang. He called this hypothesis “the historical truth”.
But the investigation included cases of torture, improper detention and mishandling of evidence that have since allowed most of the gang members directly involved to walk free.
The incident occurred near a large army base, and independent investigations have found that members of the military were aware of what was happening. The students’ families have long called for the troopers to be included in the investigation.
On Thursday, the truth commission that looked into the case said that one of the kidnapped students was a soldier who had infiltrated the university of radical teachers, but the army did not search for him despite having real-time information that the kidnapping was taking place. He said the inaction violated Army protocols for missing soldier cases.
The defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Mexican federal prosecutors previously issued arrest warrants for members of the military and federal police, as well as Tomás Zeron, who at the time of the kidnapping headed the federal investigative agency, Mexico’s detective agency.
Zeron is wanted on charges of torture and cover-up of enforced disappearances. He fled to Israel and Mexico has asked the Israeli government for help in his arrest.
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 budget.
The reason for the kidnapping of the students remains a matter of debate.
On September 26, 2014, local Igualada police, members of organized crime and authorities kidnapped 43 students from buses. Students regularly request buses for their transportation.
Murillo Karam claimed that the students were handed over to a drug gang that killed them, cremated their bodies in a landfill in Cocula and dumped the burned remains in a river.
Subsequent investigations by independent experts and the Prosecutor’s Office, and corroborated by the truth commission, have dismissed the idea that the bodies were cremated at the Cocula landfill, although the recovered burnt bone fragments have been used to identify three of the missing students.
There is no evidence that any of the students may still be alive.
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