Published on: 08/20/2022 – 12:08
After a report by an official commission that labeled the case a “state crime,” on Friday, August 19, the Mexican judiciary arrested the country’s former attorney general and ordered the arrest of 64 police and military officers because in 2014 43 students of the normal school had disappeared from Ayotzinapa (south). This is the main figure arrested in the case, which started from scratch after Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador’s arrival in the presidency.
Former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam was arrested Friday night at his home in Mexico City for “enforced disappearance, torture and crimes against the administration of justice” and offered no resistance, prosecutors said in a press release.
The latter later announced that arrest warrants had been issued for 20 members of the army, 44 police officers and five civil servants for their alleged involvement. In this casewhich was deeply shocked in Mexico and abroad.
These 64 police officers and soldiers are wanted for “organized crime, enforced disappearance, torture, manslaughter and offenses against the administration of justice”, the public prosecutor specified. The identity and rank of the wanted persons were not mentioned.
Former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam had served under President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) and led a controversial initial investigation into these missing persons cases. He is a former heavyweight of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for 71 consecutive years until 2000.
The investigation was restarted from scratch under the presidency of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador
This is the most important figure arrested so far in this investigation, which was started from scratch. after left-wing President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador took power in 2019.
The public prosecutor’s office, according to the on Thursday, 18.
On the night of September 26-27, 2014, a group of students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training school in the southern state of Guerrero traveled to the nearby city of Iguala to “requisition” buses to go to a demonstration in Mexico City. According to the poll, 43 youths were arrested by the police in collusion with “Guerreros Unidos”, then shot and burned in a rubbish dump for reasons that are still unclear. Alone The remains of three of them have been identified.
falsification of evidence by the military
According to the Commission, Mexican soldiers are partly to blame: “Their actions, omissions or participation made possible the disappearance and execution of the students and the murder of six other people,” said Undersecretary of Interior Alejandro Encinas, during the public presentation of the report .
Another commission, the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), created under an agreement between the Peña Nieto government and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), alleges that soldiers falsified evidence found at the dump where the bodies were burned.
“Bringing this cruel and inhumane situation to the public while punishing those responsible makes it possible to prevent these unfortunate events from happening again” and “strengthens the institutions,” said Andrés Lopez Obrador on Friday. He will insist on the extradition of the former chief of the federal prosecutor’s office, Tomas Zeron, who fled to Israel.
(with AFP)