Ex-attorney general arrested in missing student probe
Jesus Murillo Karam is the most important personality arrested so far in the investigation into the disappearance of 43 students in 2014 in Ayotzinapa.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called on Friday to “punish those responsible” involved in the disappearance.
AFP
The former attorney general of Mexico, responsible for the controversial investigation into the disappearance of 43 students in 2014 in Ayotzinapa (south), was arrested on Friday, announced the general prosecutor’s office.
Jesus Murillo Karam was arrested at his home in Mexico City for “enforced disappearance, torture and offenses once morest the administration of justice”, and did not put up any resistance, the prosecution said in a statement.
Jesus Murillo Karam, who had served under President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), is a former heavyweight in the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who ruled Mexico for 71 years without interruption until 2000.
This is the most important personality arrested so far as part of this investigation, which had restarted from scratch following the coming to power in 2019 of left-wing president Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Shot dead
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 town of Iguala to ” requisition” buses to go to Mexico City for a demonstration.
According to the investigation, 43 young people were arrested by local police in collusion with the drug trafficking cartel Guerreros Unidos, then shot and burned in a landfill for reasons that remain unclear. Only the remains of three of them might be identified. Thursday, an official report published by the “Ayotzinapa Truth Commission” set up by Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador had estimated that Mexican soldiers had a share of responsibility in this crime.
The first official investigation, led by Jesus Murillo Karam and whose conclusions were rejected by the families of the victims and by independent experts, attributed no responsibility to the military. This version accused a cartel of drug traffickers of having had the students killed by taking them for members of a rival gang.
“State crime”
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called on Friday to “punish those responsible”, soldiers and police involved in this disappearance, the day following the report of a commission of inquiry which qualifies this case as a “state crime”.
“Making this atrocious and inhuman situation public, and at the same time punishing those responsible, makes it possible to prevent these deplorable events from happening once more” and “strengthens the institutions”, declared Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who had set up this commission. “What weakens an institution is that it does not act in accordance with the truth and that there is corruption, impunity,” he added during a trip to Tijuana in the northwest. from the country.
AFP
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