Article Author:
Associated Press
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Federal prosecutors said Friday , the attorney general of Mexico's former administration, was arrested in what appears to be a false charge investigating the disappearance of 43 students from a radical teaching college in 2014.
Jesus Murillo Karam served as Attorney General from 2012 until he served as Attorney General under then-President Enrique Peña Nieto.
In 2020, current Attorney General Alejandro Gerts Manero said Murillo Karam had "engineered a massive media trick" and led a "generalized cover-up" in the case. accused as.
The arrest, a day after a commission was set up to determine what happened, said the military was at least partially responsible.
In the city of Iguala, Guerrero state, corrupt local police, security forces, A member of a drug gang kidnapped a student, and the motive remains unclear, eight years later.
Murillo Karam, under pressure to quickly resolve the case, said that in 2014, students were killed at a dump by members of a drug gang and their bodies were killed. announced that it was burned. He called the hypothesis "historical truth."
However, the investigation included cases of torture, improper arrests, and mishandling of evidence, after which most of the directly involved gang members were free to roam.
The incident occurred near a large army base, and an independent investigation found that members of the military were aware of what was happening. The student's family has long called for military personnel to be included in the investigation.
On Thursday, the Truth Commission investigating the incident said one of the abducted students was a soldier who had infiltrated a radical teacher training school, but the military had no real-time information. There was no search for him despite the fact that a kidnapping had taken place.
The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.
Mexican federal prosecutors had previously issued arrest warrants for members of the military and federal police, as well as Thomas Xelon, who was head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mexico's detective agency, at the time of the abduction.
Zeron is being investigated for charges of torture and covering up an enforced disappearance. He fled to Israel and Mexico enlisted the Israeli government to arrest him.
Gertz Manero said that in addition to Xeron's criminal charges related to the case, he is suspected of stealing more than $44 million from the Attorney General's budget.
The motive for the student abduction remains a matter of debate.
On 26 September 2014, local police, organized crime members and authorities in Iguala kidnapped 43 of her students from a bus. Students regularly requisitioned buses for transportation.
Murillo Karam claimed that the students were handed over to drug gangs who killed them, incinerated the bodies at the nearby Kocula dump and threw the burned remains into the river.
Subsequent investigations by independent experts and the Attorney General's Office, corroborated by the Truth Commission, dismissed the notion that the bodies were cremated at the Kocula dump. missing student.
There is no evidence that the student is still alive.
Sign up to receive daily top stories from National Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.
Thank you for registering.
Sending welcome email. If you don't see it, please check your spam folder.
The next issue of NP Posted will arrive in your mailbox shortly.
