The government announced on Thursday that for alleged connection to the disappearance of 43 students in southern Mexico in 2014 Mexican authorities have arrested a retired general and three other members of the army.
Assistant Public Safety Secretary, Ricardo Mejia, said in the Guerrero state city of Iguala in September 2014 among those arrested was the former officer who commanded the army base, from a radical teacher’s college when the students were abducted.
With knowledge of the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter confirmed later a government official said that another member of the army had been arrested and Mejía said a fourth arrest was expected soon.
The commander of the Iguala base at that time was José Rodríguez Pérez, then a colonel but Mejía did not give names of those arrested. With the missing students’ families Barely a year after the students’ disappearances already raising suspicions about military involvement and demanding access to the base, Rodríguez was promoted to brigadier general.
At a military installation on condition of anonymity confirmed that Rodríguez was arrested by the government official who spoke and said he was being held. About the others arrested the source would say only that two were officers and the third was an enlisted soldier.
For the disappearance of six of the students last month a government truth commission re-investigating the case issued a report that named Rodríguez as being allegedly responsible.
Alejandro Encinas, Interior Undersecretary who led the commission said that Six of the missing students were allegedly kept alive in a warehouse for days last month and then turned over to Rodríguez who ordered them killed.
A “state crime” the report had called the disappearances, emphasizing that authorities had been closely monitoring the students from the teachers’ college at Ayotzinapa by local police in the town of Iguala that night from the time they left their campus through their abduction.
The school was among the abducted students, a soldier who had infiltrated, and Encinas asserted the army did not follow its own protocols and tried to rescue him.
“During several days and alive in what they call the old warehouse and from there were turned over to the colonel there is also information corroborated with emergency 089 telephone calls where allegedly six of the 43 disappeared students were held”, Encinas said.
Allegedly then Col. José Rodríguez Pérez, “After the events allegedly the six students were alive for as many as four days and were killed and disappeared on orders of the colonel.”
About what happened to the 43 students numerous government and independent investigations have failed to reach a single conclusive narrative, but it appears that local police pulled the students off several buses in Iguala that night and turned them over to a drug gang.
The motive remains unclear. Although fragments of burned bone have been matched to three of the students, their bodies have never been found.
Between the families and the government the role of the army in the students’ disappearance has long been a source of tension. There were questions about the military’s knowledge of what happened and its possible involvement, from the beginning.
To search the army base in Iguala the students’ parents demanded for years that they be allowed. Along with Encinas and the Truth Commission it was not until 2019 that they were given access.
The Attorney General’s Office announced 83 arrest orders, 20 for members of the military shortly after the truth commission report. At the time federal agents arrested Jesús Murillo Karam, who was attorney general.
Since the arrest orders were announced doubts had been growing in the weeks because no arrests had been announced. The administration has also formed a closer public bond with the military than any in recent memory by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
To continue a policing role in the streets to 2028 the president pushed to shift the newly created National Guard under full military authority and his allies in congress are trying to extend the time for the military.
José Luis Abarca, on Thursday said that Mejía also dismissed any suggestion that who was mayor of Iguala at the time, would be released from prison based on a lack of evidence after a judge absolved him of responsibility for the student’s abduction.
For organized crime and money laundering Abarca still faces other charges, even without the aggravated kidnapping charge, and the judge’s latest decision would be challenged, Mejia said. The man who was Iguala’s police at the time including the judge similarly absolved 19 others.
They said that if the prosecution of Rodríguez did advance it could be very relevant for holding the military accountable on “solid evidence”. From the Iguala base with organized crime the statement noted that there was “abundant” evidence about the collusion of soldiers.
To appeal the judge’s decision absolving Abarca and others, the organizations also called on authorities. By the Attorney General’s Office that originally brought the charges they said the ruling was the result of poor work, including the extensive use of torture which led much of the evidence to be excluded.
Source:- https://liveblogsus.com/in-case-of-missing-students-mexico-arrests-general/
