Federal prosecutors announced on Friday that they had detained Mexico’s former attorney general on charges that he botched investigations into the 2014 abduction of 43 students from a radical teacher academy.
Jess Murillo Karam served as attorney general under President Enrique Pea Nieto from 2012 until 2015. Murillo Karam was charged with torture, official misconduct, and disappearance, according to the office of the current attorney general, Alejandro Gertz Manero.
Gertz Manero stated in 2020 that Murillo Karam was implicated in “orchestrating a big media deception” and “generally covering up” the case.
Under pressure to quickly solve the case, Murillo Karam announced in 2014 that members of a narcotics gang had murdered the kids and burned their bodies in a rubbish dump. He referred to this theory as “the historical reality.”
However, the investigation included incidents of torture, wrongful arrest, and inappropriate management of evidence, which led to the release of the majority of the directly accused gang members.
The incident occurred close to a huge army base, and independent investigations have determined that military personnel were aware of what was happening. Long ago, the relatives of the missing students urged that military be included in the investigation.
The truth commission investigating the case revealed on Thursday that one of the abducted students was a soldier who had infiltrated the radical teachers’ college, but the army did not hunt for him despite having real-time knowledge that the abduction was underway. It was stated that the inaction violated army procedures for missing personnel.
The ministry of defense did not respond to a request for comment.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party, to which both Murillo Karam and Pea Nieto belonged, stated on its Twitter account that Murillo Karam’s detention was a violation of democratic principles “relates more to politics than to justice. This lawsuit does not help the families of the victims obtain answers.”
Federal prosecutors in Mexico had already filed arrest warrants for members of the military and federal police, as well as Tomás Zeron, who led the federal investigative agency, Mexico’s detective agency, at the time of the abduction.
Zeron is wanted on charges of torture and covering up disappearances by force. Mexico has urged the Israeli government to aid in his apprehension after he fled to Israel. Gertz Manero stated that in addition to the alleged offenses related to the case, Zeron is also suspected of stealing more than $44 million from the budget of the Attorney General’s Office.
The motive for the kidnapping of the students remains a matter of contention.
Murillo Karam asserted that the students were given over to a drug gang, which murdered them, burned their bodies at a dump in nearby Cocula, and dumped the bone fragments in a nearby river.
Independent specialists, the Attorney General’s Office, and the truth commission have debunked the theory that the bodies were burned at the Cocula dump.
There are no indications that any of the pupils are still alive.