Press TV – September 27, 2020
On the sixth anniversary of the mysterious disappearance of 43 Mexican college students, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has issued dozens of arrest warrants for soldiers, who are suspected of involvement in their still un-resolved abduction from a teacher’s college in the state of Guerrero.
Lopez Obrador announced the arrest warrants at an event with parents of the missing students on Saturday.
“Orders have been issued for the arrest of the military personnel,” he said. “Zero impunity —those proven to have participated will be judged.”
Gomez Trejo, the prosecutor leading the investigation into the case, said in a separate statement that 25 arrest warrants had been issued for the “material and intellectual authors” of the crime, including military members, and federal and municipal police.
They are accused of carrying out or knowing about the students’ disappearance that had happened on September 26, 2014, near a large army base in the city of Iguala, Guerrero.
The highest-ranking official in the case, Tomas Zeron who at the time of the incident was the head of the federal investigation agency, is accused of torture and covering up forced disappearances.
The students who had commandeered public busses to travel to a protest, disappeared in the state of Guerrero.
The former administration had concluded that authorities took the students for members of a rival gang and killed them before incinerating their bodies at a garbage dump and tossing the remains in a river.
The remains of only two of the students have been identified so far.
Current Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero, however, said he believed there had been a “generalized cover-up” that led to further arbitrary arrests and torture.
Relatives of the students as well as independent experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also rejected the report as faulty.
They have continued to demand answers as independent investigations have shown the military was aware of what happened to the victims.
The kidnapping of the students, who were training to be teachers, sent shockwaves across Mexico and became a symbol of police violence and corruption that has plague the North American country.