Mexican authorities arrested the country’s former attorney general on Friday and accused him of torture and forced disappearance in the mass kidnapping of 43 students in 2014.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities arrested the country’s former attorney general on Friday and accused him of torture and forced disappearance in the mass kidnapping of 43 students in 2014, as the government made its boldest move yet to resolve one of the most severe human rights scandals in recent decades.The arrest stunned Mexicans, coming after eight years of slow-moving investigations and what investigators have called a coverup under the previous president, Enrique Peña Nieto.
Scores of people have been arrested in the case, including police and alleged gang members, with many subsequently released because of a lack of evidence or signs that they were tortured. But Jesús Murillo Karam, the former attorney general detained Friday, was the highest-ranking former official to be charged. Senior Mexican politicians historically have enjoyed impunity even as allegations of corruption have swirled around the government.
Still, some analysts questioned whether Mexico’s weak, ineffectual justice system could successfully win convictions in the complex crime. Alejandro Hope, a security analyst, tweeted that the case could turn into “a long back-and-forth, in which both sides wind up litigating the investigation and there is never anything that resembles justice.”
The 43 students from the rural Ayotzinapa teachers’ college were last seen in the hands of local police in the southern city of Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014. The students had commandeered several buses to go to a protest rally, following a local custom. But that night, police and other gunmen attacked the vehicles.
“Federal and state authorities at the highest levels were indifferent and negligent,” said Encinas, the undersecretary for human rights, at his Thursday news conference. His remarks suggested that authorities might be willing to take on powerful people and institutions involved in the attack or coverup, such as the military. He said, however, that there was no evidence pointing to Peña Nieto’s involvement.
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