Mejía didn’t give names of these arrested, however the commander of the Iguala base at the moment was José Rodríguez Pérez, then a colonel. Barely a yr after the scholars’ disappearances and with the lacking college students’ households already elevating suspicions about army involvement and demanding entry to the bottom, Rodríguez was promoted to brigadier normal.
Final month, a authorities fact fee re-investigating the case issued a report that named Rodríguez as being allegedly chargeable for the disappearance of six of the scholars.
Inside Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas, who led the fee, stated final month that six of the lacking college students have been allegedly saved alive in a warehouse for days then turned over to Rodríguez who ordered them killed.
The report had known as the disappearances a “state crime,” emphasizing that authorities had been carefully monitoring the scholars from the academics’ school at Ayotzinapa from the time they left their campus by way of their abduction by native police within the city of Iguala that evening. A soldier who had infiltrated the college was among the many kidnapped college students, and Encinas asserted the military didn’t observe its personal protocols and attempt to rescue him.
“There may be additionally info corroborated with emergency 089 phone calls the place allegedly six of the 43 disappeared college students have been held throughout a number of days and alive in what they name the outdated warehouse and from there have been turned over to the colonel,” Encinas stated. “Allegedly the six college students have been alive for as many as 4 days after the occasions and have been killed and disappeared on orders of the colonel, allegedly the then Col. José Rodríguez Pérez.”
Quite a few authorities and impartial investigations have failed to achieve a single conclusive narrative about what occurred to the 43 college students, however it seems that native police pulled the scholars off a number of buses in Iguala that evening and turned them over to a drug gang. The motive stays unclear. Their our bodies have by no means been discovered, although fragments of burned bone have been matched to 3 of the scholars.
The position of the military within the college students’ disappearance has lengthy been a supply of stress between the households and the federal government. From the start, there have been questions in regards to the army’s information of what occurred and its doable involvement. The scholars’ dad and mom demanded for years that they be allowed to go looking the military base in Iguala. It was not till 2019 that they got entry together with Encinas and the Reality Fee.
Shortly after the reality fee report, the Legal professional Common’s Workplace introduced 83 arrest orders, 20 for members of the army. Then federal brokers arrested Jesús Murillo Karam, who was legal professional normal on the time.
Doubts had been rising within the weeks because the arrest orders have been introduced as a result of no arrests had been introduced. The administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has additionally shaped a better public bond with the army than any in current reminiscence.
The president pushed to shift the newly created Nationwide Guard beneath full army authority and his allies in congress are attempting to increase the time for the army to proceed a policing position within the streets to 2028.
On Thursday, Mejía additionally dismissed any suggestion that José Luis Abarca, who was mayor of Iguala on the time, can be launched from jail after a choose absolved him of duty for the coed’s abduction based mostly on an absence of proof. Even with out the aggravated kidnapping cost, Abarca nonetheless faces different prices for organized crime and cash laundering, and Mejía stated the choose’s newest determination can be challenged. The choose equally absolved 19 others, together with the person who was Iguala’s police on the time.
The Miguel Agustin Professional Human Rights Middle and different nongovernmental organizations which have supported the households of the scholars stated in a joint assertion Thursday that the federal government had up to now not notified the households of the case towards Rodríguez nor the fees he would face.
They stated that if the prosecution of Rodríguez did advance on “stable proof” it could possibly be very related for holding the army accountable. The assertion famous that there was “plentiful” proof in regards to the collusion of troopers from the Iguala base with organized crime.
The organizations additionally known as on authorities to enchantment the choose’s determination absolving Abarca and others. They stated the ruling was the results of poor work by the Legal professional Common’s Workplace that initially introduced the fees, together with the intensive use of torture which led a lot of the proof to be excluded.
