Murillo Karam was arrested while dozens of military and police are being sought. Mexico called the 2014 disappearance of 43 students a state crime.
Mexico arrested former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam and issued 20 arrest warrants against military leaders and troops late Friday in a mass roundup over the still-unresolved case of 43 missing students.
Murillo Karam was arrested on charges of alleged torture and other abuses committed during the investigation over the 2014 disappearance of the students from a teacher college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. It was the first arrest of a former attorney general in recent Mexican history.
In all, prosecutors issued 83 warrants, mostly against authorities, one day after Mexico declared the disappearances a state crime and said that responsibility lay with the military. The incident and alleged mismanagement of the investigation rocked the nation and caused then President Enrique Pena Nieto’s approval rating to plunge.
Murillo Karam’s political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, defended him and said he was being arrested as a “sacrificial lamb.”
Murillo Karam had pronounced in 2014 that based on suspects’ testimonies the students were probably kidnapped by police and handed over to a drug gang that killed them, burnt their bodies at a landfill, and dumped their remains in a river. A subsequent independent investigation found signs of a cover-up and blamed navy officers for tampering with evidence at the crime scene.
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