#Mexicos #exattorney #general #faces #trial #missing #students
A Mexican judge on Wednesday ordered a former attorney general to stand trial in the case of 43 students whose grim disappearance in 2014 traumatized the nation.
Jesus Murillo Karam will be tried on charges of enforced disappearance, torture and obstruction of justice, the Federal Judiciary Council said after a court hearing in Mexico City.
He is credited with being the architect of the so-called “historical truth” version of events – presented in 2015 by the government of then-President Enrique Pena Nieto – that was widely rejected, including by relatives.
So far, the remains of only three students at the Ayotzinapa Teachers College in southern Guerrero state have been identified.
Murillo Karam, a former heavyweight of the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), is the longest-serving figure to have been indicted in connection with the case that sparked international condemnation.
He was arrested Friday at his home in an exclusive Mexico City neighborhood and remanded in custody.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Wednesday that anyone involved in a cover-up must be held accountable, including the person who “gave the order.”
Arrest warrants have also been issued for more than 80 other suspects, including military personnel, police officers and cartel members, in the past week, prosecutors said.
The case is one of the worst human rights tragedies in Mexico, where a spiral of drug-related violence has left more than 100,000 people missing.
– Unsolved Crime –
The students had seized buses to go to a demonstration in Mexico City before disappearing.
Investigators say they were arrested by corrupt police and handed over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, who mistook them for members of a rival gang, but what exactly happened to them is disputed.
According to the official report submitted in 2015, cartel members killed the students and cremated their remains at a dump.
These conclusions have been rejected by independent experts and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as by the families.
Lopez Obrador said in March that members of the Navy are under investigation for allegedly tampering with evidence, including at the dump.
On Thursday, a truth commission investigating the atrocities branded the case a “state crime” involving agents from various institutions.
Military personnel, either directly or negligently, bear a “clear responsibility,” in contrast to “historical truth” that ascribes no responsibility to military personnel.
The PRI, now an opposition party, has criticized Murillo Karam’s arrest as politically motivated.
Mexico has also repeatedly urged Israel to arrest fugitive former CID chief Tomas Zeron in connection with the case.
Zeron is accused of using torture to extract alleged confessions from suspects, enforced disappearances and embezzlement of public funds.
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