Former Mexican governor accused of cover-up
Aguirre arrested for alleged involvement in disappearances
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Mexican authorities have arrested the former governor of the southern state Guerrero for his alleged involvement in the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, a case that has become a symbol for impunity and state involvement in cartel violence.
Federal prosecutors said Thursday that they arrested Angel Aguirre, Guerrero's former governor, on accusations of "concealing evidence to determine the whereabouts of the students" of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College.
The former governor, belonging to a party that gave rise to Mexico's ruling Morena party, is the highest-profile arrest in the case to date since the detention of former federal Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, who is facing criminal charges of forced disappearance, obstruction of justice and torture. Aguirre governed Guerrero from 2011 until he resigned in October 2014, one month after the students disappeared.
The disappearance of the students from the rural teacher's college of Ayotzinapa after they commandeered several buses on their way to a protest shocked Mexico and the international community, and continues to fuel outrage as the truth of the case continues to trickle out nearly 12 years later.
According to Mexican authorities, a cartel in Guerrero state's city of Iguala attacked the students in collusion with security forces as well as local, state and federal authorities, including the military. Officials were presumably involved by taking part in the crime or concealing it.
Ernestina Godoy, the Attorney General of Mexico, stated that two testimonies gathered this year indicate that Aguirre not only requested that officials hand over the security camera footage from one of the locations of the attack that night but also ordered the destruction of any evidence related to the events.
"The Attorney General's Office has evidence proving that this order to conceal the evidence was issued directly by the then-governor, with the participation of high-level state officials," she said.
"Far from being an isolated act or a technical oversight, the concealment of the recordings was the result of a malicious operation, deliberately orchestrated from the highest levels of the State Executive Branch."
Godoy did not explain why the testimonies of a collaborator and a protected witness, collected in January and May 2016 respectively, were obtained more than a decade after the events. She only indicated that when she arrived at the Attorney General's Office at the end of last year, she began a "reanalysis" of the case with a "new investigative approach."
Hours later, the Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center, which represents the families, stated in a social media post that neither the students' parents nor their attorneys had been notified of the arrest and that they were unaware of the charges. "If it is solid and in accordance with the law, the process that is beginning could help settle a debt of justice for the families," the center said.