A retired general, Jose Rodriguez, and three other army members, have been arrested by the Mexican authorities in connection with the disappearance of 43 student teachers in southern Mexico in 2014. The arrest of the general makes him the highest-ranking military officer arrested in the case.
Ricardo Mejia, the Assistant Public Safety Secretary, said that the four arrest warrants were issued against the notorious military officials, including the former army base commander of a military base in the Guerrero state city of Iguala on September 14, when the students were abducted from a teachers’ college.
Jose Rodriguez was the commander of the base during the period of the abductions, a colonel at the time.
Rodriguez was promoted to brigadier general a year after the students were abducted from the college. The families of the missing raised their suspicions about the military being involved and demanded access to the base.
A government official, who insisted on remaining anonymous, confirmed Rodriguez’s arrest, saying he was being held at a military prison.
In August, a report was issued by a government truth commission investigating the case, alleging that Rodriguez was responsible for the disappearance of at least six of the students.
The previous Mexican government said the abductions were carried out by corrupt local police cooperating with a local drug gang.
The commission’s leader, Interior Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas, said in the report that six missing students were turned over to Rodriguez after being kept alive in a warehouse for several days. Rodriguez then ordered them to be killed.
Authorities had been keeping tabs on the students from the college at Ayotzinapa closely, from the time they left the campus until they were abducted that night by local police officers in Iguala town. The report also said that a soldier who had infiltrated the school was among the abducted students.
It has been difficult for numerous government and independent investigations to establish a timeline about what happened to the students. Still, everything suggests that they were pulled off several buses by local corrupt police that night in Iguala and handed over to a drug gang. The motive for the abductions is yet to be established. None of the students’ bodies have ever been found, although pieces of burned bones matched the DNA of three missing students.
The tension between the student’s families and the military was high as many of the families questioned the extent of the military’s involvement in the disappearance of their family members and the military’s role.
A judge absolved Jose Luis Abarca, the mayor of Iguala at the time, of any wrongdoing over the abduction of the 43 students, due to lack of evidence. When asked about it, Assistant Public Safety Secretary Mejia dismissed any suggestion that the former mayor would be released from prison, saying that he still faces other charges for organized crime and money laundering. The judge also absolved 19 other people in the case.
NGOs supporting the students’ families, including The Miguel Pro Human Rights Center, released a joint statement saying that the government was yet to notify the families about the case against Rodriguez or the charges he was facing.
The organizations criticized the judge’s decision to absolve Mayor Abarca and urged authorities to appeal the decision.
Mexico’s lawmakers voted this week to man soldiers on the streets to ensure public security, leading citizens to be concerned about how much power President Andres Manuel Lopez is allowing the military.