In September 2014, 43 students were abducted in southern Mexico. Eight years later, the case is still a mystery. Now the Attorney General responsible at the time is to be tried. The lawyer is said to have falsified evidence.
Eight years after the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico, criminal proceedings have been opened against the then Attorney General. All three counts of the charges against Jesús Murillo Karam – enforced disappearances, torture and offenses against the administration of justice – have been admitted, the judicial authorities said.
The 74-year-old was arrested in front of his home in the Mexican capital at the end of last week. At the hearing, Murillo Karam acknowledged possible mistakes, but according to media reports he defended the results of his investigation. Accordingly, the kidnapped young men had been killed and burned in a rubbish dump. Gang members are said to have mistook the students for members of an enemy cartel.
Independent experts and most recently a truth commission accused Murillo Karam of falsifying evidence in order to be able to close the case after just four months. The possible involvement of the military and other authorities in the case was not investigated. In addition, witnesses were tortured.
Corrupt police officers kidnapped the students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college in the southern city of Iguala on the night of September 27, 2014 and handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos criminal syndicate. The students were on their way to a demonstration in Mexico City. To this day, the background to the crime has not been fully elucidated. According to a recent report by the Truth Commission, all of the students are believed to be dead. So far, however, only bone fragments from three of the young men have been found and identified.
