Mexico's Missing Students: Former Iguala Mayor Charged With Murders; Over 22 Police Officers Detained for Involvement
The former mayor of Mexico's Iguala city has been charged with murders in a case involving the disappearance of 43 student teachers, six of whom died after an encounter with police in his city – an event that hit headlines in newspapers around the world.
Mayor José Luis Abarca is charged with six counts of aggravated homicide and one count of attempted homicide, CNN reports.
The Guardian says Abarca allegedly ordered the police to attack the students on the night of Sept. 26 because he feared they were going to disrupt an event meant to promote an attempt by his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, to replace him as mayor in 2015.
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The kidnappings were allegedly carried out by police officers who turned the students, who were from a radical teacher training college in Ayotzinapa, over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel.
Some students who escaped the police action said they had gone to Iguala to seize buses to use in future protests concerning education reform amid the 46th commemoration of the student killings in Tlatelolco in 1968.
Whey they were leaving town at about 9 p.m., police attacked their convoy, the students claim, also alleging that police fired indiscriminately on some of the passengers after they got down from the bus to confront the officers.
One student was shot in the face, two others were shot dead by gunmen later, another student was found dead nearby with his skin peeled from his face and his eyes gouged out, a teenage footballer and the driver of the bus were killed in yet another attack, and a woman in a taxi was supposedly killed in the crossfire.
At least 22 municipal police were detained for their alleged role in the disappearances and allegedly colluding with the cartel. Soon thereafter, the mayor and his wife fled the city, and were arrested from a neighborhood in Mexico City on Nov. 4.
While there is no official confirmation on what happened to the other students, authorities have stated they believe they were killed by the gang members.
Attorney General Jesús Murillo revealed recently that a large group of young people were massacred in a rubbish tip near Iguala shortly after the students were taken. The victims were then burned on a large pyre for 14 hours, making identification of the remains very difficult.
Mexican citizens have been expressing their increasing frustration with government corruption and inability to deal with the country's large problem of criminal gangs since the incident.
