( Spanish) — A judge ordered preventive detention for six months and linked to the process for the second time the former attorney general of Mexico Jesús Murillo Karam for accusations of forced disappearance and torture, related to the disappearance of the 43 normalistas students from Ayotzinapa, according to a statement this Saturday from Council of the Federal Judicature.
The report describes the defendant at the hearing as Jesús “N”. The Council confirmed to that it is the former official.
The hearing was held this Friday at the Reclusorio Sur in Mexico City.
The link to the process gives the Mexican authorities six more months to investigate and be able to substantiate their case.
The resolution ruled out linking Murillo Karam for the crime of coalition of public servants, after the Attorney General’s Office charged him with the charge this week.
tries to obtain a reaction from the defense of Murillo Karam, who in the past have said that they do not recognize the existence of such crimes and that the accusations against his client are based on statements that the then prosecutor made about the case at the time and have been “taken out of context”.
This is the second time that Murillo Karam has been brought to trial for the Ayotzinapa case. In August 2022, he was arrested by the Prosecutor’s Office accused of forced disappearance, torture and obstruction of justice. In September, a district judge granted the ex-prosecutor a final suspension against being prosecuted for those crimes.
Murillo Karam was Attorney General of the Republic during the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, when he led the initial investigations into the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students in Iguala, Guerrero —south of the country—, which occurred in September 2014.
He also presented and defended the “historical truth”, as the explanation that the authorities of the time gave about the facts is known and that the Attorney General of the Republic now considers a fabrication. This first version maintains that the students were kidnapped by members of the Guerrero Unidos criminal group, who later murdered and burned them in a garbage dump in the municipality of Cocula, Guerrero. The current authorities consider that the disappearance of the 43 students was a “state crime in which members of the criminal group Guerreros Unidos and agents of various state institutions participated.”
