Former Mexican attorney Jesús Murillo Karam, involved in the Ayotzinapa case, is arrested

First modification: 08/20/2022 – 12:44

Former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam was arrested at his home located in an exclusive neighborhood of Mexico City for “forced disappearance, torture and crimes against the administration of justice,” the FGR reported in a statement. Murillo Karam is the highest former official detained for the disappearance of the normalistas, which occurred in the state of Guerrero, in southern Mexico.

Hours after the arrest, the prosecution reported the arrest warrants against 20 soldiers and 44 policemen, without specifying their rank and current activity, in addition to another 19 against five state officials and 14 members of the Guerreros Unidos cartel, alleged executors of the crime.

The lawyer for the relatives of the 43, Vidulfo Rosales, considered the arrest of Murillo Karam “an important step”, but was skeptical about possible revelations by the former prosecutor. “What Mr. Murillo is going to do is defend himself, so I don’t think (…) he wants to provide any information,” Rosales told Mexican media.

Murillo, a prosecutor during the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), became a heavyweight of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for 71 uninterrupted years until December 2000.

The former official did not resist and will be imprisoned in a prison in the capital, the Presidency said. The PRI assured that the arrest “responds more to a political issue than to justice.”

The capture occurred hours after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for “truth” and punishment for those responsible for the disappearance of the students, after the publication on Thursday of the report of a government commission that has been investigating the case since 2019 and considers it a “state crime”.

The document maintains that the military and officials, due to their “actions, omissions or participation,” allowed the kidnapping and death of the students of the Ayotzinapa normal school and six other people at the hands of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel.

“Disclosing this atrocious, inhuman situation, and at the same time punishing those responsible, helps prevent repetition. May these unfortunate events never occur again,” added López Obrador in Tijuana (north).

Demand more sanctions

The commission’s report highlighted “clear responsibilities of elements” of the Secretaries of Defense and the Navy stationed at the scene of the events, but warned that the extent to which that participation reached should continue to be investigated. “On our part, what is guarantee is not to hide anything, offer all the information and give all the facilities so that it goes to the bottom,” López Obrador promised, after in March the independent commission accused authorities of refusing to deliver intelligence data necessary for the investigations.

The GIEI maintains that the military manipulated evidence in a garbage dump where human remains were found, including those of the only three normalists identified so far.

The findings of that group and the government commission debunk much of the so-called “historical truth” proposed by the Peña Nieto government and officially presented by Murillo Karam, who did not prove the responsibility of the military.

According to that version, the youths were detained and handed over by local police officers to Guerreros Unidos when they were mistaken for members of an enemy gang.

After being shot, his remains were cremated and thrown into the Cocula dump, according to the same thesis, rejected by relatives, the López Obrador government and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The president announced that he will continue to insist that Israel extradite Tomás Zerón, former head of the Criminal Investigation Agency, who worked under Murillo Karam’s orders.

The former Attorney General’s Office was replaced in 2018 by the Attorney General’s Office, which, unlike the previous one, has autonomy from the government.