More than a decade after 43 students vanished in Mexico, ex-governor arrested, accused of cover-up

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities have arrested the former governor of the southern state Guerrero for his alleged involvement in the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, a case that has become a symbol for impunity and state involvement in cartel violence.Federal prosecutors said Thursday that they arrested Ángel Aguirre, Guerrero’s former governor, on accusations of “concealing evidence to determine the whereabouts of the students” of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College.The former governor, belonging to a party that gave rise to Mexico’s ruling Morena party, is the highest-profile arrest in the case to date since the detention of former federal Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, who is facing criminal charges of forced disappearance, obstruction of justice and torture.Aguirre governed Guerrero from 2011 until he resigned in October 2014, one month after the students disappeared.The disappearance of the students from the rural teacher’s college of Ayotzinapa after they commandeered several buses on their way to a protest shocked Mexico and the international community, and continues to fuel outrage as the truth of the case continues to trickle out nearly 12 years later.According to Mexican authorities, a cartel in Guerrero state’s city of Iguala attacked the students in collusion with security forces as well as local, state and federal authorities, including the military.

Officials were presumably involved by taking part in the crime or concealing it.Ernestina Godoy, the Attorney General of Mexico, stated that two testimonies gathered this year indicate that Aguirre not only requested that officials hand over the security camera footage from one of the locations of the attack that night but also ordered the destruction of any evidence related to the events.“The Attorney General’s Office has evidence proving that this order to conceal the evidence was issued directly by the then-governor, with the participation of high-level state ...