Public Security Assistant Secretary Ricardo Mejia said among those arrested was the former officer who commanded the military base in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state in September 2014, when students from an extreme teachers’ college were kidnapped. Mejia said a fourth arrest is expected soon. A government official with knowledge of the case who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed that another member of the military had been arrested. Mejía did not name those arrested, but the commander of the Iguala base at the time was José Rodríguez Pérez, then a colonel. Just a year after the students disappeared – and after the families had already raised suspicions of military involvement and demanded access to the base – Rodríguez was promoted to brigadier general. The government official confirmed that Rodríguez Pérez had been arrested and said he was being held at a military base. The source said two of the others arrested were officers and the third was a soldier. Last month, a government truth commission reinvestigating the case issued a report naming Rodríguez Pérez as allegedly responsible for the disappearance of six of the students. Interior Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez, who led the commission, said last month that six of the missing students were allegedly kept alive in a warehouse for days before being handed over to Rodríguez Pérez, who ordered them killed. The report had called the disappearances a “state crime”, stressing that authorities had been closely monitoring the students from the teachers’ college in Ayutthaya since they left their campus through their abduction by Iguala police that night. A soldier who had infiltrated the school was among the abducted students, and Encinas said the military did not follow its own protocols in trying to rescue him. “There is also information confirmed by emergency phone calls where it is alleged that six of the 43 missing students were held for several days and were alive in what they call the old warehouse and from there they were handed over to the colonel,” Encinas said. “Allegedly, the six students were alive for four days after the events and were killed and disappeared on the orders of the colonel, alleged then-Colonel José Rodríguez Pérez.” Multiple government and independent investigations have failed to come up with a single definitive account of what happened to the 43 students, but it appears local police took them off buses in Iguala and handed them over to a drug gang. The motive behind the kidnapping remains unclear. Their bodies were never found, although burned bone fragments have been matched to three of the students. The role of the military in the disappearance of the students has long been a source of tension between the families and the government. From the beginning there were questions about the military’s knowledge of what happened and their possible involvement. The parents of the students have demanded for years that they be allowed to investigate the military base in Iguala. It wasn’t until 2019 that they were given access along with Encinas and the truth commission. Shortly after the commission’s report, the attorney general’s office announced 83 arrest warrants, 20 of which involved members of the military. Federal agents then arrested Jesus Murillo Caram, who was then the attorney general. Doubts grew in the following weeks because no arrests were announced. The administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has forged a close public bond with the military. López Obrador has pushed to shift the newly formed national guard under full military authority, and his allies in Congress are trying to extend the time for the military to continue its police role on the streets until 2028. On Thursday, Mejía also rejected any suggestion that José Luis Abarca, who was mayor of Iguala at the time, would be released from prison after a judge cleared him of responsibility for the student’s abduction due to a lack of evidence. Even without the aggravated kidnapping charge, Abarca still faces other charges of organized crime and money laundering, and Mejía said the judge’s latest ruling will be challenged. The judge similarly acquitted 19 others, including the man who was then Iguala’s police chief.
