MOSCOW, October 23 (RIA Novosti) – The runaway mayor of Iguala, a Mexican town where the 43 students had been kidnapped and allegedly killed in September, along with his wife are the principal suspects in the criminal case, Mexican authorities say.
Mayor of Iguala Jose Luis Abarca and his spouse Maria de los Angeles Pineda are wanted by Mexican lawmen on charges of attack on the students who disappeared last month, says Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The couple fled the town soon after the incident when local police killed six people and detained the 43 students, who were participating in a protest rally against the violation of rights of teachers in rural schools. The students had presumably been turned over to one of Iguala’s criminal organizations, which had allegedly brutally killed them and burned the bodies.
Mexican authorities claim that it was Mayor Abarca who ordered the police to stop the student protest by any means necessary, as he was concerned their rally would disrupt his wife’s party. Ms. Pineda was allegedly intending to run for Mayor after her husband’s term was due to expire next summer.
Attorney General Murillo Karam also said that the fugitive Mayor had already had a bone to pick with the local students, as last year during a similar protest they vandalized his office, shattering the windows in retaliation for an earlier killing of a left-wing activist. Mayor Abarca’s role in that case is also being investigated.
It had been reported earlier that the Iguala Mayor Abarca has family ties with the local drug-trafficking cartel, the Guerreros Unidos. Now Mexican authorities say the Mayor may have been receiving some $230,000 a month from the organization, with an additional $50,000 going to the police to provide support for the cartel’s business in the area.
The Guerreros Unidos boss Sidronio Casarrubias has already been detained. The cartel leader says the violent actions against the missing students were due to their affiliation with a rival criminal organization, not their civil activism. Concurrently, the DNA of the remains found in a mass grave soon after the kidnapping, does not match with that of the students, as opposed to earlier media speculations.
As for now, 52 gangsters, policemen and town officials of Iguala and neighboring Cocula are being held in custody while the investigation is underway. The whereabouts of the main suspect, Mayor Abarca, are yet to be discerned.
