Mexican officials said on Friday that they had detained the leader of a group of criminals who prosecutors believe killed 43 college students then burned their bodies, in a case that continues to roil the country more than three months after the young men disappeared.
The arrest of Felipe Rodriguez Salgado, who was being questioned late on Friday, might add more details to the theory that the authorities have outlined.
Prosecutors say municipal police in Iguala City, in the southern state of Guerrero, arrested the students and handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos organized crime group on orders from Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca.
Photo: Reuters
Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, are believed to be closely linked to the Guerreros Unidos. The pair fled Iguala, then were arrested in Mexico City in November. Authorities formally charged Abarca in the students’ disappearance on Tuesday. At the same time, Pineda was charged with involvement in organized crime.
The case, which has highlighted the ways in which drug gangs have succeeded in buying off the local police and officials in many parts of the nation, has shocked Mexico and challenged Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s efforts to focus public attention on the economy.
Turmoil is rising in Guerrero State, where masked protesters have been burning state buildings and cars and disrupting public events.
Photo: AFP
The families of the missing young men, who were studying to be teachers at the Escuela Normal Rural Raul Isidro Burgos, have questioned whether the students are dead. The remains of only one of the 43 students have been identified so far by a special laboratory at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Some of the families began a new search in the hills around Iguala on Friday.
On Monday, some relatives gathered outside the army base in Iguala, demanding to be allowed in to see if their sons were inside. The army said that it would allow the Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights to visit the base with relatives.
Rodriguez, whom officials described as a Guerreros Unidos hit man, is believed to have ordered the group that killed the students and burned the bodies to remove all traces of the crime. According to the authorities, he took orders from a lieutenant named Gildardo Lopez Astudillo, who is a fugitive.
Officials believe that Lopez orchestrated the students’ disappearance in September on orders from Guerreros Unidos leader Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, who was arrested in October.
Almost 100 people have been detained in the investigation, officials announced this week. The majority of those are police officers from Iguala and the neighboring town of Cocula, the site of the trash dump where prosecutors said the students were killed and then cremated.
China’s military news agency yesterday warned that Japanese militarism is infiltrating society through series such as Pokemon and Detective Conan, after recent controversies involving events at sensitive sites. In recent days, anime conventions throughout China have reportedly banned participants from dressing as characters from Pokemon or Detective Conan and prohibited sales of related products. China Military Online yesterday posted an article titled “Their schemes — beware the infiltration of Japanese militarism in culture and sports.” The article referenced recent controversies around the popular anime series Pokemon, Detective Conan and My Hero Academia, saying that “the evil influence of Japanese militarism lives on in
ANTI-SEMITISM: Some newsletters promote hateful ideas such as white supremacy and Holocaust denial, with one describing Adolf Hitler as ‘one of the greatest men of all time’ The global publishing platform Substack is generating revenue from newsletters that promote virulent Nazi ideology, white supremacy and anti-Semitism, a Guardian investigation has found. The platform, which says it has about 50 million users worldwide, allows members of the public to self-publish articles and charge for premium content. Substack takes about 10 percent of the revenue the newsletters make. About 5 million people pay for access to newsletters on its platform. Among them are newsletters that openly promote racist ideology. One, called NatSocToday, which has 2,800 subscribers, charges US$80 for an annual subscription, although most of its posts are available
GLORY FACADE: Residents are fighting the church’s plan to build a large flight of steps and a square that would entail destroying up to two blocks of homes Barcelona’s eternally unfinished Basilica de la Sagrada Familia has grown to become the world’s tallest church, but a conflict with residents threatens to delay the finish date for the monument designed more than 140 years ago. Swathed in scaffolding on a platform 54m above the ground, an enormous stone slab is being prepared to complete the cross of the central Jesus Christ tower. A huge yellow crane is to bring it up to the summit, which will stand at 172.5m and has snatched the record as the world’s tallest church from Germany’s Ulm Minster. The basilica’s peak will deliberately fall short of the
Venezuelan Nobel peace laureate Maria Corina Machado yesterday said that armed men “kidnapped” a close ally shortly after his release by authorities, following former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s capture. The country’s Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed later yesterday that former National Assembly vice president Juan Pablo Guanipa, 61, was again taken into custody and was to be put under house arrest, arguing that he violated the conditions of his release. Guanipa would be placed under house arrest “in order to safeguard the criminal process,” the office said in a statement. The conditions of Guanipa’s release have yet to be made public. Machado claimed that
RSS