Federal authorities on Tuesday arrested an ex-municipal police officer in connection with the infamous case of the abduction and presumed murder of 43 students in Guerrero in 2014.
Rey Flores Hernández, alias “El Negro,” was detained in Iguala, Guerrero, according to a statement issued by the Defense Ministry, the Navy Ministry, the Federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR), the National Guard and the Security Ministry.
The statement said that as a “result of investigative work about the disappearance of the students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers College in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, in 2014,” federal security forces executed an arrest warrant for the crimes of organized crime and enforced disappearance.
Video footage shows the suspect being marched into a facility, possibly FGR offices, after his arrest.
The statement said that authorities have determined that Flores, the 50-year-old ex-police officer in Iguala, belonged to a criminal group and was “linked” to the disappearance of the 43 students.
The criminal group to which he belonged was reportedly “Los Bélicos,” which allegedly moved drugs for the Guerreros Unidos crime group.
The 43 students — all young men — were allegedly abducted by members of the Guerreros Unidos in Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014, after buses they had commandeered to travel to a protest in Mexico City were stopped by municipal police.
Flores reportedly provided a police escort for a flatbed truck linked to the abduction. He was also allegedly involved in the abduction of members of rival criminal groups.
The news website Reporte Indigo reported that the aforesaid flatbed truck took a group of students to the ranch of Gildardo López Astudillo, a regional leader of the Guerrero Unidos.
In 2019, federal authorities said that López Astudillo sent a text message to his superior days after the students went missing that said: “They’ll never find them, we turned them into dust and threw them into the water.”
He was arrested in 2015, but acquitted and released in 2019.
Scores of people, including soldiers and other Iguala municipal police officers, have been arrested in connection with the disappearance of the students. However, no one has been convicted of the crime, and 21 police officers were released from custody in 2019.
Former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador pledged to resolve the Ayotzinapa case, which was a major scandal during the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-18).
However, no one has yet been held accountable for the crime, and the remains of the vast majority of the students have never been found.
Earlier this month, a new investigation unit was established to reexamine the case.
In September 2023, the federal government published a report that outlined three “possible reasons” for the abduction of the young men.
- The government said there may have been “confusion” on the part of Guerreros Unidos members with respect to the “alleged infiltration” of Los Rojos gangsters among the Ayotzinapa students. That “confusion” could have occurred “within the context of” a turf war in the Iguala region between the two crime groups, the government said.
- The intention may have been to “teach the students a lesson within the context of threats from [then Iguala] mayor José Luis Abarca and the Guerreros Unidos after protests and damage to the Iguala municipal palace,” the government said. Those protests occurred after the abduction and murder of three “social leaders.” Abarca is currently serving a 92-year prison sentence for the abduction of six Iguala activists unrelated to the Ayotzinapa case.
- “Drug trafficking and the possible presence of drugs, weapons or money” on buses commandeered by the students was the third possible reason identified by the government.
With reports from Reforma, El Universal, Expansión and Reporte Indigo
