Authorities are searching for the former head of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC), Tomás Zerón, and his team for irregularities in the case of the 43 missing students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college.
The charges include torture, forced disappearance, evidence tampering and altering the crime scene. The arrest warrant was issued on March 10.
As federal reports indicate that he is currently located in Canada, Interpol has issued a Red Notice for Zerón, which initiates an international search.
The accusations against him stem from events that occurred on October 28, 2014, in Río San Juan de Cocula, Guerrero, but were not entered into the official case documentation.
That day Zerón allegedly took one of the suspects in the disappearances, Agustín “El Chereje” García Reyes, to one of the crime scenes with neither a lawyer present nor official authorization to do so.
A video released in 2016 shows the two in an area where at least one bag of burned human remains was found, evidence that was used to back up the investigator’s report and formed the basis of the so-called “historical truth,” the former federal government’s official version of events of what happened on September 26, 2014, in Iguala, Guerrero.
That version was released to the public in late 2014, and an independent team of experts invited to help with the investigation said in April 2016 that Mexican authorities were too “married” to the official version for them to uncover the actual truth of the night’s events.
The federal Attorney General’s Office says that Zerón also wrongfully ordered forensic personnel to look for bags containing human remains in the river in order to distract them from other parts of the search area.
Authorities said that it was sufficient evidence to assume that Zerón and his team fabricated the “historical truth” version of the story.
Another former AIC official, Ezequiel Peña Cerda, was arrested on Tuesday on charges of torture of one of the alleged perpetrators of the attack.
Parents of the missing students met with President López Obrador on March 5 to ask him to have the Financial Intelligence Unit investigate public officials who intervened in the Ayotzinapa case.
These include, in addition to Zerón, former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, former Iguala Mayor José Luis Abarca and his wife, among others.
Families of the missing students have long claimed that Zerón fabricated evidence.
Source: Reforma (sp)
