A decade after 43 students vanished in Mexico, ex-governor arrested, accused of concealing evidence

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican authorities have detained the former governor of the southern state Guerrero for his alleged involvement in the disappearance of 43 students in 2014 – a case that has grown to become a symbol for impunity and state involvement in cartel violence.

Federal prosecutors said Thursday that they arrested Ángel Aguirre, Guerrero’s former governor, on accusations of “concealing evidence to determine the whereabouts of the students” of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College. Few other details about the arrest were immediately available.

The former governor – of the party from which Mexico’s ruling Morena party emerged – is one of the highest-profile arrests in the case to date since the detention of former federal Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, who is facing criminal charges of forced disappearance, obstruction of justice and torture. Aguirre governed Guerrero from 2011 until October 2014, one month after the students disappeared.

The disappearance of the students after they commandeered several buses on their way to a protest shocked Mexico and the international community, and continues to fuel outrage in Mexico as the truth of the case continues to trickle out more than 10 years later.

After three administrations, dozens of arrests and an investigation plagued by irregularities, key questions remain unanswered. Authorities believe the students were killed, but only bone fragments from three of them have been found, and the motive for the attack remains unclear, although it is believed to have been linked to heroin trafficking in the area.

According to Mexican authorities, a cartel in the city of Iguala attacked the students in collusion with security forces and local, state and federal authorities, including the military.

The administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who served from 2018 to 2024, described the Ayotzinapa case as a “state crime.”