President Sheinbaum revealed this Friday that “there have been more than 10 recent arrests” in the Ayotzinapa case; They evaluate the return of former members of the GIEI.
Mexico City, November 28 (However).– The President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo revealed this Friday that more than 10 recent captures related to the case of the disappearance of the 43 normal students of Ayotzinapawhich occurred in 2014, thanks to new scientific research. Furthermore, he announced that evaluate along with fathers and mothers of the missing If a couple of people return to the investigation former members of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI).
“There are more than 10 recent arrests, particularly more recent ones. They will be made known at the time as soon as the new Prosecutor comes, as long as he or she does not intervene in the investigation,” Sheinbaum explained when asked by However during his morning press conference this morning.
“It is important for everyone to know that there have been very important recent arrests related to the Ayotzinapa case that were presented to the parents yesterday. Where do they come from? From a very exhaustive work that the new Prosecutor is doing [Mauricio Pazarán]of scientific research, related to telephone calls that were made that night, September 26 and 27, 2014,” he added.
Advances in the Ayotzinapa case
The President explained that these criminal investigation tools had not been used in everything carried out by the Prosecutor’s Office. “Something had been done, but these mechanisms had not been used. That means that cell phone calls that were made that night in the area, which are hundreds of thousands, there is a scheme to know, from people who are detained, with certain phones, they called who and where,” he concluded.
Sheinbaum acknowledged that, although there is progress, “still not what we would like to reach truth and justice.” “But there is additional progress to what was already there, which was the review of the investigation folders and previous investigations and the statements of the witnesses themselves. This has allowed progress to a certain point, the people of Mexico will be informed when the Prosecutor’s Office considers it,” he assured.
Just this week, local media in Guerrero reported that federal forces searched two houses in Iguala and arrested three people allegedly involved in the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa normal students.
Added to this is that, at the beginning of November, the United States government deported Juan Alberto “N”, a former municipal police officer from Huitzuco, Guerrero, who was allegedly involved in the case of the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa normalistas. This is one of the two identified in the case that Sheinbaum had asked Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, to extradite to Mexico.
However, the extradition of José Ulises Bernabé García, who lives in the US and who at the time of the students’ disappearance was a Judge in Barandilla de Iguala, would be more complicated, since he requested political asylum in the US in April 2015 and was accepted in that country since then.
Return of GIEI members evaluated
President Sheinbaum also confirmed this Friday from the National Palace that they are evaluating the return of former members of the GIEI to collaborate with the investigation of the Ayotzinapa case, but she did not give the names of who would be the experts who would return to the country.
“It is not the GIEI as such, that group has already disappeared, those who participated there are no longer together. Some fathers and mothers have insisted that some of the people who participated in the GIEI can be incorporated as part of the investigation. I had already suggested that we could talk to them. At the time they set a series of conditions that from our perspective have limitations,” the president explained.
“What we decided yesterday is that Arturo Medina, the Undersecretary of Human Rights of the Ministry of the Interior, was going to communicate with two people who belonged to the GIEIunder what conditions, if they are interested, to return to participate in the research,” he revealed.
In addition, Sheinbaum said that they are talking with the United Nations “so that some other international expert, who knows about this type of research, can participate, with the consent of the parents of the Ayotzinapa students.” “And there are new search places too, so not as we would like, but there is progress. We will talk to them, to the people, to see if they would like to return, in what condition,” the President reiterated.
In July, Sheinbaum had confirmed that Rosendo Gómez Piedra, until then head of the Special Investigation and Litigation Unit for the Ayotzinapa Case (UEILCA), decided to leave his position after accusations of corruption by the parents of the 43 missing normal students.
“He resigned. He decided to resign and for now the lawyer is [Mauricio] Pazarán, which was incorporated as part of the Prosecutor’s Office a few months ago. He has been talking with family members,” he explained in his press conference from the National Palace.
Now, the investigation will also have to face the change of Attorney General of the Republic (FGR), after the resignation this week of Alejandro Gertz Manero, the incumbent since 2019, to take over an Embassy, in an untimely move that occurred only in the last few hours.