Mass kidnapping in Iguala 2014

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“They were taken alive. We want them alive again. Solidarity with the 43 missing students ”; Graffiti in Mexico
Demonstration in Mexico City on the first anniversary of the crime

On September 26, 2014 , 43 students from the Escuela Normal Rural "Raúl Isidro Burgos" , a college in Ayotzinapa ( Guerrero , Mexico ) for the training of primary school teachers, were kidnapped in Iguala and later murdered. Reports of acts of violence in Mexico's drug war , which has been going on for years and which had killed over 47,000 people by 2011, have become commonplace. But the crime against the 43 students upset the Mexican public more than any other.

The course of events

The students were part of a group that had traveled to Iguala to protest the Mexican government's discriminatory hiring and payment practices. They attended a teachers' seminar where housing, food and accommodation are free in exchange for agricultural work, and they came from poor and often indigenous families. Apparently they had the well-known habit of using public buses for their overland trips at demonstrations and for the involuntary attendance of "observation courses" and forcing the drivers to change the route, but they were always unarmed. The students had to attend these "observation courses" because the Mexican state deeply distrusts the teacher seminars, as they have a reputation for spreading revolutionary ideas in the spirit of the Mexican Revolution . On the way to a rally, local police intervened, stopped the buses and opened fire without warning. A bus filled with returning footballers also escalated. Six students were shot dead by the police. The further process was initially unclear. Later investigations found that 43 of the arrested students were handed over by the police to the criminal drug syndicate Guerreros Unidos and allegedly murdered.

The Milenio newspaper reported on January 24, 2015, citing interrogation protocols, that the hit man known as "El Cepillo" from the Guerreros Unidos criminal cartel had confessed to the murder of at least 15 students. The young people were handed over to him alive by police chiefs and he and accomplices then shot them. At least 25 died of asphyxiation, he said. Other gang members have also admitted the murder and burning of the students.

Arrests and investigations

Around 100 suspects, including police officers and gang members, were arrested. "The act highlighted the close ties between politicians, police officers and criminals in Mexico."

In September 2015, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights published the results of its six-month investigation into the crime. She questioned the attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam's account that the 43 students were cremated in a garbage dump. The commission also asked investigating authorities to test the hypothesis that the students had confiscated a bus with a large amount of heroin on it without their knowledge.

In June 2018, the 1st Higher Court ( Tribunal Colegiado ) in the 19th district of the court ( Tamaulipas state ) ordered that an independent investigative commission had to be formed. Because the previous investigations by the General Public Prosecutor's Office ( Procuraduría General de la República ) were "not as swift, effective, independent and impartial" as required by the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights .

The government at the time assumed that the mayor of Iguala José Luis Abarca Velázquez , who belonged to the left Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa were the masterminds of the crime. María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa apparently feared that the students could disrupt a rally at which she wanted to announce her candidacy for mayor (as her husband's successor). In order to forestall a disturbance, her husband ordered the police to take action against the students. Four days after the crime, the couple went into hiding, as did local police chief Felipe Flores Velásquez. The couple were arrested in Mexico City a month later. However, this official version has been questioned by several commentators. The journalist Anabel Hernández suspects a client up to the level of the then President Enrique Peña Nieto .

At the end of June 2020, the responsible public prosecutor announced that José Ángel Casarrubias Salgado, known as El Mochomo , had been arrested in connection with the investigation . The suspect is considered a senior member of the criminal group Guerreros Unidos . The Chicago Attorney's Office also had an ongoing case against the suspect at the same time. Salgado is accused of involvement in the trade and manufacture of heroin . The spokesman for the responsible Mexican public prosecutor's office, Felipe de la Cruz, told journalists that in connection with the previous investigations into the case, a total of more than 140 arrests had been made, without any guilt for the murders being established. 77 of the arrested persons were released because of procedural deficiencies, such as proven torture by judicial authorities. Investigations are also pending or in preparation against Tomás Zerón, who headed the earlier federal police investigation, and against Jesús Murillo Karam, the former attorney general responsible. They are accused of delaying investigations and influencing the evidence. A recently unexecuted arrest warrant has been issued against Zerón.

Demonstrations

The mass kidnapping and murder was the biggest scandal during the tenure of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto . The event sparked massive protests across the country.

One month after the students' disappearance, thousands of demonstrators held an initially peaceful rally. However, some of them set fire to Iguala City Hall after the rally. The Tagesschau reported that it was called: “This building is no longer good. The whole apparatus is in the service of the narcos (drug dealers). "

On October 21, 2014, angry teachers set fire to the PRD headquarters in Guerrero state after numerous indications emerged that suggested PRD politicians were involved in the crime. The governor of Guerrero, Ángel Aguirre Rivero, who was appointed by the PRD and who was friends with Mayor Abarca and his wife, resigned from his post in early 2015. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano , the founder and long-time chairman of the PRD, spoke in an open letter to the party executive about the involvement of party friends in the crime in Iguala and then left the PRD.

Many demonstrators called for the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto, and 246,524 people (as of November 26, 2014) joined the call in an online campaign.

Planned reform of the security apparatus

The kidnapping case and the government's handling of it led to his state crisis. Peña Nieto announced a comprehensive reform of the security forces in his country in a live television broadcast in late November 2014. For example, he plans to abolish the roughly 2,000 police authorities in the communities that are considered particularly corrupt. Instead, units of the 31 states should take over their tasks. Peña Nieto also announced that it would pool the work of the judicial authorities more closely, take measures to better protect human rights, and set up a nationwide system to search for those who have disappeared. The corresponding laws are to be introduced into the Mexican parliament soon.

Opposition politicians welcomed Peña Nieto's reform proposals, but criticized that they were not concrete enough and that the president lacked self-criticism. It is also questionable whether the local police force can be disempowered and whether the central authorities are not just as corrupt.

Movies

Web links

Commons : Mass kidnapping in Iguala 2014  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jo Tuckman: Bringing up the bodies: Mexico's missing students draw attention to 20,000 'vanished' others , The Guardian of November 26, 2014
  2. ↑ a b c Rachel Nolan: The police suddenly shot into the buses . Ed .: Barbara Bauer, Dorothee D'Aprile. No. 05/25 . TAZ / WOZ , May 2019, ISSN  1434-2561 , p. 12 f .
  3. ^ A b c Nicole Anliker: The kingdom of the queen of Iguala. Mastermind in the case of the 43 missing students in Mexico . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of February 7, 2015, international edition, p. 7.
  4. ↑ http://orf.at/#/stories/2262586/ Killer admits murder of 15 students in Mexico, ORF.at January 25, 2015
  5. ↑ a b Independent Report on Missing Students in Mexico Die Welt, September 7, 2015 (accessed September 15, 2015).
  6. ↑ Amnesty International: Orden para crear una comisión de investigación es un avance importante en el caso de Ayotzinapa , June 5, 2018, accessed on June 18, 2018.
  7. ↑ Tribunal mexicano establece comisión para investigar desaparición de estudiantes por fallas fiscalía , accessed on June 18, 2018.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h Wolf-Dieter Vogel: Disappeared students in Mexico - arrest without investigation. In: The daily newspaper . June 30, 2020, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  9. ^ Protest in Mexico over missing students. Demonstrators set fire to the town hall ( memento from October 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), tagesschau.de , October 23, 2014
  10. ^ Protesters burn city hall in Mexico town where 43 students vanished ( Memento from February 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on February 20, 2015.
  11. ↑ Carta abierta. A los miembros del Partido de la Revolución Democrática. Al Presidente, Secretario General e integrantes del Comité Ejecutivo Nacional del PRD , accessed February 20, 2015.
  12. ↑ Jorge Ramos Ávalos, La renuncia de Peña Nieto , November 1, 2014
  13. ↑ Enrique Peña Nieto: Esta Consulta Popular es para pedir tu renuncia al cargo de Presidente de la República Mexicana . , avaaz.org
  14. ↑ a b Martin Polansky: After the alleged massacre of students Never again Iguala ( memento from November 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) at tagesschau.de, November 28, 2014 (accessed November 28, 2014).