Mexico's ex-AG charged for mishandling mass disappearance case

On Friday, August 19th, Mexican federal prosecutors reported that they had arrested Mexico’s former attorney general, 74-year-old Jesús Murillo Karam. Murillo Karam is being charged with “torture, official misconduct, and forced disappearance” in relation to the disappearances of 43 students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos School for Teachers in 2014, states CBS News.

When the students’ bus arrived in the city of Iguala, Mexico, CNN reports they were assailed by “local police and the federal military forces. Buses with broken windows and traces of blood were later found in Iguala. Investigators into the crime have reported involvement by "the Guerreros Unidos criminal group and agents from various institutions of the Mexican state.”

Murillo Karam’s mishandling of the case in 2014 and over-hasty closure allegedly led multiple suspects to walk free. He claimed that the 43 students had been murdered by a drug gang which incinerated their bodies at a dump in Cocula, while investigators have more recently disproven this. Only three students’ bodies have been recovered so far, according to CNN, and the fates of the others are still unknown.