MEXICO CITY – Mexican authorities on Wednesday arrested a former senior judge in connection with the disappearance and presumed murder of 43 students a decade ago.
Lambertina Galeana, who faces charges of forced disappearance, is accused of helping to conceal videos that allegedly showed the tragedy unfolding, a government statement said.
The case, one of the violence-plagued country’s worst human rights atrocities, has become emblematic of a missing persons crisis that has seen more than 120,000 people disappear.
Galeana, now retired, was president of the Superior Court of Justice in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, where the students from a rural teacher training college disappeared in September 2014.
So far, the remains of only three of the missing students have been found and identified, and relatives denounce impunity.
The students from Ayotzinapa — whose members have a history of political activism — had commandeered buses to travel to a demonstration in Mexico City when they went missing.
Investigators believe they were abducted by a drug cartel with the help of corrupt police, although exactly what happened is unclear.
In 2022, a truth commission set up by former president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s government branded the case a “state crime” and said the military shared responsibility, either directly or through negligence.
The commission found that the army was aware of what was happening and had real-time information about the kidnapping and disappearance.
