Eduardo Murillo and Gustavo Castillo
Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, September 21, 2022, p. 9
The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) obtained new arrest warrants against José Luis Abarca, mayor of Iguala, Guerrero, when the attack and disappearance of the 43 normalistas from Ayotzinapa, and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda, which prevented to get out of jail with the protection they obtained last week.
On the other hand, Friday is the deadline for resolving the legal situation of General José Rodríguez Pérez, who was commander of the 27th Infantry Battalion in 2014, when the aforementioned events took place.
The second district judge for federal criminal proceedings in the state of Mexico, Enrique Beltrán Santes, issued the new arrest warrants against Abarca and his wife; Felipe Flores Velázquez, former Secretary of Public Security of Iguala, and four other people for the crime of organized crime, due to their relationship with the criminal group United Warriors.
These orders were fulfilled on September 16, which prevented the former mayor and his spouse from being released. They were authorized by the judge based on criminal case 15/2022, derived from the testimonies of twenty protected witnesses and the investigation of the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice of the Ayotzinapa case.
Abarca and Pineda had obtained a resolution from the third district judge for federal criminal proceedings, based in Tamaulipas, which determined that there were not enough elements to prosecute them, a decision that was challenged by the FGR.
Meanwhile, Rodríguez Pérez is imprisoned in Military Camp number 1, awaiting the hearing that he must hold at the Federal Justice Center based in Almoloya de Juárez, state of Mexico. The case will be developed according to the rules of the previous justice system, so it will be defined there if a formal prison or release order is issued.
According to the defense, he is accused of organized crime, not of having participated in the homicide of the students, as the Undersecretary for Human Rights, Alejandro Encinas, pointed out when he released last August the report on the progress of the investigation of the Ayotzinapa case.
According to the information released by his lawyers, the only testimony that exists in the preliminary investigation initiated against the now general was provided by Gildardo López Astudillo, The Gil, one of the regional leaders of the cartel united warriors, group that deprived of liberty and would have executed the 43 normalistas.
