Mexico’s former attorney general has been detained in connection with the abduction of 43 students in 2014.
Jesús Murillo Karam, who headed a probe into the crime, has been accused with forced abduction, torture and the obstruction of justice.
While on their route to a demonstration in Mexico City, the students disappeared off their bus in the city of Iguala.
Nothing is known about the other two, and just three pieces of bone were found.
What transpired after municipal police opened fire on buses transporting the students on the evening of September 26, 2014, is unclear.
Their inexplicable abduction sent shockwaves throughout the globe and provoked huge demonstrations in Mexico against impunity and official participation in organised crime.
The investigation Jesus Murillo Karam oversaw in 2015 into the disappearance of the students was widely criticised since it implicated members of a cartel in the kids’ deaths and the subsequent cremation of their bodies. Karam was detained on Friday for leading the probe.
Independent experts and families of the missing students criticised his conclusions, which were supported by then-President Enrique Pea Nieto, for including inaccuracies and failing to place culpability on the military forces.
In a tweet, Mr Karam’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which is no longer in power, accused those behind Friday’s detention of being politically motivated.
As of yet, his arrest is the most high-profile action taken by authorities in relation to the students’ disappearance.
The current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, convened a truth committee on Thursday to investigate the massacre and found that troops were at least indirectly responsible for it due to their carelessness.
“Their acts, omissions or involvement facilitated the abduction and execution of the students,” said Alejandro Encinas, who is the commission’s chairman as well as Mexico’s deputy interior minister, according to AFP news agency.
Nonetheless, he stressed the need for more research on the whole role of military people.
Early this year, President López Obrador said that members of the navy were being probed for potential tampering with evidence.
On Friday, he issued a request for the prosecution of any military personnel or government officials responsible for the disappearance.
Mexico’s leader stated, “publicising this horrible, inhuman scenario and at the same time punishing those involved helps to avoid these deplorable acts from ever occurring again.”
