The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, reported on Tuesday about the escape of a police officer accused of shooting the Yanqui student Kothan Gómez Peralta of the Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa and about the disappearance of two prosecutors who were investigating the case of the 43 students of that institution disappeared in 2014.
Peralta was killed by police at a roadblock in the city of Chilpancingo, Guerrero, on March 7, a day after a protest by normalista students in Mexico City, in which they knocked down a door of the National Palace with a car. during a morning press conference by López Obrador.
The Mexican president, who ruled out filing complaints related to the protests at the National Palace, condemned the attack on the normalistas in which Peralta lost his life.
The death of the 23-year-old has sparked protests in Guerrero, where a group of national guards were temporarily held by protesters demanding justice for the murdered student.
López Obrador reported on Tuesday that the police officer accused of shooting Gómez Peralta “was in an administrative arrest, but the protocols were not followed,” so he suspects that other authorities helped him flee.
“Yesterday the alleged person responsible for the murder of the young man from the Ayotzinapa normal school escaped and the investigation is being carried out, of course the search, and responsibilities will be established, but it is part of this decomposition that we are facing and the interests that "They are in the way," declared the president.
"Without a doubt (there was complicity), it was in the process of handing over the state authorities to the Attorney General's Office of the Republic, which already brought the case," said the president.
The officers had claimed that the victim and another student were armed in a stolen car and shot at the officers, but the president denied that version.
[“We thirst for justice”: relatives of Ayotzinapa march for the ninth anniversary of the disappearance of the 43 students]
Although there were three police officers detained, only the alleged shooter escaped, according to López Obrador, who promised that “there will be no impunity.”
“That we realize how the situation is, that there are many interests, there are those who do not want justice to be done and that we look bad, and also to have elements, because we are in the electoral season, to affect us, they think that with this they are going to harm us. weaken as an authority,” he noted.
Two prosecutors assigned to the case disappear
López Obrador also reported on Tuesday the disappearance of two of the prosecutors participating in the investigation of the case of the 43 normalista students from Ayotzniapa who have disappeared since 2014.
"Yes, these missing people exist, it is a man and a woman from the Attorney General's Office who are working in the search for the young people of Ayotzinapa and they disappeared and the search is already being carried out," said the president in his morning conference, but He did not offer details of how and when the incident occurred.
Local media reported that experts Suay Domínguez Pastrana and Enrique Linares Ríos disappeared on Sunday in the central city of Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos, according to a report from the Person Search Commission of that state.
The authorities lost communication with the two officials when they were traveling in a vehicle towards the southern state of Guerrero.
The president ruled out that the incident could affect the process that the authorities are carrying out to clarify the disappearance of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School that occurred in September 2014 in the city of Iguala, in Guerrero.
"And I hope it is not something related to those who do not want the young people to be found and are hindering us. Since they know that we are working and we are moving forward, they want to prevent us from continuing to move forward. They are not going to achieve it," added the president.
[Students from Ayotzinapa break down the door of the National Palace during López Obrador's conference]
The Ayotzinapa case has been involved in controversy in recent days after the violent protest carried out last Wednesday by a group of protesters who broke down a door of the National Palace (seat of the Executive Branch) to demand that the authorities speed up the investigations and that the president receives the parents of the 43 students.
In recent months, relatives and their lawyers have accused the López Obrador Government of not having made progress in the investigations despite the fact that, at the beginning of his six-year term in 2018, he promised that the young people would be located and the facts would be clarified. .
Almost nine and a half years later, the motive for the crime and the fate of the students are not clear, although the charred remains of three of the young people were found and it is presumed that they were all murdered by members of a local cartel that trafficked heroin and acted in collusion. with security forces and local, state and federal authorities, including the military.
Protests in Guerrero
According to local media such as Sol de Acapulco, the incident has unleashed a state of alert in the institutions of Guerrero, which since last Friday have kept some public buildings armored, such as the Government Palace, the State Attorney General's Office and the Juan N. building. Alvarez.
During Monday, groups of young students went out to protest in Chilpancingo, with a partial blockade of the Autopista del Sol, in which they called for the dismissal of Rolando Solano, who is the head of the Ministry of Public Security.
[It was “a state crime”: Mexican authorities give preliminary conclusions on the Ayotzinapa case]
Mexico is experiencing a crisis of missing persons with more than 100,000 people not located since there was a record, according to the official census of the National Search Commission (CNB) that López Obrador intends to modify.
With information from EFE,
The Associated Press
and
El Sol de Acapulco