Mexico arrested a former attorney general on Friday for leading a contentious probe into the 2014 abduction of 43 students, one of the country's biggest human rights tragedies. Prosecutors also revealed that arrest warrants had been filed for several other suspects, including military personnel, police officers, and cartel members.

Ex-attorney general Jesus Murillo Karam's arrest shocked the nation and generated international condemnation because of his age. He is widely regarded as the architect of the so-called "historical truth" version of events offered by then-President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration in 2015, which was widely rejected by his family.

Murillo Karam, a former heavyweight of the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), has been detained for offenses including forced disappearance, torture, and perverting justice, according to the attorney general's office.

“In order for disappearance to cease to be the paradigm of the perfect crime in #Mexico, prevention must be at the heart of national policy for the prevention and eradication of enforced disappearances," said the #UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances. pic.twitter.com/BiWvPGGWYU

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) April 14, 2022

Prosecutors later announced that arrest warrants had been filed for 20 military personnel, five administrative and judicial officials, 44 police officers, and 14 Guerreros Unidos cartel members. They are accused of involvement in organized crime, kidnapping, torture, homicide, and obstruction of justice.

Before going missing, the teaching students had commandeered buses in the southern state of Guerrero to proceed to a rally in Mexico City.

Investigators say they were detained by corrupt police and handed over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel which mistook them for members of a rival gang, but exactly what happened to them has been hotly disputed.

According to an official investigation released in 2015, cartel members murdered the students and burned their bodies at a rubbish dump. These findings were challenged by independent experts, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the families.

'State crime'

A truth committee examining the atrocity declared the case a "state crime" involving operatives from several organizations on Thursday. It was stated that military people carried at least some culpability, either directly or indirectly.

"Their actions, omissions, or participation allowed the disappearance and execution of the students, as well as the murder of six other people," said the commission's head, Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas. He stated that additional investigations were required to determine the extent to which military people engaged.

"An action of an institutional nature was not proven, but there was clear responsibility of members" of the armed forces, Encinas added. The "historical truth" did not attribute any responsibility to military personnel. According to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, any soldiers or authorities complicit in the disappearance must face punishment.

"Publicizing this atrocious, inhuman situation, and at the same time punishing those responsible, helps to prevent these deplorable events ever happening again" and "strengthens institutions", Lopez Obrador said.

"We said from the beginning that we were going to speak the truth, no matter how painful it was," he told reporters during a visit to the northwestern border city of Tijuana. Murillo Karam's detention, according to the PRI, was driven by politics rather than justice.

"We will not remain silent before a government that uses the state apparatus against opponents," it tweeted.

Lopez Obrador stated in March that navy members were being investigated for allegedly tampering with evidence, specifically at a rubbish dump where human remains, including those of the only three students recognized, were discovered. He refuted allegations made by independent experts that Mexican officials withheld critical information regarding the case.