Mexico arrests alleged cartel kingpin tied to 43 missing students

( NewsNation ) — Mexican authorities have arrested a suspected d r ug cartel leader who was allegedly behind the decade-old kidnapping and disappearance of nearly 50 college students.

Gildardo Lopez Astudillo, the suspected leader of the Guerreros Unidos cartel , was arrested on charges of organized crime, and taken to the Altiplano maximum security prison in south-central Mexico, reported CBS News.

Lopez Astudillo, who is also known as “El Gil,” had been arrested in 2015 in the southern city of Taxco, Guerrero state, about 21 miles north of the town of Iguala from where the students vanished, but was released in 2019 after a judge found the evidence against him was obtained illegally.

His release was criticized by the victims’ families.

Authorities say 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college were abducted by local police who were working with the cartel. The students were then given to Guerreros Unidos, who was headed by Lopez Astudillo at the time.

Jesús Murillo Karam, attorney general under President Enrique Peña Nieto, infamously announced the “historic truth” about the students’ disappearance to the nation in 2015.

He said that the students were killed and their bodies incinerated at a garbage dump. But independent experts said there was no evidence to support that conclusion.

A truth commission set up by the government had called the disappearance a “state crime” because the military shared responsibility, either directly or through negligence, CBS reported.

His arrest comes as relatives prepare demonstrations to mark the 10th anniversary of the students’ disappearance.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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