The special prosecutor leading the Attorney General’s Office investigation into the abduction and disappearances of 43 students in southern Mexico in 2014 has resigned, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Tuesday.
The resignation of Omar Gómez Trejo came one day after the families of the missing students marched on the eighth anniversary of their disappearances.
Gómez Trejo himself appeared to have gained the trust of the families. But the Attorney General’s Office has come under fire for cancelling some 21 arrest orders for suspects -- including 16 members of the military -- without explanation and for sensitive portions of a Truth Commission report being leaked to the press.
That followed some advances in the case, including the arrest of former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam and of the army officer commanded the base in Iguala, Guerrero, when the students disappeared. He is now a retired general.
At his daily news conference Tuesday, López Obrador did not detail the reasons for the prosecutor's resignation.
At Monday’s march, the students’ families called for the resignation of Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero.
Security forces abducted the students from buses in Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014, and turned them over to a local drug gang. New revelations implicate the military in the disappearances, but the motive for the students' abduction remains unclear, though there is growing evidence it involves police and military collusion with drug traffickers."
