Mexico says 'key' figure held in missing students' case

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Mexican authorities have announced the arrest of a man who they claim was a key figure in the disappearance of 43 student teachers in September 2014.

The Attorney General's office said on Monday that it had held Erick Sandoval Rodriguez, “a probable member of a criminal organization” operating in the violent southwestern state of Guerrero.

Prosecutors have said that corrupt police in the state handed the students over to drug cartel members, who killed them and incinerated their bodies in a big fire at a trash dump.

The atrocity has plunged President Enrique Pena Nieto’s government into one of its worst crises, as doubts swirl around the conduct of the investigation into the case.

The Attorney General’s Office said the suspect faces organized crime and kidnapping charges.

Mexican police have been criticized for their handling of the case. /VCG photo

He is one of about 132 people arrested so far in the case.

Only one of the missing students has been matched through DNA testing to the charred remains, and experts doubt all could have been burned.

The government had originally put a 1.5 million pesos (81,000 US dollars) bounty on Sandoval Rodriguez’s head because of his alleged involvement in the murder of the student teachers.

Earlier this month, the prosecutor in charge of the case said authorities were preparing to arrest dozens of people implicated in the killings.

Last week, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said he would soon issue a report "on elements of the investigation” in the case.

During President Pena Nieto's six-year-term, which will end in December, the murder rate in Mexico has climbed, with more than 25,000 committed across the drug-ravaged country in 2017, the highest since modern records began.