The disappearances were the latest sign of what appeared to be a breakdown in law and order in Guerrero state
Two detectives looking for 43 students who went missing almost ten years ago have disappeared in Mexico, the country’s president has announced.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that a search effort has been launched to find the two federal detectives, a man and a woman. Speaking at his daily news briefing, López Obrador said “I hope this is not related to those who do not want us to find the youths.”
The disappearances were the latest sign of what appeared to be a breakdown in law and order in Guerrero state, home to the resort of Acapulco. The state has been dogged for a decade by the case of 43 students from a rural teachers’ college in Guerrero who disappeared in 2014 and are believed to have been abducted by local officials and turned over to a drug gang to be killed.
Students at that college, located in Tixtla, north of Acapulco, have a long history of demonstrating and clashing with police, and last week a student was shot to death in what police said was a confrontation with students riding in a stolen car.
One of the police officers involved in that shooting had been detained and placed under investigation in the case, after the president described the shooting as “an abuse of authority” and confirmed the dead student had not fired any gun.
But López Obrador acknowledged Tuesday that the state police officer detained in the case had escaped from state custody before being turned over to federal prosecutors.
The president suggested that Guerrero state police had not properly guarded their colleague, saying arrest “protocols had not been followed.”
The 43 missing male students are believed to have been killed and burned by drug gang members. The two missing detectives were part of a years-long effort to find where the students remains had been dumped.
López Obrador did not specify when the detectives disappeared.
Authorities have been able to identify burned bone fragments of only three of the 43 missing students. The work largely involves searching for clandestine body dumping grounds in rural, isolated parts of the state where drug cartels are active.
