Two detectives searching for 43 students who disappeared nearly a decade ago in Guerrero state on Mexico’s Pacific coast have been found unharmed two days after they themselves disappeared, authorities announced.
Officials did not say Tuesday how the two federal detectives, a man and a woman, were found or released from custody.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said early Tuesday that he had launched a search operation for two federal detectives, a man and a woman. “I hope this is not connected to people who don’t want young people to be found,” López Obrador said at a daily news conference.
The disappearances were the latest sign of a complete breakdown in law and order in the state of Guerrero, where the resort town of Acapulco is located. For 10 years, the state has been tracking the disappearance of 43 students from a rural teacher’s college in Guerrero state who disappeared in 2014 and are believed to have been abducted by local authorities, handed over to drug gangs and murdered.
Students at the university, located in Tistla, north of Acapulco, have a long history of demonstrations and clashes with police, and last week police said they collided with students in a stolen car, killing one student. was shot dead.
One of the officers involved in the shooting was detained and placed under investigation after the president described the shooting as an “abuse of power” and confirmed that the deceased student did not fire the gun.
But President López Obrador acknowledged Tuesday that a state police officer detained in the case had fled state custody before being handed over to federal prosecutors.
The president suggested that Guerrero state police did not adequately protect their colleagues and said the arrest “did not follow procedure.”
There was little evidence that the president’s promise to investigate last week’s shootings or the fate of the 43 missing people would quell the traditionally violent student protests.
On Tuesday, student demonstrators broke into the state prosecutor’s office in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state, detonating explosives and burning 11 police patrol cars. Prosecutors said four employees were injured in the attack.
The 43 missing schoolboys are believed to have been murdered and burned by drug gang members. The two detectives were part of a multiyear effort to find where the students’ bodies were dumped. López Obrador did not say when the detectives disappeared.
Authorities were able to identify burnt bone fragments in only three of the 43 missing students. The task is to search for secret burial sites in isolated, rural areas of the state where drug cartels operate.
Drug cartels are so dominant in Guerrero state that a video posted on social media this week shows drug gang enforcers brutally beating an Acapulco bus driver for failing to look after the cartel. It was reflected.
One video showed what appeared to be a gang enforcer slapping a driver more than a dozen times, calling him an “animal” and demanding that he meet with the gang several times a day.
In testimony before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee this week, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines acknowledged that “there are areas that are effectively under cartel control in certain respects.”
The flight of the suspected police officer and the disappearance of the two detectives comes amid heightened tensions between López Obrador and the families of the missing students. Families have accused López Obrador of not doing enough to investigate the fate of his sons.
Last week, demonstrators supporting the families of the missing students used a commandeered pickup truck to drive through the wooden doors of Mexico City’s National Palace, where López Obrador lives and works.
The demonstrators broke down a door and entered the colonial palace before being chased away by security officials.
President López Obrador called the protests a provocation and claimed the demonstrators had sledgehammers, high-powered slingshots and torches. López Obrador complained about the involvement of human rights groups, claiming they were being prevented from speaking directly to parents of missing students.
