Reveal Presents (Investigations) · Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting

After Ayotzinapa: Arrests and Intrigue

September 23, 2022·12 min·1 clip

Watch military drone footage showing officials manipulating the Ayotzinapa crime scene before forensic teams arrived.

Host Al Letson opens by noting it has been eight months since the original After Ayotzinapa series aired and introduces Kate Doyle of the National Security Archive and Reveal reporter Anianci Diaz-Cortez. The first major development: after the podcast aired in English, Mexican special prosecutor Omar Gomez-Trejo found that DEA agents in Chicago had listened to it. He described them treating him like a rock star at a subsequent meeting and giving him access to the complete investigative file on the Guerreros Unidos cell in Chicago — a dramatic shift from the non-cooperation he had previously encountered. Access to that file contributed to the extradition of Adan Casarubias, known as Silver, one of the founding brothers of Guerreros Unidos. Silver was extradited to the US in May on conspiracy, drug trafficking, and money laundering charges, and has pleaded not guilty. A US federal trial could produce new disclosures about the fate of the students. On the Mexico side, four of five international experts were rehired under Gomez-Trejo's new investigation and have focused on the military's role. In March, they revealed military drone footage at a packed press conference in Mexico City showing that government officials — including federal police, Marines, the prosecutor's office, and the attorney general himself — were at the Cocula garbage dump hours before official forensic teams arrived, apparently tampering with the site. A helicopter lowered over the dump without landing, blowing debris into the air. The new government report states that at least six of the 43 students were alive for four days after their disappearance, and that a retired army general named Jose Rodriguez, who commanded the base in Iguala at the time, ordered the gang members to kill them. Rodriguez has been arrested. Meanwhile, former government investigator Tomas Zeron, who led the previous administration's flawed investigation and is linked to torture and planting evidence, is living in an apartment in Israel owned by a businessman connected to a major spyware company. Zeron used the Pegasus spyware to surveil the international experts, Omar, and the students' parents — including Doña Cristi — while ostensibly investigating the case for the government between 2014 and 2016. Gomez-Trejo flew to Jerusalem to meet with Israeli prosecutors and share the evidence against Zeron. During that trip, the former attorney general Murillo Caram was arrested in Mexico, though reporters note puzzlement that such a major arrest happened while the special prosecutor was out of the country. Doyle identifies a structural contradiction: the investigation has closed in on the military's role at the same time that President Lopez Obrador has granted the military unprecedented powers over airports, customs, and telecommunications. The episode closes with the perspective of Doña Cristi, mother of disappeared student Benjamín, who says that after eight years of arrests and reports, she still needs to know where her son is and where to mourn him.

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