Former Iguala Mayor Arrested for Ordering Attacks on 43 Students Breaks His Silence Roque Planas - The World Post
go to original October 26, 2015

Former Iguala Mayor José Luis de Abarca and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, denied any wrongdoing in their first media interview since they were arrested nearly one year ago. (Associated Press)

In their first interviews with the media since their arrests nearly one year ago, the former mayor of the Mexican city of Iguala and his wife say they didn’t order the attacks against 43 missing students - a high-profile human rights case that sparked a national protest movement and an international outcry.

Speaking to journalists Anabel Hernández and Steve Fisher, former Iguala Mayor José Luis Abarca said he didn’t even have direct communication with the local police on the night of Sept. 26, 2014, when the attacks occurred. The federal police didn’t answer his phone calls, he added, and the military refused a request to head to the scene.

His wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, said Mexican authorities tortured her and told her that they would arrest their children as well if she protested the criminal charges against her, which include association with the drug cartel Guerreros Unidos. She and her attorney say authorities arrested her without a warrant.

“I was deprived of my freedom illegally,” Pineda Villa said in the article, which appeared in Mexican magazine Proceso’s Sunday edition. “I was physically, psychologically and verbally tortured to force me to appear. They violated my human rights, my guarantees, they threatened to arrest my children too if I didn’t go along with what they were charging me.”

The Mexican attorney general's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the Proceso story.

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