Mayor of Town Linked to Mexico's Missing Students Charged with Ties to Gang Lucy Westcott - Newsweek
go to original December 31, 2015

Hundreds of demonstrators take part in a march to mark the 15-month anniversary of the students' disappearance, in Mexico City on December 26. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters)

The former mayor of Cocula, the Mexican town linked to the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, has been charged with ties to organized crime, according to reports.

Cesar Penaloza Santana was the mayor of Cocula from 2012 to 2015, during the time of the students’ disappearance. He was arrested on December 16 on suspicion of having links to “a criminal group that operates in northern Guerrero state,” according to the prosecutor’s office.

Dozens of students, who had attended a teacher training college in Ayotzinapa, southwest Mexico, went missing last September from Iguala, in southwest Guerrero state. The Mexican government said the 43 were abducted by corrupt officials from both Cocula and Iguala and given to a drug gang, who are believed to have murdered them. The official government report on the disappearances said the gang mistook the students for members of a rival drug gang.

Read the rest at Newsweek

Related: Investigation Into Massacre of Mexican Students Continues (Vatican Radio)

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