Former Director of Transit of the municipality of Iguala, Mauro Antonio Mosso Benitez, was arrested on Tuesday, March 3, for his alleged involvement in the disappearance of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, according to Mexico’s Security Cabinet.

Twelve years after the case, the agency specified that “as a result of investigative work and follow-up, elements of the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC, in Spanish) and the Attorney General’s Office (FGR, in Spanish), in coordination with the Secretariat of National Defense (Defensa, in Spanish), the Secretariat of the Navy-­Army of Mexico (Semar, in Spanish) and the National Guard, arrested a man linked to the crime of organized crime.”

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According to preliminary investigations, the detainee used a telephone device belonging to one of the students of the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College of Ayotzinapa on September 27, 2014.

The federal institutions specified that Mosso Benitez was arrested based on “sufficient evidence that was presented before a control judge, who granted the search warrant to intervene in a property located in the Villas del Rey subdivision, in the municipality of Iguala.”

Mosso Benitez had two firearms, cartridges, a magazine and doses of drugs seized from him. He was placed at the disposal of the Public Prosecutor’s Office so that the institution could determine his legal status.

However, versions emerged that his apprehension was carried out at two in the morning with the intervention of agents from the Special Investigation and Litigation Unit for the Ayotzinapa Case (UEILCA) of the FGR.

Meanwhile, on February 26, Ayotzinapa student teachers stated that the arrest of Lambertina Galeana Marin, former president of the Guerrero State Judiciary, does not represent progress, if there are no concrete results to learn the whereabouts of their 43 classmates who disappeared during the Night of Iguala on September 26 and 27, 2014.

During the protest, which also included members of the Federation of Socialist Peasant Students of Mexico, they demanded that the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs promote the extradition of Tomas Zeron de Lucio, former head of the Criminal Investigation Agency, who is in Israel; and Jose Ulises Bernabe Garcia, who served as a night court judge in Iguala and remains in the United States after requesting political asylum.

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