Wafric News – May 16, 2025

Mexico City — In a major development nearly a decade after one of Mexico’s most haunting human rights tragedies, authorities have arrested a retired judge accused of playing a role in the disappearance and presumed deaths of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College.

Lambertina Galeana, a former top judicial official in Guerrero state, was taken into custody Wednesday on charges of forced disappearance. According to a government statement, Galeana is suspected of concealing surveillance footage that allegedly showed the moment the students were abducted by armed men outside a court building in 2014.

Investigators say the retired judge ordered the destruction of the videos, claiming they were unusable due to “technical issues.” However, a 2022 report by El País revealed that the footage may have been intentionally erased to protect those involved in the crime.

The disappearance of the 43 students — who had taken buses to travel to a protest in Mexico City — has become a symbol of the country’s deep-seated crisis of impunity and mass disappearances. With over 120,000 people officially listed as missing in Mexico, the Ayotzinapa case remains one of the most painful and unresolved.

Only the remains of three students have been recovered and identified. For years, families of the missing have demanded answers and justice, marching in cities across Mexico and drawing global attention to the case.

The students were believed to have been kidnapped by members of a drug cartel working in collusion with local police forces. But the full picture remains elusive.

A truth commission established in 2022 by then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador labeled the event a “state crime,” asserting that the military was either complicit or failed to act despite being aware of the abduction in real time.

That same year, Mexico’s former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam — who led the controversial original investigation — was arrested by federal agents. The commission found significant evidence that the official version of events was manipulated to protect state institutions and key actors.

One of the most disturbing theories to emerge is that the students may have unknowingly boarded a bus carrying hidden narcotics, prompting the cartel’s violent reaction.

The arrest of Lambertina Galeana underscores the long and complicated road to justice in a country where institutional corruption and narco-violence often intersect. Guerrero state, where the students disappeared, has long been a hotspot for cartel activity and political tension.

Since 2006, roughly 480,000 people have lost their lives to criminal violence in Mexico, and the Ayotzinapa case remains a brutal reminder of how deeply the crisis has scarred the nation.

As families continue to demand the truth, the arrest offers a glimmer of accountability — but for many, justice remains heartbreakingly out of reach.


By Wafric News Desk.