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World

Mexico’s ex-attorney general arrested over disappearance of 43 students in 2014 | Mexico

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Mexico’s former attorney general has been arrested in relation to the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, the most prominent individual held so far in the notorious case that has haunted the country ever since.

Jesús Murillo was arrested at his home in Mexico City home on Friday on charges of forced disappearance, torture and obstruction of justice in the abduction and disappearance of the student-teachers in the south-western state of Guerrero, now seen as a “state-sponsored crime”.

Murillo was taken to an office of the attorney general and would be moved to a jail in Mexico City, authorities said.

Within hours of the arrest, a judge released 83 more arrest orders for soldiers, police, Guerrero officials and gang members in relation to the case, the attorney general’s office said.

During Murillo’s 2012-2015 term under then-president Enrique Peña Nieto, he oversaw the highly criticised investigation into the disappearance of the students on 26 September 2014 from the Ayotzinapa rural teachers’ college.

Jesús Murillo was arrested at his home in Mexico City on Friday. Photograph: Yuri Cortéz/AFP/Getty Images

The remains of only three students were ever found and identified, and questions have remained unanswered ever since.

International experts said the official inquiry was riddled with errors and abuses, including the torture of witnesses. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in 2018 vowing to clear up what had happened.

López Obrador’s administration has tried since 2020 to arrest another top former official, Tomas Zeron, including asking Israel last year to extradite him.

When asked about the government’s move to scrutinize the past investigation, Murillo said he was pleased and was open to being questioned, local media reported in 2020.

Murillo was taken into custody wearing black slacks, his hands folded inside the pockets of a grey jacket, as a law enforcement officer with a rifle slung over his chest stood behind, an image published by local media showed.

The attorney general’s office said Murillo cooperated “without resistance”.

The arrest comes a day after Mexico’s top human rights official, Alejandro Encinas, called the disappearances a “state crime” with involvement from local, state and federal officials.

“What happened? A forced disappearance of the boys that night by government authorities and criminal groups,” Encinas told a news conference. The highest levels of Peña Nieto’s administration orchestrated a cover-up, he said, including altering crime scenes and hiding links between authorities and criminals.

Murillo took over the Ayotzinapa case in 2014 and dubbed the government’s findings the “historical truth”.

According to that version, a local drug gang mistook the students for members of a rival group, killed them, incinerated their bodies in a dump and tipped the remains into a river.

A panel of international experts picked holes in the account, and the United Nations denounced arbitrary detentions and torture during the inquiry.

The “historical truth” eventually became synonymous with the perception of corruption and impunity under Peña Nieto as anger mounted over the lack of answers.

Murillo, who had previously been a federal lawmaker and the Hidalgo state governor, resigned in 2015 as criticism mounted over his handling of the case.

The lawyer for the parents of the Ayotzinapa students, Vidulfo Rosales, urged the government to make more arrests. He told Mexican television: “There’s still a lot left to go before we can think this case has been solved.”

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US

January 6 committee has been talking with ex-attorney general William Barr, chairman Bennie Thompson says

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“To be honest with you, we’ve had conversations with the former attorney general already,” Rep. Bennie Thompson told CBS’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” when asked if the committee would go to Barr. “We’ve talked to Department of Defense individuals. We are concerned that our military was part of this big lie on promoting that the election was false.”

The Mississippi Democrat continued, “So, if you are using the military, to potentially seize these voting machines, even though it’s a discussion, the public needs to know, we’ve never had that before.”

Thompson’s remarks came in response to a question regarding text of a draft executive order that had been presented to then-President Donald Trump in December of 2020 to have the secretary of defense seize voting machines in battleground states.
Barr, who was a staunch defender of Trump during his tenure at the Department of Justice and pushed the administration’s “law and order” message, resigned in December 2020 after rebuking the then-President’s false claims about widespread election fraud.

It is unclear who wrote the draft order, which is full of legal language asserting presidential powers to seize the election equipment and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

The draft, which was published by Politico last week, also said the defense secretary could identify National Guard units to be federalized to help the effort. The document also appears to be one that Trump fought to block from the January 6 select committee, which is investigating his attempts to subvert the 2020 election.

It was dated December 16, 2020, according to the document published by Politico, which is two days after the Electoral College met in state capitals to formalize President Joe Biden’s victory, dealing a huge blow to Trump’s attempts to overturn the election.

Thompson also said he wasn’t aware of an operational plan but just the draft itself.

“We do know that a potential person was identified to become the attorney general of the United States, who would communicate with certain states that the election on their situation had been fraudulent and not to produce certified documents,” he said.

CNN’s Marshall Cohen and Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.

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US

Special prosecutor John Durham charges ex-attorney for Clinton campaign with lying to FBI

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In a statement issued prior to the indictment, Sussmann’s lawyers insisted that their client is innocent and they suggested that politics were at work in the decision to charge their client.

“Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime,” defense attorneys Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth said in the statement. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented, and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work.”

Sussmann’s lawyers also contend that he never made such a statement, that the evidence in the case is weak and that there’s no sign the alleged falsehood affected the FBI’s work.

The charge against Sussmann from a Washington grand jury is the first outward sign of activity in Durham’s investigation in nearly nine months. Republicans have grown impatient with the probe, while still hoping for a report that will vindicate former President Donald Trump’s charge that the original inquiry was a thinly veiled and unfounded political attack.

“Does everybody remember when we caught the Democrats, red-handed, SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN? Where’s Durham?” Trump wrote in a statement emailed to reporters last month.

Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor and cybersecurity expert who became a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie, is the second defendant facing charges brought amid Durham’s long-running investigation. The first, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty to altering an email used to obtain a surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Clinesmith’s alterations, Durham charged, obscured Page’s prior relationship with the CIA. Clinesmith was sentenced in January to probation.

Then-Attorney General Bill Barr tapped Durham in May 2019 to examine how the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia began.

Last year, Barr converted Durham’s probe into a special counsel investigation under Justice Department regulations.

That move effectively took Durham out of the normal Justice Department hierarchy and supervision, although after the Biden administration assumed office, Attorney General Merrick Garland retained the right to overrule any of Durham’s major decisions, such as the effort to seek an indictment of Sussmann.

A spokesman for Garland did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his role in the case.

The precise scope of Durham’s mandate has never been clear. Some close to the investigation have said Durham appeared not simply to be seeking out potential crimes, but conducting a broader review of the quality of the intelligence that led the FBI to begin investigating people tied to the Trump campaign.

Some former intelligence community officials have said those sorts of judgments were better reviewed by inspectors general of the intelligence agencies and not by a federal prosecutor.

The case against Sussmann was assigned on Thursday to Judge Christopher Cooper, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

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