Ex-Governor Held in Preventive Detention for Hiding Ayotzinapa Evidence

Former Guerrero Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero faces preventive detention in Mexico for his alleged role in the 2014 forced disappearance of 43 students. A judge declared his arrest legal on Friday, with prosecutors formally charging him and seeking a criminal trial.

The Attorney General's Office (FGR) stated that evidence suggests Aguirre Rivero directly ordered the concealment of key videos. These recordings reportedly showed municipal and state police intercepting the bus carrying the students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College. The FGR asserts this was a deliberate operation orchestrated from the highest levels of the state executive.

Aguirre Rivero was arrested on Thursday in the State of Mexico. Prosecutors presented evidence, including testimonies from 2026, linking him to the suppression of footage from cameras near Iguala's Palace of Justice. Initially, authorities claimed the images were lost due to technical issues, but a collaborator later confirmed their existence and stated they were given to the then-governor.

A second witness testified in May that Aguirre ordered high-level officials to make any evidence disappear. Aguirre Rivero governed Guerrero from April 2011 to October 2014, resigning shortly after the students vanished. The case remains unresolved twelve years later, with only three of the 43 students' remains identified.