Who is the torturer Tomás Zerón and why AMLO asks Israel to extradite him

Tomás Zerón de Lucio was head of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) of the Mexican Attorney General’s Office. In 2014, he was in charge of investigating the disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa. Today he is on the run in Israel and the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) he asks that country to extradite him, since it is a key piece for knowing what really happened to the young people in the municipality of Iguala, state of Guerrero.

We appeal to the authorities of Israelbecause they are protecting the lord Zeronwho participated in Mexico in fabricating the alleged facts in which young people from Ayotzinapa. He was one of those who participated in the call historical truthand the had to do with torture what did you do”he said Tuesday AMLO in his daily press conference.

LOOK: Ayotzinapa turns 8: How the military killed some of the 43 students

Mexico request the extradition of Zeron despite the fact that it does not have agreements on this matter with Israel.

But why Tomas Zeron is key to him Ayotzinapa case And what are they accusing him of?

Ayotzinapa students paint slogans on the walls of the Israeli embassy in Mexico City during a demonstration on September 21, 2022 to demand the extradition of former Attorney General Tomás Zeron de Lucio. (Photo by CLAUDIO CRUZ / AFP). (CLAUDIO CRUZ /)

The “historical truth”

The 43 students of the Normal School of Ayotzinapain the state of Warriordisappeared between the night of September 26 and the early morning of September 27, 2014, when they tried to seize buses in the town of Equal to to travel to Mexico City and participate in demonstrations. This action was carried out every year.

But in 2014 they were detained by local police officers and, according to investigations, handed over to a drug trafficker from the cartel. united warriorsto whom his murder is attributed.

According to a version that was held for years, the criminals would have confused the young people with members of an enemy gang, but a commission of the current government of Mexico who investigated the case maintains that The criminals, in complicity with the police and the military, sought to recover drugs that were hidden in a bus taken by the students, without them knowing of its existence.

The drug would have been packaged in that vehicle to be taken to the United States, specifically to Chicago.

The so-called “historical truth”, upheld by Tomas Zeron and other high authorities Mexicoincluding the president of Then Enrique Peña Nietomaintained that the criminal gang united warriors kidnapped and ordered the murder of the students because he mistook them for his enemies’ hitmen, The Reds.

In addition, as part of the official version, it was said that the bodies of the students were burned in the municipal garbage dump of cocula.

Forensics work at the Cocula garbage dump, on October 28, 2014. (AFP PHOTO / POOL / Rebecca Blackwell). (-/)

“The called ‘Historical Truth’ of the Government of Peña Nieto it is the result of concerted action by the organized apparatus of power. Had they intervened, the repression and murder of the students would have been avoided.” said in August 2022 Alejandro Encinas, undersecretary of Human rightswhen presenting its report on what the AMLO government believes really happened with the students.

The Ayotzinapa Case. (AFP).

What is Tomás Zerón accused of?

Thomas Zeron de Lucio resigned to the address of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) in September 2016.

At that moment Zeron was being investigated by the prosecutor’s office, along with other officials, for alleged irregularities committed during the investigation of the Ayotzinapa case.

The pressures for Zeron leave office and be investigated began in April 2016, when the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI)who investigated the Ayotzinapa case by order of the Inter-American Commission on Human RightsHe presented his final report.

He IGIE pointed out that Tomas Zeron distorted reality by saying that representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights witnessed on October 28, 2014 the visit he made, with a key detainee, to the San Juan river.

According to the official version, the ashes of the 43 students were thrown in plastic bags in that river in the state of Guerrero.

The UN declared itself “astonished” and distanced itself from the proceedings carried out by Zeron.

The same happened with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), which in its investigation concluded that there is no scientific or biological evidence to show that the 43 students were cremated in the garbage dump of cocula.

The then director of the Criminal Investigation Agency, Tomás Zeron, arrives at the house at the end of the tunnel through which drug trafficker Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán escaped from the Altiplano prison, on July 12, 2015. (Photo by YURI CORTEZ/AFP). (YURI CORTEZ /)

The Argentine team also assured that “there are not enough scientific elements to link” the remains found in the dump with those recovered by the Mexican prosecutor’s office in a bag in the San Juan River.

From one of these bags comes the full identification of one of the 43 students, alexander moraperformed by the laboratory of the Austrian University of Innsbruck.

Currently, Tomás Zerón is accused of having tortured Felipe Rodríguez Salgado, alias ‘El Cepillo’‘, alleged ringleader of united warriorsduring a videotaped interrogation in which he appears hooded and handcuffed.

According to the investigations, Zeron tortured ‘The brush‘ to force him to declare what the then Attorney General’s Office (PGR) announced as the “historical truth”.

After being charged with tampering with the investigation, kidnapping and torturing witnesses, and embezzling some $55 million in public funds, Tomas Zeron fled from Mexico and in 2020 it was located in Israel.

After that, Mexican officials traveled to Israel to discuss the issue of its delivery and in 2021 the Government sent a letter to the then Prime Minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett, but received no response.

Protesters march in Mexico City on Sunday, September 26, 2021, marking the seventh anniversary of the disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa students. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte).

Who is Tomas Zeron?

Tomás Zerón de Lucio has a degree in Industrial Administration by the Interdisciplinary Professional Unit of Engineering and Social and Administrative Sciences (UPIICSA) of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN).

Also has Master’s studies in Criminal Sciences at the University of Spain and Mexico.

In September 2016, resigned as chief director of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) of the former Attorney General of the Republic, a position in which he was appointed three years earlier by the then Attorney General of the Republic, Jesús Murillo Karam.

Before directing the AIC, he was coordinator of Investigation and Analysis of the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Mexico.

In May 2007, he was dismissed from his position as coordinator of Police Control by the former federal public security secretary Genaro García Luna, who ordered the separation of the entire command structure of the Regional Security area of ​​the Federal Preventive Police (PFP).

Source: Elcomercio