Mexican mayor detained with cartel suspect
AFP
October 31, 2015, 8:15 am
Mexico City (AFP) - Mexican police have arrested a drug cartel suspect alongside the mayor of a southern town where authorities say 43 missing students were killed and incinerated, officials said Friday.
Cocula Mayor Erick Ulises Ramirez was detained on Thursday in the central state of Morelos along with Adan Zenen Casarrubias, an alleged member of the Guerreros Unidos gang, a federal official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The official did not have details about the charges against the two men.
Ramirez took office last month, so he was not mayor when the 43 students were abducted by local police in the neighboring city of Iguala on September 26, 2014.
Prosecutors say officers from both Iguala and Cocula handed the students over to members of the Guerreros Unidos, who killed them and burned their bodies at a landfill in Cocula.
The president of Ramirez's leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), Carlos Navarrete, confirmed the mayor's arrest.
Navarrete said the PRD did not have any information from the authorities about any criminal record for Ramirez prior to him running for mayor.
Iguala's mayor, also a PRD member, and his wife are among more than 100 people, including police officers and gang members, arrested over the students' disappearance.
