Case against the Abarcas crumbles

In January 2015 Mexico's Attorney General's Office (PGR) got an arrest warrant from a federal judge in Toluca against María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, wife of José Luis Abarca, former mayor of Iguala, for organized crime, money laundering and crimes against health.

However, on December 24, 2014 another federal judge in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, had found at least 15 shortcomings in the investigation.

The only arrest warrant he approved was for bribery, following an attempt by Pineda Villa to bribe federal policemen when she and her husband were arrested on November 4, 2014 in Iztapalapa, Mexico City.

The rest were discarded because, in his opinion, there was no way to prove that the couple were members of Guerreros Unidos, neither how or where they worked for the criminal organization or who were their collaborators.

He added that the accusations against her made by Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, alleged leader of Guerreros Unidos who was arrested on October 16, 2014, were not enough to prove her involvement, neither a journalistic story linking the Pineda Villa family with organized crime.

The judge also dismissed the statements of a witness who said that Guerreros Unidos did not extort the jewelry owned by Pineda Villa and her husband because she had links with a powerful drug dealer.

Another statement of a witness who claimed to have been threatened by José Luis Abarca and María de los Ángeles Pineda after denouncing a narco-laboratory, and another one who said that Pineda received money from her brothers -involved with organized crime- were not accepted either.

Regarding her involvement in the disappearance of the 43 missing students of Ayotzinapa, the judge said that since she did not participate actively in their detention and murder, she could not be accused of enforced disappearance.

Currently the wife of Abarca is in prison in Nayarit.

Gilberto Santa Rita, criminal law specialist and professor at the Iberoamerican University, said that "if the prosecutor does his job well, there is no reason for impunity. However, if authorities continue to proceed as until now, some of the crimes may not be proven."

He added that the shortcomings could be “attributed to a technical deficiency in the investigation, which may have been intentional or result of recklessness”.

Finally, even though the official version of the arrest of the Abarcas stated that they were found in a house in Iztapalapa, according to newly declassified information federal policemen declared that they were arrested outside the house, when they were about to board a taxi.