Mexican federal forces have arrested Juan Miguel "N," also known as "El Pajarraco", an alleged member of the Guerreros Unidos cartel linked to the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from a rural school in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero.
Mexico's Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection (SSPC) said El Pajarraco was taken into custody in the state of Hidalgo after intelligence and investigative work led authorities to his location.
According to the SSPC, El Pajarraco is a member of Guerreros Unidos, the criminal organization accused of participating in the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College in Guerrero.
This is not El Pajarraco's first arrest. He was previously detained in 2018 in connection with the Ayotzinapa case but was released two weeks later after a judge ruled his detention was unlawful.
According to news outlet Milenio, El Pajarraco gave a statement to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) while in custody, claiming he could not sleep since the night the students went missing and sought to "clear his conscience."
"Stop looking for them because they all died after being incinerated at the Cocula dump," he told the commission at the time.
43 Students Disappeared
The disappearance of 43 students from Guerrero has drawn sustained public and media attention in Mexico for over a decade.
On Sept. 26, 2014, students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College were traveling from Iguala to Mexico City when their buses were intercepted by municipal police. The students' whereabouts remain unknown.
According to reports from the Comisión para la Verdad y Acceso a la Justicia del Caso Ayotzinapa, the Guerreros Unidos cartel was aware of the students' buses because the group used similar vehicles to transport drugs to the United States. Cartel members allegedly believed rival gang members were among the students.
Local police stopped the buses and, according to Mexican authorities, turned them over to Guerreros Unidos, who then killed them and burned their bodies.
Later that year, two suspected members of Guerreros Unidos confessed to taking part in the killings. They claimed officers from Iguala and Cocula delivered the students to the cartel. A text message sent to then-cartel leader Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado reportedly confirmed the students' bodies were incinerated and dumped in a river.
Despite those confessions, federal prosecutors later said investigations failed to verify the claims, and the suspects were released.
According to InSight Crime, Guerreros Unidos is a splinter group of the Beltrán Leyva Organization and operates primarily in central Mexico. The group is known for extortion, kidnapping, and trafficking heroin into the United States.
Arrest Follows Exoneration of Former Mayor
El Pajarraco's arrest came just hours after José Luis Abarca Velázquez, the former mayor of Iguala, was cleared of alleged responsibility in the Ayotzinapa case.
On June 3, an appeals court ruled there was insufficient evidence to link Abarca to charges of organized crime and aggravated kidnapping. Despite the decision, Abarca remains in prison, serving a 20-year sentence for the 2013 murder of social activist Justino Carbajal Salgado. He also faces additional criminal proceedings for money laundering and drug-related offenses.
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