Suspect Held in Disappearance of 43 Mexican Students

MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials said Friday that they had detained a leader of the criminal group that prosecutors believe killed 43 college students, then burned their bodies in a case that continues to roil the country more than three months after the young men disappeared.

The arrest of Felipe RodrÍguez Salgado, who was being questioned late Friday, may add more details to the theory that the authorities have outlined.

Prosecutors say that the municipal police in the southern city of Iguala, in the state of Guerrero, had arrested the students and handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos organized-crime group on orders from the city’s mayor, JosÉ Luis Abarca.

Mr. Abarca and his wife, MarÍa de los Angeles Pineda Villa, are believed to be closely linked to Guerreros Unidos. The pair fled Iguala, then were arrested in Mexico City in November. The authorities formally charged Mr. Abarca with kidnapping in the students’ disappearance on Tuesday. At the same time, Ms. Pineda was charged with involvement in organized crime.

Prosecutors in Mexico say Felipe RodrÍguez Salgado, center, killed 43 college students. Credit SEIDO, via European Pressphoto Agency

The case, which peeled back the ways in which drug gangs have succeeded in buying off the local police and officials in many parts of the country, has shocked Mexico and challenged President Enrique Peña Nieto’s efforts to focus public attention on the economy.

Turmoil is rising in Guerrero, where masked antigovernment protesters have burned state buildings and cars and disrupted public events.

The families of the missing young men, who were studying to be teachers at the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos, have questioned whether the students are dead. The remains of only one of the 43 students have been identified so far by a special laboratory at the Innsbruck Medical University in Austria. Some of the families began a new search in the hills around Iguala on Friday.

On Monday, some relatives gathered outside the army base in Iguala, demanding to be allowed to see if their sons were inside. The army has said that it will allow the National Human Rights Commission to visit the base with relatives.

Mr. RodrÍguez, whom officials described as a Guerreros Unidos hit man, is believed to have ordered the group that killed the students and burned the bodies to remove all traces of the crime. According to the authorities, he took orders from a lieutenant named Gildardo LÓpez Astudillo, who is a fugitive.

Officials believe that Mr. LÓpez orchestrated the students’ disappearance in September on orders from the leader of Guerreros Unidos, Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, who was arrested in October.

Almost 100 people have been detained in the investigation so far, officials announced this week. The majority of those are police officers from Iguala and the neighboring town of Cocula, the site of the trash dump where prosecutors say the students were killed and then cremated.