Mexico Presses Israel to Extradite Ayotzinapa Ex-Security Chief
Speaking at her morning press conference, held after the 12th anniversary on Sept. 26 of the mass disappearance, Sheinbaum said her government had shaken up the Attorney General's Office to speed the request, which has gone unaddressed since 2020.
“And in the case of extraditions, the Attorney General's Office has, at this time, even changed personnel within the office to accelerate all extradition processes, both from the United States and from Israel, which is where Tomas Zeron is. And work is underway on this,” she said.
In 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College in Iguala, Guerrero, were disappeared by local police and criminal groups. According to the Presidential Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa Case, they allegedly acted with the backing and protection of high-ranking government figures, including military officers and intelligence and security officials.
Until 2020, the government maintained that criminal groups alone carried out the attack. That account was fabricated under former President Enrique Pena Nieto and later challenged by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who had promised to solve the case if elected in 2018.
Zeron, then director of the now-defunct Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC), was central to efforts to shield officials, police and military personnel involved in the crime. In 2020, Mexico's Attorney General's Office issued an arrest warrant for enforced disappearance and torture after the official version was refuted. He had relocated to Israel in 2019.
Investigations launched after the rise of the ruling Morena Party, which won a historic landslide in the 2018 elections, found that Zeron ordered evidence fabricated and witnesses tortured to obtain false testimony. That testimony upheld the official narrative, which blamed the criminal syndicate Guerreros Unidos alone and protected government officials.
Mexico has offered Zeron immunity in exchange for his cooperation, but he remains in Israel, and the absence of an extradition treaty between the two countries has stalled Mexico's requests. Sheinbaum said she wrote directly to Israeli President Isaac Herzog seeking Zeron's extradition, without success.
“He replied to us that he had raised this with the judiciary but that it fell outside the scope of his authority,” she said.
Bringing Zeron back would be a major win for Sheinbaum, whose handling of the case has so far alienated the students' relatives. The parents say both the Lopez Obrador and Sheinbaum governments have broken promises to clarify what happened, and that senior military commanders allegedly involved in the state crime remain protected.
Lopez Obrador and Sheinbaum have maintained the armed forces' innocence. Independent investigative groups, however, have documented extensive evidence that the military had infiltrated a soldier into the students' ranks and that troops in civilian clothing surveilled the students before they disappeared.
Twelve years on, the parents still do not know where their children are, why they were taken or who ordered the attack.
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