The former Guerrero state governor, Ángel Heladio Aguirre Rivero. Photo: EFE.
Officials of Mexico’s Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) arrested the former Guerrero state governor, Ángel Heladio Aguirre Rivero, at 9:46 a.m. local time on Friday, August 7, at the Tepotzotlán toll booth in Estado de México. Aguirre is accused of concealing revelatory recordings related to the Ayotzinapa Case, in which police and military officials forcibly disappeared 43 students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Guerrero, on September 26-27, 2014. He served as governor of the state from April 2011 to October 2014.
The former governor was transferred to the Federal Social Rehabilitation Center number 1, El Altiplano, in Almoloya de Juárez, where he remains under the jurisdiction of the second district court in criminal matters for crimes against the administration of justice and forced disappearance of persons.
Mexico’s attorney general, Ernestina Godoy Ramos, announced in a message to the nation that the operation is part of the Special Investigation and Litigation Unit’s investigations for the Ayotzinapa Case. She stated that “far from being an isolated act or a technical omission, the concealment of the recordings was the result of a malicious and deliberately structured operation from the top of the state government.”
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The formal accusation states that Aguirre Rivero directly ordered the removal and destruction of the recordings captured by security cameras numbers 12 and 15 located outside the State Justice Palace in Iguala during the night of September 26 and the early morning of September 27, 2014.
Those devices had captured the moment when the Estrella de Oro bus number 1531, which was transporting a group of students from the school, was intercepted by Iguala and Cocula municipal police elements in coordination with state security forces.
According to institutional reports, after forcing the students to deboard from the vehicle, the law enforcement forces handed them over to members of the criminal gang Guerreros Unidos. Since then, the 43 students remain missing.
The dismantling of the official story regarding alleged technical failures in the surveillance system was based on the testimonies collected by the public prosecutor’s office in 2026.
In January, a collaborator broke their silence, citing previous threats as the reason for their silence. They confirmed the existence of the video recordings and identified the person who extracted the recordings to deliver personally to the former governor.
The formal accusation states that Aguirre Rivero directly ordered the removal and destruction of the recordings captured by security cameras 12 and 15, located outside the State Justice Palace in Iguala, during the night of September 26 and the early morning of September 27, 2014.
Those devices captured the moment when the Estrella de Oro bus number 1531, which was transporting a group of students from the school, was intercepted by Iguala and Cocula municipal police elements in coordination with state security forces.
According to institutional reports, after forcing the students to deboard from the vehicle, the law enforcement forces handed them over to members of the criminal gang Guerreros Unidos. Since then, the 43 students remain missing.
The dismantling of the official story regarding alleged technical failures in the surveillance system was based on the testimonies collected by the public prosecutor’s office in 2026.
In January, a collaborator broke their silence, citing previous threats as the reason for their past silence. They confirmed the existence of the video recordings and identified the person who extracted the recordings to deliver personally to the former governor.
Subsequently, in May 2026, a second protected witness confirmed the events, stating that Aguirre, in a meeting with top-level members of his cabinet, gave orders to “disappear any evidence related to the events that occurred in the vicinity of the Palace of Justice in Iguala.”
This legal action against the former head of the Guerrero government adds to the criminal proceedings opened against Lambertina Galeana Marín, former president of Guerrero’s State Supreme Court of Justice, who was arrested in May 2025 and granted house arrest in April 2026 due to her advanced age.
Aguirre’s arrest marks a decisive stage in the pursuit of accountability regarding the actions of high-level authorities in the state crime committed against the 43 students of the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School.
(Telesur)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/SF
