Mexican Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his Wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda Arrested in Case of Missing 43 Students

Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda were arrested Tuesday morning at a house they had rented in Mexico City’s Iztapalapa neighborhood. The couple is believed to have ordered an attack that killed six people and left 43 students missing in September. The question still remains following the arrest, where are the 43 students who haven’t been seen being taken away by officers after the deadly attack by police in Iguala on September 26?

Federal police seized Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, in a raid before dawn in Iztapalapa, a working-class neighborhood of the capital. It was a steep fall from their reign of wealth and power as the mayor and first lady of Iguala, a town in southern Guerrero state where the students from a teachers’ college went missing Sept. 26, allegedly at the hands of police and a drug cartel.

A Mexican mayor characterized as a “probable mastermind” in the mass abduction of 43 students has been taken into custody as authorities have tracked down a top target who eluded them for weeks — even if they still haven’t managed to locate the missing.

Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda — dubbed “the imperial couple” by local media for how they presided over their southern Mexican city — were detained early Tuesday morning at a house they had rented in Mexico City’s Iztapalapa neighborhood. They did not resist arrest, authorities said.

The couple had been staying in a house that appeared to be abandoned, and investigators first got suspicious when they saw a woman repeatedly entering and leaving the building, Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam told reporters. That woman, Noemí Berumen Rodríguez, was arrested alongside the mayor and his wife. Authorities accused her of concealing the couple.

Their capture, which Mexican Federal Police spokesman Jose Ramon Salinas reported on his Twitter account, signals a major milestone in the high-profile case.