Mexican police arrest suspect in missing students' case

A man suspected of being involved in the disappearance of 43 education students in southern Mexico last year has been arrested by the Federal Police in Mexico City, the National Security Commission said.

Miguel Angel Landa Bahena has been linked to the September 2014 disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School students in Iguala, a city in Guerrero state, Spanish news agency Efe reported on Sunday citing a statement issued by the commission on Saturday.

Landa Bahena was identified in statements given to prosecutors as a member of the inner circle of Gildardo Lopez Astudillo, a fugitive suspected of being the leader of a gang that operates in Guerrero.

Dozens of suspects, including police officers and public officials, have been arrested in connection with the events in Iguala on the night of September 26, when corrupt municipal police officers opened fire on students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School, a nearby teacher-training facility.

Six people died that night, 25 others were wounded and 43 students were detained by police and then handed over to members of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel.

Landa Bahena was captured as part of "the work to identify, locate and arrest the material authors of the events that occurred in Iguala", the commission said.

Four suspects arrested last October and a fifth suspect detained the following month identified Landa Bahena as one of the individuals behind the attack on the education students.

Landa Bahena was the subject of an arrest warrant executed by the Federal Police in the Mexico City borough of Gustavo A. Madero.

The suspect was armed at the time of his arrest, the commission said.

Landa Bahena was turned over to federal prosecutors following his arrest.

Three suspects in the case -- Patricio Reyes, Jhonatan Osorio and Agustin Garcia -- confessed to having killed the students and burned their bodies.

Reyes, Osorio and Garcia told investigators they took the 43 students to the Cocula dump and set them on fire.

Former attorney general Jesus Murillo Karam said in a press conference on January 27 that there was sufficient scientific evidence to conclude that the students were murdered and their bodies burned by Guerreros Unidos drug cartel members at the dump in Cocula, with the ashes dumped in the San Juan river.

The Guerreros Unidos gang mistook the students for members of the Los Rojos cartel, Murillo Karam, who left office on February 26, said.

A delegation made up of relatives of the missing students plans to tour Canada to call for diplomatic pressure on the Mexican government to clear up the case, the Tlachinollan human rights centre said in a statement released on Saturday.

The delegation will call for the students' safe return and plans to "tell Canadian civil society and politicians about the human rights crisis in Mexico", the centre said.

The group arrived in Vancouver on Saturday and will visit several cities, with the tour ending on May 2.