Reuters reports that the statement did not give a reason for Tomás Zerón’s resignation.
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The former head of investigations for the Mexican Attorney General’s Office has been named a national security adviser to President Enrique Pena Nieto hours after he resigned his previous post.
The move comes two weeks before the second anniversary of the 2014 tragedy, which has caused global outrage while President Enrique Pena Nieto’s administration has faced criticism at home for failing to resolve the case.
Zeron and officials at the attorney general’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.
Tomas Zeron’s departure had been a rallying cry for the parents of the youths who haven’t been seen since being taken away by police in the town of Iguala in southern Guerrero state. Two independent teams of experts have cast doubt on its insistence that their bodies were incinerated in a huge fire at a trash dump.
Zeron was at the centre of the government’s widely criticized investigation, which has failed to definitively determine what happened to the students. Court documents obtained by The Associated Press in May showed that 10 of the suspects described similar treatment at the hands of authorities and some even said they were given planted evidence or prefabricated stories.
The statements did not say why he quit the attorney general’s office. They called for Zeron himself to be investigated for “crimes related to obstruction of justice”.
The families will hold a news conference on Thursday to address Mr Zeron’s resignation.
A new independent study is the latest forensic evidence to rebut the Mexican government’s claim that the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students were burned in a garbage dump, lending credence to claims by human rights groups that authorities have conspired to cover up the truth to hide their own complicity.
It was there on October 29, 2014, that Zeron’s team said it found a bone fragment belonging to the only one of the 43 students whose remains have been definitively identified. A bone fragment found at the scene is thus far the only DNA link to any of the students. The government said the bone fragments were found there the next day.
But the panel of experts found that Zeron had been to the scene of the discovery a day earlier with one of the alleged gang members, without notifying the man’s lawyer or filing a report on his visit.
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The students attended the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa, a teachers college. They were attacked on the buses by local police and allegedly handed over to members of the Guerreros Unidos cartel.
