TEL AVIV — A former top Mexican official accused of compromising the investigation of a notorious mass abduction has taken refuge in Israel while the extradition case against him is mired in a diplomatic tussle over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, Israeli and Mexican officials say. The Mexican authorities have accused the official, Tomás Zerón de Lucio, the former director of Mexico’s equivalent of the F.B.I., of abduction, torture and tampering with evidence in the investigation into the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, and of embezzling about $50 million in state funds in another case. Mr. Zerón, who says the charges are false and politically motivated, has applied for asylum in Israel, where he has lived for nearly two years. Israel has not acted on either the extradition request or the asylum claim, much to the consternation of Mexican officials, human rights organizations and the families of the massacre victims, who are still seeking the truth about their loved ones’ disappearance in southern Mexico in 2014.

Source: International New York Times July 15, 2021 09:00 UTC