MEXICAN prosecutors have arrested a former attorney general on charges that he committed abuses in the investigation of 43 missing students.

Jesus Murillo Karam served in the role between 2012 and 2015 under then-president Enrique Pena Nieto.

He has been charged with torture, official misconduct and forced disappearance.

It comes after an independent probe revealed on Thursday that the army had not acted to stop the abduction of the students in 2014.

The federal prosecutors also announced on Friday that they have issued arrest warrants for 20 soldiers and officers, five local officials, 33 local police officers and 11 state police.

Mr Murillo Karam faced pressure to quickly resolve the case and was quick to announce that the students had been killed and their bodies burned at a garbage dump by members of a drug gang, calling the hypothesis “the historic truth.”

But the investigation included instances of torture, improper arrest and mishandling of evidence that has since allowed most of the directly implicated gang members to walk free, later investigations found.

The students, from a rural teachers’ college in the south-western state of Guerrero, had been on their way to a protest.