Mexico’s efforts to clean up their badly damaged image in regards to human rights violations appear to have taken a turn for the worse. The newly appointed head of the special unit charged with tackling the case of 43 missing education students appears to have ties to Mexico’s most famous drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera.

The ties are deep enough that the man was a guest of honor at one of El Chapo’s weddings.

As Breitbart Texas previously reported, on September 2014, 43 education students from the rural town Ayotzinapa were kidnapped by police officers and turned over to cartel members. Ayotzinapa is a small town in the Mexican State of Guerrero. The state is home to the beach resort of Acapulco. It is also home to lucrative drug production and drug distribution territories that have resulted in a large spike in violence in the area.

The 43 education students were heading to a protest when police officers in Iguala intercepted them. According to the Mexican government, the students were murdered and their remains incinerated at the landfill in the town of Cocula. That version has since been debunked by an international team of forensic specialist.

In an effort to save face, the Mexican government then set up a joint investigation with the international team. The Mexican government has disputed the results and stopped cooperating with the international team.

The case of the missing students has led to international news outlets calling out the gross violation of human rights taking place in the central and southern part of Mexico further damaging that country’s image.

In their most recent effort to save face, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (PGR) announced the appointment of Alfredo Higuera Bernal, to head up a task force aimed at solving the case. The native of Culiacan Sinaloa along with his brother have been implicated for having ties to the Sinaloa cartel, however Mexican authorities have not charged them nor prosecuted them, Proceso reported.

According to Mexico’s Proceso Magazine, the appointment of Higuera Bernal raises red flags since the man had been a guest of honor at Guzman’s 2007 weeding to beauty queen Emma Coronel.

In an article from the time, Proceso reported that Higuera along with a local mayor from Sinaloa had been at El Chapo’s wedding. A claim that the high ranking prosecutor has denied.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.