Maria de los Angeles Pineda, pictured above with her husband and former mayor Jose Luis Abarca, has been charged with organized crime and money laundering, judicial confirmed on Monday.

Judge Tomas Zeron, head of the criminal investigation unit of the local prosecutors' office, issued a warrant for Pineda's pretrial detention "for her likely role in committing organized crime ... and operations with funds of illicit origin" referring to the suspected abduction and killing of 43 college students who vanished in September,

Video footage showed a grim-looking Pineda being escorted to jail, where she has been ordered held indefinitely.

Pineda was arrested along with her husband, Jose Luis Abarca, on November 4. Abarca has been charged with homicide, kidnapping, and organized crime. The former mayor stands accused of ordering the police to prevent the students from staging a protest at a event hosted by his wife. Police, allegedly with ties to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, of which Penida's brothers are reported to be members, are accused of attacking buses carrying the students.

Charred remains

According to confessions from the dozens of others arrested in connection with the case, the police are then said to have delivered the young men to the gang, who told investigators that they brought the students to a landfill, where they killed them and burned their bodies. Only one victim has been identified from charred remains.

The massacre sparked a series of nationwide protests. On Christmas Eve, the students' parents held a protest in front of the Los Pinos presidential palace despite heavy rain.

es,pfd/rg (AP, AFP)