In this Dec. 18, 2014 file photo, the mother of missing college student Adan Abarajan de la Cruz sits at the foot of soldiers outside a military base during a protest by the families of 43 missing students
An independent report presented yesterday (Macau time) dismantles the Mexican government’s investigation into the disappearance of 43 teachers’ college students, saying the prosecutor’s contention that they were incinerated in a giant pyre never happened and fueling the anger of parents who nearly a year later still don’t know what happened to their sons.
Attorney General Arely Gomez, who was not in office during the initial investigation, said that in light of the report she would call for a new forensic review of the municipal garbage dump where the initial probe concluded the 43 were burned to ash beyond identification.
The government said the Sept. 26 attack was a case of mistaken identity. But the group of experts assembled by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concluded in its report that it was violent and coordinated reaction to the students, who were hijacking buses for transportation to a demonstration and may have unknowingly interfered with a drug shipment on one of the buses. Iguala, the city in southern Guerrero state where that attacks took place, is known as a transport hub for heroin going to the United States, particularly Chicago, some of it by bus, the report said.
“The business that moves the city of Iguala could explain such an extreme and violent reaction and the character of the massive attack,” the experts said in the report delivered to the government and the students’ families during a public presentation, where some chanted “It was the state!”
The report means that nearly a year after the disappearance, the fate of 42 of the students remains a mystery, given the errors, omissions and false conclusions outlined in more than 400 pages. Only a charred bone fragment of one of the 43 has been identified and it wasn’t burned at the high temperature of an incineration, contrary to Mexican investigators’ claims.
“We have no evidence to support where the disappeared are,” said Carlos Beristain, a Spanish medical doctor on the team.
The report recommends that authorities rethink their assumptions and lines of investigation, as well as continue the search for the students and investigate the possible use of public or private ovens to cremate the bodies. It also recommends investigating the possible drug angle and who coordinated and gave the orders for the attacks — all unknowns nearly a year later. E. Eduardo Castillo and Katherine Corcoran, Mexico City, AP
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