The parents’ comments came a day after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a group of worldwide experts, issued a report criticising the investigation, saying suspects appear to have been tortured and key pieces of evidence related to the supposed burning of the students’ bodies were not correctly investigated. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights experts questioned that version in their final report and said that the government obstructed their investigation, a claim authorities have denied.
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At a news conference Monday, the relatives of the 43 teaching students from Ayotzinapa College who disappeared in September 2014 in Iguala, said they fully support a team of global experts. Mexican authorities on Sunday said that mounting evidence and initial DNA tests confirmed that 43 trainee teachers who were abducted by corrupt police 10 weeks ago were incinerated at a garbage dump by drug gang members.
The U.S. State Department congratulated the IACHR for its investigation and urged Mexico to seriously analyze leads put forth by the group.
Editor’s Note: A damning report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights refutes the Mexican government’s official version of what happened to the 43 missing students.
Pena Nieto has been criticized for only meeting twice with the parents, though other officials have held several meetings with them to give them updates about the investigation.
As GIEI members told the New York Times in an interview published on Friday, in the end their efforts were met with harassment, stonewalling and intimidation by the federal government. “My heart can’t take anymore”, she said, standing near the main building of Mexico’s attorney general’s office.
“There seems to be no limit to the Mexican government’s utter determination to sweep the Ayotzinapa tragedy under the carpet”, said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, in response to the report.
Facing criticism in the case of 43 missing students, Mexico said Sunday it’s investigating allegations that 31 people rounded up in the aftermath were tortured while in custody.
The government’s conclusion, what the former attorney general called the “historic truth”, that the students were burned in the trash dump in the hills above the town of Cocula, has been refuted by the group of experts and an Argentine forensic team that has studied the case, using fire experts to examine the dump site.
Lawlessness reigns in parts of the country and has tarnished President Enrique Pena Nieto’s reputation.
NPR’s Carrie Kahn says that at the press conference announcing the findings, group member Alejandro Valencia said the government has primarily relied on confessions – “many through torture” – rather than scientific evidence. It followed up findings from the IACHR in September 2015, which concluded a fire consuming 43 bodies was “scientifically impossible” and noted avenues of investigation that went ignored by Mexican officials, such as buses being used to carry opium paste from the poppy-growing state of Guerrero to the US. “We call for the completion of a full and transparent investigation of the students’ disappearances and the prosecution of all those responsible”, he said.
After releasing their reports, the experts will soon leave Mexico.
It said medical report of the suspects shows “significant indications of mistreatment and torture” against 17 of the detainees.
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While the experts’ probe showed that the municipal police were the main culprits of the detention and disappearance of the students, they said the federal police should also be investigated.
