A panel of experts in Mexico has denounced flaws in the investigation of 43 missing Ayotzinapa students.
A new report has identified failures in an investigation into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students in Mexico, one of the most high-profile mass kidnappings in recent history.
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), a panel of experts appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, released its findings Friday and concluded that Mexican authorities had failed to release arrests related to the case. to feed.
It also found that important bits of information had been withheld, particularly about military involvement in the kidnapping.
“There are black holes where the information disappears,” said Carlos Beristain, one of the members of the GIEI panel.
It is the latest damning report on an ongoing, scandal-ridden investigation into the events of September 26, 2014, when 43 students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College forcibly disappeared.
The students had commandeered a series of buses in the city of Iguala, as part of an annual protest tradition to drive to Mexico City on the occasion of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre.
But they were intercepted by the police – and what happened next remains obscure. Mexican authorities have speculated that the students were handed over to local cartels linked to the police and military, and then killed.
Some charred bone fragments have been recovered, which have been linked through DNA to three of the missing students. However, the rest of the bodies were never found.
In Friday’s press conference, GIEI member Angela Buitrago called for arrests to continue the case. According to the GIEI report, some outstanding arrest warrants were more than six months old.
“We have insisted on the need to verify and execute these arrest warrants,” Buitrago said, indicating that several public officials were among the suspects still on the run.
Prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 83 officials in 2022, including members of the military, government and police, but 21 of those warrants were withdrawn despite the GIEI’s objections.
In her statement on Friday, Buitrago said the GIEI had recently sent evidence to prosecutors to support the revoked arrest warrants.
“It is clear in the sheer volume of documents that there is an opportunity to reactivate many of them,” she said.
The GIEI has previously indicated that there are indications of military involvement in the mass disappearance.
On Friday, the panel of experts renewed its call for the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to push the military to release its files on the case, including phone records from the time of the alleged kidnapping.
López Obrador campaigned for office promising to establish a truth commission into the disappearances, which had sparked criticism from the government under his predecessor, former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
That truth commission ruled last August that the kidnapping constituted a “state crime” due to the “act, omission or participation” of government and military officials.
“There is no indication that the students are still alive. All the testimonies and evidence prove that they were cunningly murdered and disappeared,” said Alejandro Encinas, the politician who led the commission. “It’s a sad reality.”