Nothing has cast such a long shadow over the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto as last year’s disappearance of 43 students in the south-western state of Guerrero. The shadow grew longer on September 6th when the government’s account of events was severely questioned by an international inquiry.
Investigators from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights spent six months picking over all the forensic and documentary evidence. Their conclusions compounded the uncertainty over what happened to the trainee teachers from the town of Ayotzinapa, who vanished last September in the town of Iguala, after commandeering buses to drive to Mexico City for a rally.
In January the attorney-general’s office presented what it called the “historic truth”. It held that the students had been handed over by local police to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, which killed them, burned their bodies on a dump and threw the remains in a river. The killers apparently believed that some students were members of a rival gang.
The new report adds weight to the notion that the government was too quick to close the case. For example, it rejects the government’s claim that all the bodies were burned at the dump.
The report identifies many other problems with the official findings, including discrepant testimonies and destroyed video recordings. It notes that government accounts played down an important element: the reported existence of a fifth bus seized by the students, which might have carried drugs.
Arely Gómez González, who has been attorney-general since February, has ordered a new forensic investigation. But the panel’s work is hurting the government. “With the world watching and with substantial resources at hand, the authorities proved unable or unwilling to conduct a serious investigation,” says José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, a lobby group.
(The Economist)
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