Mexico president meets with parents of 43 missing students

MEXICO CITY

The parents of 43 students who disappeared a year ago met with Mexico’s president on Thursday in an effort to jumpstart a new investigation into the case.

President Enrique Pena Nieto was presented with a list of eight demands, including the creation of an independent investigation committee supervised by international experts in an attempt to be “on the side of the truth, not on the side of lies”, according to the parents.

They want the investigation to be independent from a government probe so that the students can be found and any inconsistencies from an initial investigation can be exposed.

The first investigation led by the former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam has been highly discredited.

International experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) released findings on Sept. 6 that dismantled the controversial version by authorities citing numerous problems in the investigation.

The parents also asked Pena Nieto to give attention to the victims and to legitimatize the rights of the parents to know the truth about what happened.

About 120 people were invited to the closed-door meeting at a Mexico City museum, including IACHR experts, government officials, human rights organizations and other students from Ayotzinapa college.

After the meeting, Pena Nieto’s spokesman, Eduardo Sanchez, said the president would create a new special prosecutor for the case and that the Cabinet will analyze each of the eight demands made by the parents.

Sanchez said Pena Nieto told the families, "we are on the same side. You and I are looking for the same thing."

The meeting was only the second between the parents and Pena Nieto since Sept. 26, 2014, when the student teachers from a rural teachers college in Ayotzinapa vanished in the city of Iguala in the southwestern state of Guerrero. The last meeting was hold in October.

Pena Nieto will attend the UN General Assembly meetings in New York next week but the missing students case would not be discussed during the international gathering, according to Sanchez.

The parents launched a 43-hour fast that began Wednesday and will end Saturday, the day that marks the one-year anniversary of the abductions.

A massive protest is scheduled for the occasion in Mexico City.