Experts condemn Mexico’s probe of missing students

By Nancy Caouette

MEXICO CITY

A team of international experts who have been investigating the disappearance of 43 Mexican students denounced omissions and the use of torture in the government’s probe of the case.

The five-member team from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), presented its final report on the investigation and criticized the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto they said “obstructed” their probe on the attack and kidnapping of 43 teaching students in the city of Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014.

“The team has suffered a discrimination campaign as a way to question its work. Despite it, the team has continued to work on the case, compromising itself with the families [of the missing students] and Mexico’s state to find the truth,” according to the report presented Sunday during a press conference in Mexico City.

There is evidence that torture and bribery has been used to influence the testimonies of several detainees in the case, according to the IACHR.

The group – composed of experts from Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Spain – dismissed conclusions drawn in the official inquiry, just as the IACHR had done in its preliminary report last September.

The Mexican government contends that teaching students were kidnapped by corrupt police officers in Iguala.

The students were killed and burned by members of the Guerrero Unidos, or United Warriors, drug cartel in a dump in the city of Cocula, a town at 21 kilometers (13 miles) from Iguala, the government said.

"There is evidence that cellphones of the students were active hours after or days after the moment when they would have been burned," said Francisco Fox, one member of the IACHR team.

The IACHR said Mexico’s Attorney General neglected to disclose that members of its office went to the Cocula dump one day before they allegedly found human remains there a month after the students disappeared.

“This information has not been registered,” said Carlos Beristain, another IACHR team member.

The group added that the government did not pursue leads such as the implication of the army and that the youth could have unknowingly boarded a bus used by criminal groups to transport drugs.

The government had no official representative at the press conference but took to Twitter to thank the IACHR for its work.