A scathing report issued Sunday accuses the Mexican government of stonewalling an international probe into the disappearance of 43 students in September 2014, and Mexican police of torturing suspects in the case.
The 608-page report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights—the fruit of an oft-obstructed, year-long investigation—was unveiled “at an emotional press conference on Sunday attended by some of the relatives of the missing students,” according to VICE.
No high-ranking government officials showed up.
“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.
Forty-three student-teachers, studying at a college in rural Ayotzinapa, went missing on Setember 26, 2014. The official government narrative is that that the students were abducted by a drug cartel and incinerated at a nearby trash dump under orders from the local mayor.
But the outside experts’ report is skeptical of that storyline:
“It is clear that there was a latent rejection of any version other than the burning of the students at the Cocula dump, and they turned back to that scenario time after time, without investigating other police forces or state actors,” the group said in its final report.
Such stonewalling by prosecutors “cannot be seen as partial or improvised obstacles,” said the report. “These different situations aren’t casual barriers, they are structural barriers to the investigation.”
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Indeed, said Guevara-Rosas said on Sunday: “By refusing to follow up all possible lines of investigation, manipulating evidence, failing to protect and support the student’s relatives…and even failing to attend today’s presentation, the Mexican authorities are sending the dangerous message that anyone can disappear in Mexico and nothing will be done about it.”
The “enforced disappearance” of the Ayotzinapa 43 was just one of a “relentless wave of disappearances” taking place across the country, Amnesty charged earlier this year. According to official figures, the whereabouts of more than 27,000 people remain unknown in Mexico.
“The official response to the enforced disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students and the extrajudicial execution of three people is the tragic illustration of Enrique Peña Nieto’s approach to human rights: hide or ignore the facts and hope for accusations to go away,” she declared. “This is not only illegal but immoral and a slap on the face of the relatives who are still awaiting answers nearly two years on.”
According to Latin America News Dispatch:
Meanwhile, the Associated Press explains that the allegations of torture—17 of the approximately 110 suspects arrested in the case showed signs of beatings, according to the experts—”could endanger any chance of convictions in one of the highest-profile human rights cases in Mexican history, especially because the government’s version of events…hangs in large part on the testimony of some drug gunmen who now say they were tortured into confessing.”