Report into Mexico’s 43 missing students rejects official account

An independent report dismantled the Mexican government’s investigation into the disappearance of 43 students, saying the contention they were incinerated in a giant pyre never happened.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report fuelled the anger of parents who still do not know what happened to their sons almost a year ago.

Attorney General Arely Gomez, who was not in office during the initial inquiry, said she would call for a new forensic investigation of the municipal rubbish dump where the probe concluded the 43 were burned to ash beyond identification.

Parents of the teachers' college students demanded a meeting with president Enrique Pena Nieto, whose reputation and popularity has been undermined by the case.

"We will not accept another lie from the government," Blanca Nava Velez said, mother of student Jorge Alvarez Nava.

The government claimed the September 26th attack was a case of mistaken identity.

But the report said it was a violent and co-ordinated reaction to the students, who were hijacking buses to take them to a demonstration and may have unknowingly interfered with a drug shipment on one of the vehicles.

Iguala, the city in southern Guerrero state where the attack took place, is known as a transport hub for heroin going to the United States, particularly Chicago, some of it by bus, the report said.

“The business that moves the city of Iguala could explain such an extreme and violent reaction and the character of the massive attack,” the document said.

The report means that nearly a year after the disappearance, the fate of 42 of the students remains a mystery, given the errors, omissions and false conclusions outlined in more than 400 pages by the experts assembled by the commission.

Only a charred bone fragment of one of the 43 has been identified and it was not burned at the high temperature of an incineration, contrary to Mexican investigators’ claims.

"We have no evidence to support where the disappeared are," said Carlos Beristain, a Spanish medical doctor on the team.

The report recommends that authorities rethink their assumptions and lines of investigation, as well as continue the search for the students and investigate the possible use of public or private ovens to cremate the bodies.

It also suggests investigating the possible drug angle and who co-ordinated and gave the orders for the attacks — all unknowns nearly a year later.

Mr Pena Nieto said he has given instructions for investigators to take into account the findings of the report, which dealt another blow to his government in a case that has already brought international outrage.

Ms Gomez was named in March to replace former attorney general Jesus Murillo Karam, who led the initial investigation and concluded the students were incinerated.

The attack and disappearance of the 43 became a pivotal moment in Mr Pena Nieto’s administration, which began three years ago with a series of key political and economic reforms.

But the slow response to the case and the implausibility of the government’s version of the events eroded his credibility.

PA