It’s been more than a year since 43 students from an Ayotzinapa teachers college in Mexico were kidnapped. While the movement demanding accountability from the Mexican government continues to grow – most recently with Sting’s help – the families of the missing 43 are no closer to getting any answers.
Over the weekend, the office of Mexico’s attorney general released a heavily redacted case file from their initial investigation, which totals 54,000-pages. In September, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ripped the Mexican government for its mishandling of the investigation. The commission disputed that many of the government’s assertions were not supported by the evidence, including Mexican prosecutors’ declaration that the 43 missing students were incinerated at a landfill.
The Tico Times reports that there are hundreds of pages with contradictory statements in government’s investigation.
Here are some of the findings from the newly released documents:
- While the government concluded that all students were taken to the landfill, the testimony of two suspects did not confirm this. One said he saw about 30 transported, while another said about 40.
- Guerreros Unidos member Marco Antonio Ríos Berber confessed to having shot two of the students. He said that there were four others shot by other gang members, and that the six bodies were thrown into a pit and incinerated. He doesn’t know what happened to the rest of the students because he left at 3 a.m. on September 27.
- Jonathan Osorio Cortes said that the students died from asphyxiation, because they were piled on top of each other in a truck.
- One suspect said that the remains of the 43 were tossed in a river.
- Some of the students were asked if they were working with the Rojos gang.