UN rights groups retakes probe into fate of 43 trainee teachers, apparently massacred

Record ID: 79473

  • Title: UN rights groups retakes probe into fate of 43 trainee teachers, apparently massacred
  • Date: 10th November 2016
  • Summary: MEXICO CITY, MEXICO (NOVEMBER 10, 2016) (REUTERS) **** WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY **** VARIOUS OF MEMBERS OF THE INTER-AMERICAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION (IACHR) WALKING INTO NEWS CONFERENCE AND SETTLING DOWN (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) IACHR RAPPORTEUR FOR MEXICO, COMMISSIONER ENRIQUE GIL BOTERO, SAYING: "So we can me an advancement in the investigation, leading to the ultimate goal of establishing or finding those missing (students) or finding the truth." GENERAL VIEW OF NEWS CONFERENCE (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) IACHR PRESIDENT, COMMISSIONER JAMES CAVALLARO, SAYING: "One can't continue to look for ways to strengthen the version of the rubbish dump in Cocula. The 43 students were not cremated in the rubbish dump of Cocula. It's something that is physically impossible." MORE OF NEWS CONFERENCE
  • Embargoed: 25th November 2016 21:45
  • Keywords: Missing students Mexico investigation experts
  • Location: MEXICO CITY / TIXTLA AND COCULA, GUERRERO, MEXICO
  • City: MEXICO CITY / TIXTLA AND COCULA, GUERRERO, MEXICO
  • Country: Mexico
  • Reuters ID: LVA00157V4E9V
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text:The new commissioner for the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR) leading the investigation into the 2014 apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers began a four-day trip to Mexico on Thursday (November 10), to retake the probe.
    Commissioner Enrique Gil Botero took over the investigation after an independent panel of international experts who presented their final report last April, saying the government's stonewalling had prevented them from reaching the truth.
    Botero said he will meet with officials, victims' relatives and key actors in the case.
    "So we can me an advancement in the investigation, leading to the ultimate goal of establishing or finding those missing (students) or finding the truth," Gil Botero said.
    The experts cast doubt on aspects of the government's version of events and said the government blocked their efforts to obtain evidence from Mexican authorities.
    "One can't continue to look for ways to strengthen the version of the rubbish dump in Cocula. The 43 students were not cremated in the rubbish dump of Cocula. It's something that is physically impossible," said IACHR President, Commissioner James Cavallaro.
    The group will gather information and documentation on the case over a period of 12 months, according to IACHR. The Mexican government has agreed to this plan.
    Mexico's government says that corrupt police in late 2014 handed the student teachers in the southwestern city of Iguala over to drug gang henchmen, who believed the trainees had been infiltrated by a rival gang. They then incinerated them at a rubbish dump in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero.
    The remains of just one of the 43 students has been identified from a charred bone fragment. The government said it was found in the Rio San Juan, a river by the town of Cocula, near Iguala where the students disappeared.
    The experts said that the government's theory the students had been burned is scientifically impossible given the heat needed to reduce human remains to ash, and the experts raised further questions in the report about the government's story of finding the bone fragment in the river.
    In a statement, the official who is leading the investigation for the attorney general's office said that the government had held numerous meetings with the experts and had fulfilled the majority of their hundreds of requests for information.
    Pena Nieto had thanked the experts via his official Twitter account when they left. He said the attorney general's office would analyse their report.
    The case has drawn international attention and stirred protests and outrage in Mexico, where violence has surged in a decade-long drug war. Lawlessness reigns in parts of the country and has tarnished President Enrique Pena Nieto's reputation.
    The IACHR is an autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS).
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