Ayotzinapa: missing students

Mexican police tortured suspects of the crime, states report by IACHR appointed experts

The final report of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI, by its Spanish acronym) on the investigation into the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa College found strong evidence that the Mexican police tortured suspects to extract confessions.

Currently, 123 people have been detained for the crime that took place nearly 18 months ago. Many of them show signs of bodily violence. The official presentation of the document, which occurred last Sunday, April 24, in Mexico City, was also marked by the total absence of representatives from the State.

The group of experts, which was appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) at the request of the Mexican authorities, also identified basic errors in the investigation process carried out by the Office of the Attorney General and exposed the deliberate attempts by the government to obstruct the investigations.

The conclusions of the report, some of them already widely publicized by the press in September 2015, call into question the official version of the case. The Office of the Attorney General claims that the bus carrying the students was ambushed by corrupt police officers who handed them over to a criminal organization called Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors). The gang then allegedly killed them and incinerated the bodies in a landfill. Only one body has been identified. The group’s investigation, however, confirmed the impossibility of there having been a big enough fire to burn the bodies.

In an interview with Sur Journal No. 21, Gerardo Torres Pérez, a student who survived the police ambush but who lost his younger brother, emphasized that the friends and families of the victims continue to demand that the State return their colleagues alive. “It was the State that tore them from us and who took charge of their disappearance, and that is why we continue to defend the same position,” he said.

Mexican government against the IACHR

The absence of the Mexican government at the event to release the report was just one of many other alarming moves by Mexico against the IACHR and other organizations of the Inter-American System.

An alliance of Latin American organizations, of which Conectas is part, has been criticizing the government’s actions, which include the breaking of working agreements, a smear campaign against the work of human rights defenders and a possible criminal investigation against the Executive Secretary of the Commission, Emilio Alvarez Icaza.