The Executioners: What the Government Hasn't Revealed About the Mexico Student Massacre Melissa del Pozo, Hans-Maximo Musielik, and Rafael Castillo - VICE News
go to original December 29, 2015

There are still many unanswered questions about a Friday night last September when at least 43 students disappeared after coming under attack in the Mexican city of Iguala. One of the most basic is: Why?

According to testimony the Mexican government hasn't yet officially released, cartel hitmen now under arrest may have the answer: They believed that a rival gang was mixed in with the students and was attempting to enter their territory. And in addition, it appears at least 13 more people were kidnapped and executed that night at a hillside ranch in the neighborhood of Pueblo Viejo, about 18 miles from the trash dump where federal authorities say the students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college were murdered and incinerated.

"I shot two of them in the head," one of the alleged killers told authorities of the group of 13 young men. That statement and others delivered to authorities by several of the alleged killers were contained in more than 2,000 pages of a government case file. Those pages, obtained by VICE News, comprise only two of the 82 volumes in the file; officials describe the September 26 disappearances and murders as one of the "biggest cases in memory."

The confessions indicate that the participants in the chaotic attacks — including both members of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel and local police officers — believed that members of rival gang Los Rojos rode among the students who traveled through Iguala that night.

Both Los Rojos and Guerreros Unidos are splinter groups that emerged from the violent fracturing of the formerly dominant Beltrán Leyva cartel in the state of Guerrero. After the split began in 2009, official figures show homicides and kidnappings both rose dramatically in the state — and human-rights observers say the fights between the splinter gangs actually resulted in even higher numbers of victims. Dozens of clandestine graves have been uncovered in the hillsides above Iguala since the Ayotzinapa students disappeared, a result of the drug war in Guerrero.

It's not clear why authorities have downplayed the execution of the 13 additional men in Pueblo Viejo, but political pressures may have had a role.

Read the rest at VICE News

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