Critics Claim Foreign Investigators Bury Facts in Ayotzinapa Students Case Elena Toledo - PanAm Post
go to original January 10, 2016

A Mexican NGO claims that the IACHR investigation of the Ayotzinapa massacre is protecting opposition leader Andrés López Obrador. (Sputnik News)

In February 2015, a delegation of conflict-resolution experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) began looking into the Ayotzinapa student massacre at the request of the Mexican federal government. However, a civil-society group is now raising questions over the IACHR’s chosen experts, claiming that the human-rights commission is carrying out a political agenda rooted in ideological bias.

The Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice, a Mexican NGO presided over by law professor José Antonio Ortega, has criticized two IACHR experts for alleged misconduct: former Colombian prosecutor Angela María Buitrago and former Guatemalan prosecutor Claudia Paz y Paz.

In a press conference on November 18, the NGO claimed that the IACHR inquiry is politically and ideologically motivated, and has ties to guerrilla groups. According to the Council, the foreign experts are attempting to derail the investigation carried out by Attorney General of Mexico by twisting and fabricating facts.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador is a former presidential candidate for the progressive Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and current leader of the opposition party National Regeneration Movement (MORENA).

While he has largely remained outside of the spotlight throughout the Ayotzinapa scandal, López Obrador openly supported the candidacy of José Luis Abarca, the mayor of Iguala who was charged with a role in the murders.

When the Mexican police initiated the mayor’s manhunt, López Obrador tried to distance himself from the scandal: “Luckily, and to the disappointment of my detractors, I do not know José Luis Abarca,” he claimed.

The IACHR investigation has focused primarily on the allegations that the Mexican army “forcefully disappeared” the 43 students.

According to the NGO, if the Mexican government accepts this theory, then all those who the police have so far arrested will be freed, and López Obrador will have cleared his name on his way to running for the presidency again.

Read the rest at PanAm Post | Español

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