International Experts Urge Follow-Up Probe of Mexican Students' Disappearance Voice of America
go to original June 25, 2016

A protester from the CNTE teachers union places candles in front of a monument of the number 43 during a vigil following recent clashes between police and union members, in Mexico City, June 20, 2016. (Reuters)

Independent investigators who probed the disappearance and apparent massacre of 43 Mexican students in 2014 called for a robust follow-up to resolve the high-profile case and establish the truth.

Claudia Paz y Paz and Carlos Martin Beristain served on a five-member panel that accused the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto in April of undermining its inquiry.

The panelists were in Geneva to meet U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, who has voiced dismay at a lack of progress in resolving the "emblematic" case of 43 trainee teachers from Ayotzinapa who disappeared in the southwestern city of Iguala.

"We made many recommendations to deepen the investigation, mainly related to drug trafficking of heroin as a possible motive. The prosecution has not fully addressed this hypothesis," Paz y Paz, a former attorney general of Guatemala, told Reuters.

Mexico's military has been accused on multiple occasions of extrajudicial killings and torture during a decade-long war against the brutal drug cartels.

"It is up to the state's willingess to investigate what actually happened," Paz y Paz said. "We expect a strong follow-up mechanism."

The government says that corrupt police handed the 43 students over to drug gang henchmen in late 2014, who then incinerated them at a garbage dump in the southwestern state of Guerrero.

Read the rest at Voice of America

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