43 students’ disappearance is referred to as a “state crime” in Mexico.
Reuters, MEXICO CITY, August 18 – In yet another harsh evaluation of the previous administration’s activities related one of Mexico’s worst human rights catastrophes, Mexican officials on Thursday described the 2014 disappearance of 43 students as a state crime that was covered up by the government.
After rejecting the previous administration’s account of events, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has promised to uncover what happened to the students who disappeared in the city of Iguala in September 2014.
The case caused a global outcry about impunity and disappearances in Mexico and permanently damaged the Enrique Pena Nieto administration, especially after international human rights experts denounced the official investigation as being rife with mistakes and abuses.
Alejandro Encinas, the top human rights official in Mexico, declared at a press conference that any involvement by municipal, state, or federal officials in the disappearance constituted a “state crime.”
Afterward, the previous administration “covered up the linkages between law enforcement and a criminal organisation, altered crime scenes, and disguised the truth of the facts.”
Encinas also pointed out that although one of the students was a military informant, officials did not follow the proper procedures for locating missing soldiers. The “disappearance and murder of the students would have been prevented” if they had done that, he claimed.
Only three pupils’ remains have been found and identified despite thorough searches, according to Encinas.
In protests where they chanted, “We want them back alive,” the families of the students have long voiced hope that their loved ones had survived. Encinas gave the students’ untimely demise a rare official admission.
“Nothing suggests the students are still alive. All testimony and facts indicate that they were deceitfully slain and vanished “says he. It’s a depressing reality.
The Pena Nieto administration said that the kids were killed and their remains burned at a landfill after a local drug gang mistakenly thought they were members of a rival group.
Under Lopez Obrador, authorities have issued dozens of arrest warrants, including for police officers and military personnel, and have asked Israel to extradite a former official who is accused of tampering with the probe.
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