An Austrian laboratory will analyze human remains that may belong to some of the 43 Mexican students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School who disappeared nine years ago and whose different versions of the investigation are causing much controversy, the government announced on Wednesday.
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This announcement comes the day after relatives of the disappeared gathered in Mexico City to tirelessly demand justice.
Only three victims were identified by experts from the University of Innsbruck.
“We still have other remains awaiting identification,” Alejandro Encinas, deputy minister for human rights, said at a news conference.
Two of the more than 120 remains discovered are awaiting genetic analysis in the Innsbruck laboratory, said Mr. Encinas, who heads the government-appointed truth commission.
Experts from Mexico’s attorney general’s office would also conduct their own genetic analyzes on other remains, he added.
According to Mr. Encinas, 132 suspects were interviewed in this case. Among them are 41 members of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, 71 police officers, a former prosecutor general, 14 army personnel and five other officials.
These students from Ayotzinapa disappeared on the night of September 27, 2014, after traveling to Iguala, Guerrero state, where they were preparing to board several buses to go to Mexico City and take part in a demonstration.
According to official information, they were arrested by the police in collaboration with criminals and handed over to the Guerreros Unidos cartel, which would have murdered them.
Interception of cartel communications by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) suggests that the students were mistaken for members of a rival cartel and that the buses they seized contained drugs, weapons or money, Encinas said.
Last year, the Truth Commission described the case as a “state crime” and stressed that the military bore some responsibility, whether directly or through negligence.
On July 26, the commission ended the investigation that began in 2015, saying the military had refused to hand over sensitive information, making it “impossible” to continue its work.
Independent experts and relatives accuse the government of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) of not having provided all the information it had on the case.
“We regret that AMLO’s reaction is to support (the army) and not truth and justice,” one of the parents, Emiliano Navarrete, said at Tuesday’s protest.