By Lizbeth Diaz
MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s armed forces knew 43 student teachers who went missing in 2014 were kidnapped by criminals and then hid evidence that could help find them, according to a report released by Special Investigations on Monday.
Evidence obtained by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), an independent body charged with investigating the infamous case, revealed that Navy and Army officials kept secret that the students at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College were monitored in real-time by the state leading up to and during their kidnapping.
“Security agencies had two intelligence investigations underway, one to trace organized crime activities in the area and the other to track down the students,” investigators said in the report, which was based on declassified documents.
The students were put under surveillance because their college, which has strong ties to left-wing social movements in Mexico, was viewed as a potential hotbed of subversion, the GIEI said.
Neither the Army nor the Navy immediately responded to requests for comment.
The student kidnapping on the night of September 26, 2014 in the southwestern city of Iguala sparked national and international protests and remains one of the most notorious incidents in the history of Mexico’s fight against drug gangs.
Official documents reviewed by the GIEI included transcripts of conversations between soldiers and their superiors describing the students’ arrival at Iguala.
From Iguala, the students had planned to travel to Mexico City to attend a protest, but were instead kidnapped by corrupt local police and handed over to a local gang.
The students were then massacred and their bodies burned, according to the previous government. The GIEI later drilled holes into this version of events and the current government ordered the case to be reopened.
So far, only the remains of two of the missing students have been positively identified. The report did not conclude what happened to the other students.
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Mexico’s armed forces have long denied having any information about the crime or the students’ whereabouts.
According to the report, messages intercepted by the armed forces at the time could have been used to locate the students after their kidnapping.
But the armed forces denied that such wiretaps existed and did not hand them over, it said.
(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)