Mexican students’ disappearance was a state-sponsored crime, truth panel says

The government commission inquiry confirmed that federal and state authorities were tracking the 43 Ayotzinapa students in 2014

The disappearance of 43 Mexican students after they were ambushed by police officers in 2014 was a state-sponsored crime involving federal and state authorities at the highest levels of government, according to the final report of a government truth commission.

The commission, created by the current administration, confirmed that the federal government, including the Mexican military and federal police, were aware of the students’ movements from the time they left their rural school campus in the state of Guerrero to their arrival in the city of Iguala where the students were abducted the night of 24 September.

Local law enforcement officials then worked in conjunction with a large group of cartel gunmen and lookouts to forcibly disappear the students, the report confirmed.

“There is no evidence that they are alive,” said the deputy director of Mexico’s Human Rights Commission, Alejandro Encinas of the missing students. “To the contrary, all testimony and evidence suggest they were cunningly killed and disappeared.”

The report is based on more than 41,000 documents – including transcripts of phone calls, text messages and reports – as well as 50 videos showing the torture of detainees in the case.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised families of the missing students that every government agency that answers to the executive branch would cooperate with the commission to “get to the truth”, of the case. And he promised there would not be impunity.

The Mexican military, marines and the recently-created national guard, all provided documents, video and wiretaps to the commission, according to the report.

The case shook the country even as the Mexican government sought to cover up the crime, insisting that only local authorities and cartel members were responsible for the crime. To date, remains of only three of the 43 students have been identified.

The Mexican military has a barracks just five minutes from where the students were attacked, but the then-secretary of defense originally claimed that troops were not on the streets of Iguala on the night of the attack.

A news report revealed depositions from nearly 40 soldiers, who had fanned out across the city of Iguala that night, in search of students who escaped the ambush.

The commission revealed the military was closely monitoring the students and did not move to save them from local police officers who helped disappear them.

It also confirmed a soldier had infiltrated the group of students and was on the buses they had used to travel to the city. The soldier, the commission confirmed, remains missing along with the majority of the students.

The commission also confirmed the students were never taken to a nearby landfill and incinerated, as the previous administration had claimed. Fire and forensic experts, brought in by the students’ families, had disproved the theory to the anger of the previous administration.