Mexico missing students: Damning report discredits government's account of alleged massacre

The Mexican government’s claim that 43 college students who disappeared last year were burned does not stand up, a damning independent report assessing the authorities’ response to the incident has claimed.

The 400-page document, compiled by an international team of experts commissioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, looked into the disappearance of 43 teaching students in the south-western city of Iguala, on 26 September 2014.

According to the government, the students were kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity and were burned to death in the nearby town of Cocula.

“That event [the incineration] never took place,” investigator Carlos Beristain, told reporters at a press conference, according to Reuters.

Instead, researchers believe the kidnapping may have been a violent and co-ordinated attack involving drug gangs, as the students hijacked buses for transportation to a demonstration and may have unwittingly interfered with a drug trade.

Referring to the fact that Iguala is a transport hub for heroin heading for the US, the report said that “the business that moves the city of Iguala could explain such an extreme and violent reaction and the character of the massive attack.”

Among the errors, omissions and manipulations that the researchers accuse the government of making is the discovery of a charred bone fragment said to be from one of the 43 victims, which the report said was not burned at the high temperature of an incineration.

It went on to suggest that such an act is uncharacteristic of the local drug gang - Guerreros Unidos – who in any case would not have had enough fuel available for the burning, and so the students were likely not incinerated in Cocula.

The authorities have so far detained over 100 people in connection with the case, including local police officers and the former Iguala mayor, who is in custody over accusations that he ordered the attack. However, the experts believe this may not be the case.

Urging the government to essentially scrap its current efforts, the report advises officials to continue their search for the students, to reassess their lines of investigation, and to consider the involvement of drug gangs.

Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that the report was an “utterly damning indictment of Mexico's handling of the worst human rights atrocity in recent memory.”

The release of the report on Sunday has prompted Attorney General Arely Gomez to say she would order an examination of what happened at the dump hours later.

However, Tomas Zeron, the director of its criminal investigation agency, said on Monday that while it is possible there were errors in the investigation, officials are confident in the forensic science and the conclusion, adding that 100 investigators were involved.

“We can't be wrong,” Mr Zeron said on Enfoque Radio.

As the report was presented the parents of the students cheered, and demanded a meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto.

“We will not accept another lie from the government,” Blanca Nava Velez, mother of student Jorge Alvarez Nava, told AP.

President Nieto, who previously acknowledged the damage that the case had done to his popularity and the country's morale, said on Monday that he was willing to meet with the students' parents and the independent experts.

“I want to know the truth,” he said at an event in the central state of Puebla.

Additional reporting by PA and Reuters