Disappearance of 43 Mexican Students Must Be Investigated Anew (original) (raw)

Americas|Disappearance of 43 Mexican Students Must Be Investigated Anew

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/world/americas/mexico-43-missing-students-investigation.html

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

Photographs of the 43 students who vanished, carried by relatives and other students during a protest in April in Mexico City.Credit...Sashenka Gutierrez/EPA, via Shutterstock

June 5, 2018

MEXICO CITY — A federal court in Mexico ordered the government on Monday to investigate the 2014 disappearances of 43 college students again, but this time under the supervision of a truth commission to be led by the nation’s top human rights body and parents of the victims.

The order came in response to legal motions filed by several defendants accused of taking part in the students’ violent abduction, which took place in September 2014 and quickly became an international scandal for the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto. The suspects accused the government of using torture to force confessions, an accusation that the United Nations also made in a recent report.

But rather than simply validate the allegations of torture, the three judges of the First Collegiate Tribunal of the 19th Circuit unanimously delivered a broad and sweeping indictment of the entire case, describing it as “neither prompt, effective, independent nor impartial.”

They accused the nation’s attorney general’s office of ignoring lines of evidence that contradicted its theory of the case, and they ordered the creation of a so-called truth commission to oversee the new investigation.

The body would be led by the victims’ families and their representatives as well as members of the National Commission for Human Rights, in addition to the government’s own prosecutors. It would also allow for the inclusion of international experts in forensics and human rights.

The ruling shocked lawyers representing the families of the disappeared — not only because it validated years of painstaking effort to seek an impartial inquiry in the face of government intransigence, but also because it cannot be appealed.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT