In a special investigative report released Monday, the Mexican military is said to have learned that 43 student teachers who went missing in 2014 were abducted by criminals, and then withheld evidence that could help locate the victims.
Evidence obtained by the Independent Interdisciplinary Group of Experts (GIEI), an independent panel tasked with investigating the notorious case, reveals that Mexican navy and army officials kept secret the fact that students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teacher School were under state surveillance every second leading up to and during their kidnapping.
“Security authorities at the time carried out two intelligence processes, one to monitor organized crime in the area and the other to track students,” investigators said in the report, which is based on undisclosed documents.
The students are being watched because their campus has strong ties to the left-wing social movement in Mexico, which is seen as a hotbed of insurgency, the GIEI said.
Neither the army nor the navy responded to requests for comment.
The kidnapping of students on the night of September 26, 2014, in the southwestern city of Iguala sparked national and international protests and remains one of the most high-profile incidents in the history of Mexico’s struggle with drug gangs.
Official documents examined by GIEI include transcripts of conversations between soldiers and their superiors detailing the students’ arrival in Iguala.
From Iguala, the students had planned to travel to Mexico City to attend a demonstration but were instead kidnapped by corrupt local police and handed over to local gangs.
The students were then massacred and their bodies burned, according to the previous government. GIEI later found loopholes in that version of events, and the government is currently ordering the case to be reopened.
So far, only two remains of the missing student bodies have been definitively identified. The report did not conclude what happened to the other students.
Mexico’s military has long denied having any information about the crime and the student’s whereabouts.
According to the report, intercepted communications by the military could have been used to locate students after they were kidnapped.
But the military denies any such wiretapping and says it has not turned the students over to local gangs. [my/jm]