Mass grave found in Mexico believed to be students murdered by police officers

waltky · Dec 21, 2015

Iguala tries to get past student disappearances...

After student disappearances, Mexico city tries to turn page
Dec 21,`15 -- The previous elected mayor is in jail, and the new one wants to "turn the page" on the ugliest chapter in the history of this southern Mexican city.

Fifteen months ago, when 43 rural college students disappeared at the hands of local police and cartel thugs, Iguala became the symbol of Mexico's narco-brutality. Now, federal police are in charge of security, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party controls city hall - and Mayor Esteban Albarran Mendoza wants to move forward. "Ask the businesspeople, ask the cab drivers, the housewives, those who live daily here in the city, what they are enduring right now ...," Albarran said. "There is anxiety. There is not peace. There is not security. We want to turn the page on all these kinds of things." But how can this city move on when, according to a local newspaper's count, there were five murders during Albarran's first week in office, and 25 in his first two months?

Disappearances continue, and most of the missing have not been found. For hundreds of families around Iguala there is no possibility of turning the page as long as they have no proof of death or a body to mourn. On Tuesdays, they gather in the San Gerardo church basement to listen to the new numbers from the attorney general's office: bodies found, bodies identified, bodies returned to their families. Most leave without answers and return home to await a call to view photos of clothing or evidence of a genetic match. While seeking resolution of old horrors, there are new ones.

Children play in a recently inaugurated fountain with colored lights, surrounded by posters of the 43 missing students outside City Hall in Iguala, Mexico. Fifteen months ago, when 43 rural college students disappeared at the hands of local police and cartel thugs, Iguala became the symbol of Mexicos narco-brutality. Now, federal police are in charge of security, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party controls city hall _ and Mayor Esteban Albarran Mendoza wants to move forward.

Zenaida Candia Espinobarro already spent her Sundays with other families searching the mountains around Iguala for hidden graves, looking for the remains of a son who disappeared two years ago. But while she was looking for the bones of one son, she lost another: Armando Velazquez Candia was shot by two men on a motorcycle in front of his girlfriend's house the afternoon of Oct. 26 and died 10 days later. Along with the bloodshed, the drug trade goes on. Despite the presence of federal and state police, and the military, there is no sign that trafficking has abated around Iguala or elsewhere in Guerrero state - a producer of marijuana and opium paste for the U.S. heroin market.

Again this month, state and federal officials promised to secure Guerrero and eradicate more poppy fields, recognizing that efforts of the past year had little impact. Not that Iguala is unchanged. Former Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca Velazquez was arrested and charged with murder in connection with the disappearance of the 43 students, and 66 police from Iguala and neighboring Cocula have been jailed. Authorities have disbanded the local police force that allegedly turned the students over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, which officials say was closely allied with Abarca.

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longknife · Dec 22, 2015

This will not be forgotten by the parents of those students and demonstrations will continue.

waltky · Apr 2, 2016

17 incinerated remains found in southern Mexican dump...

Outside experts say at least 17 burned at Mexican dump
Apr 1,`16 -- Experts have found evidence of a large fire in which at least 17 bodies were burned at a dump in southern Mexico, a member of the investigating team said Friday, in the latest twist in the case of 43 missing teachers' college students.

Ricardo Damian Torres, speaking from the offices of Mexico's attorney general, said tests would be conducted in the coming weeks to determine whether it would have been possible to burn all 43 at the dump in the town of Cocula in Guerrero state, where the government has said the students' bodies ended up after disappearing in nearby Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014. Relatives of the missing students have fiercely disputed the government's version of events and multiple previous investigations by other teams of experts concluded they could not have all been burned at the Cocula dump. The government's perceived mishandling of the symbolic human rights case has dogged the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

In Friday's brief press conference, Torres did not say when such a fire occurred or offer any explanation as to how the team conducted its research and reached its conclusion. "There is sufficient evidence, including physically observable, to affirm that there was a controlled fire event of great dimensions in the place called the Cocula dump," he said, speaking for the six-member fire-expert team and sitting beside Mexico's deputy attorney general for human rights, Eber Betanzos. He took no questions. In an interview with Milenio TV, Vidulfo Rosales, a lawyer representing the families, said they had not reviewed the experts' report and could not discuss it. However, he expressed concern about the way the attorney general's office was handling the investigation.

Relatives of the 43 missing students from the Isidro Burgos rural teachers college march holding pictures of their missing loved ones during a protest in Mexico City. A third investigation of a dump site in southern Mexico found evidence indicating there was a large fire there in which at least 17 people were burned, a member of a six-person fire expert team said Friday

It was the latest in a series of investigations into what happened to the students from the Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa. They disappeared after hijacking buses in Iguala. Evidence indicates they were intercepted by local police and turned over to members of a local drug cartel. Four months after they disappeared, Mexico's then-attorney general Jesus Murillo Karam laid out the results of the government's investigation with such certainty that he called it the "historic truth." Citing confessions and forensic evidence, he said all 43 students were dead and had been incinerated at a garbage dump outside Cocula. Murrillo Karam said their incinerated remains were then thrown into a nearby river. Genetic testing of remains the government said it recovered from the river eventually confirmed the identities of two of the missing students. In terms of motive, he said the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, which controlled the area, had believed some of the students were from a rival gang.

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waltky · Apr 4, 2016

Bodies burned beyond recognition...

Experts question report on missing Mexican students
Mon, Apr 04, 2016 - Argentine forensic experts who have studied a dump in southern Mexico where Mexican government officials claim the bodies of 43 missing students were burned on Saturday said that results from a new investigation of the site are incomplete and inconclusive.

The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team released a statement saying that the latest investigation by a team of experts neither confirms nor denies the official version of what happened to the students from the Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa. The team were called in shortly after the teachers college students disappeared in Iguala in Guerrero State on Sept. 26, 2014. An investigation by the Mexican government concluded that they were killed by a local drug gang after being confused with members of a rival group. They were purportedly taken by corrupt local police and handed over to the gang, which incinerated their bodies at a dump in the nearby town of Cocula and threw the remains into a river.

The team studied the dump and said first in January last year and later in a full report released in February that the evidence did not support the official version of events. In September last year, another team of independent experts sent by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights released a report that dismantled the governments investigation. The report said police and the military were monitoring the students, but no one intervened when they were attacked.

On Friday, a representative of the new team said it had found evidence of a large fire at the Cocula dump. Team member Ricardo Damian Torres said the remains of at least 17 burned bodies were found in the dump, but he did not specify when the bodies were incinerated. There is sufficient evidence, including physically observable, to affirm that there was a controlled fire event of great dimensions in the place called the Cocula dump, he said, speaking for the six-member fire-expert team.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2016/04/04/2003643175
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PatrickT · Apr 4, 2016

BPman said: ↑

Nothing will change in Mexico until they have a revolution. Nothing.
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For some, ignorance is a way of life.

tidbit · Apr 4, 2016

Regular Joe said: ↑

So here we are, playing deadly games in the ME, claiming to be promoting democracy over there. The real concern for us is to follow the money trail North of the Mex. border, and conduct a manhunt for everyone in American politics who are complicit in the drug trade.
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I agree. I would rail against my sons going to the ME to fight for someone else's right to live in a democracy. I would spit shine their military boots, and starch their uniforms if they were going to Mexico to fight the Mexican cartels.

longknife · Apr 4, 2016

As a student of Mexican and Latin American history, it is my belief that it is almost impossible to see changes implemented that would reduce the inefficiency and corruption of those systems. They date back to the very founding of those countries and have been imbedded for centuries.

Here is a thought. So we recognize the farce that The War on Drugs truly is and go about legalizing and controlling all those drugs currently being smuggled into the USA. We ensure they are "clean" and tax them like we do alcohol and tobacco. We use those funds to support clinics to treat users in need of medical help.

In other words, we put drug trafficers world wide out of business.

What happens to those countries where the smugglers have been? Who feeds the corrupt officials? Who provides much needed funds to help the general population?

Will we see the entire Latin American community go bankrupt? And will the people rise up in armed rebellion?

What does the USA do them? How do we deal with a serious armed rebellion just south of our border?

BestViewedWithCable · Apr 4, 2016

Regular Joe said: ↑

conduct a manhunt for everyone in American politics who are complicit in the drug trade.
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Id start with all those who make excuses to not build a wall, or protect the American people......

waltky · Apr 9, 2016

This is ridiculous, they should at least be able to distinguish between human and animal remains...

Mexico: Austrian lab finds no evidence of missing students
Apr 9,`16 -- An Austrian laboratory has not found evidence that can confirm that remains found in a trash dump in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero belong to 43 students who disappeared in September 2014, authorities announced.

The Attorney General's Office said in a statement late Friday night that the Institute of Legal Medicine at the University of Innsbruck examined samples including hair and physical remains. The office said it was not possible to establish genetic profiles through DNA testing so far, though further testing is still being done with those results to be released in the future.

Mexican investigators have theorized that police handed the students over to drug gang members who killed them and incinerated the bodies at the garbage dump. That finding has been disputed by two outside groups of experts who examined the case and concluded there was no evidence at the dump of a fire large enough to consume all the bodies. Relatives of the students have also publicly doubted the government investigation.

Relatives of the 43 missing students from the rural teachers college march holding pictures of their missing loved ones during a protest in Mexico City. Argentine forensic experts who have studied a dump in southern Mexico where government officials claim the bodies of 43 missing teachers’ college students were burned say a new investigation of the site is incomplete and inconclusive. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team was called in shortly after the students from the Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa disappeared in Iguala in Guerrero state

The Attorney General's Office said the Austrian lab determined that some of the hair samples were human, while others were of animal origin. Those found to be human did not yield a match with DNA sequences of family members of the students. The case of the missing students has attracted national and international condemnation, and the government's perceived mishandling of it has dogged the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-04-09-19-45-41
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waltky · May 10, 2016

Mexico usin' torture to get confessions in missing students case...

In Mexico missing students case, suspects allege torture
May 10,`16 -- Within weeks of the September 2014 disappearance of 43 college students, Mexican authorities had rounded up scores of suspects and announced they had solved the case.

At a hastily called news conference, prosecutors showed video of drug gang members confessing to taking the students from police, then slaughtering them and incinerating the bodies at a junkyard and dumping the evidence in a river. Two independent, international teams of experts subsequently cast doubt on the official investigation. Now, the government case has suffered another blow: Accusations of torture.

In previously unseen court documents obtained by The Associated Press, 10 of the suspects described a chillingly similar script: First the questions, then the punches, electric shocks and partial asphyxiations with plastic bags; then, finally, the threats to kill their loved ones unless they confessed to stories that backed up the government's line. Some said they were given planted evidence or prefabricated stories to support the government's conclusions.

Police stand guard around the state Congress building, as people pass by outside the fence, some yelling taunts and hurling rocks, on the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of 43 rural college students in Chilpancingo, Mexico. Within weeks of the September 2014 disappearance of students, Mexican authorities had rounded up scores of suspects and announced they had solved the case. But two independent, international teams of experts subsequently cast doubt on the official investigation, and now the government case has suffered another blow: Accusations of torture by federal police or government troops who arrested the suspects on suspicion of ties to the notoriously violent Guerreros Unidos drug cartel.

Medical reports published last month by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission appear to confirm the allegations of torture. Of the 10 case files obtained by the AP, the group reviewed five, and it found credible evidence of torture in all of them. "They were giving me electric shocks in the testicles and all over my body," one of the suspects, Patricio Reyes Landa, a gang member who was detained a month after the students vanished, told a judge in July, according to the documents obtained by AP. "All this time, it was about two and a half hours, I was blindfolded and they were hitting me." "A person came up and took off my blindfold and showed me a photo of my family - my two daughters, my wife and my brother," he said. "He said if I didn't do everything they told me to, they were going to rape my daughters. ... I told them I was going to do everything they asked."

Reyes Landa's testimony is crucial to the government case because he was among the first to confess to killing the students and burning their bodies at a dump in the town of Cocula, before their charred remains were tossed in the nearby San Juan River. Apart from those confessions and a single bone fragment that was linked through DNA testing to one of the students, the prosecution has almost no other evidence. Under Mexican law a confession obtained by torture is not admissible in court. "If the confessions are tossed out and there is no other evidence, basically there is no case," said Denise Gonzalez, a specialist in human rights and international law at Mexico's Ibero-American University.

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waltky · Jun 27, 2016

Former mayor Obrador calls mass demonstration over deadly teachers union clashes...

Thousands protest in Mexico City over deadly teachers union clashes in Oaxaca
June 27, 2016 -- Tens of thousands of people in Mexico City protested on Sunday over recent violent clashes between police and a teachers union in the Oaxaca state that killed at least 10 people.

The protest on Sunday was called by Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, one week after the clashes between the National Coordinator of Education Workers union and Mexican state police. Authorities said more than 4,000 police officers were deployed to central Mexico City as the march occurred Sunday.

The teachers union, social organizations and local residents held protests and disrupted traffic on a major highway connecting Oaxaca to Mexico City for about a week before violence erupted last Sunday when riot police attempted to disperse the crowds. Authorities said 10 people died, but some witnesses said up to 12 people died. Dozens of civilians and police were also injured.

The incident increased criticism against Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. Some say forces under the president's command use too harsh of a force against the opposition and protesters. Many in Sunday's protest called for the president's resignation. "Condolences to relatives of the victims of repression in Oaxaca," Lopez Obrador, leader of the progressive Morena Party, said in a statement. "Enrique Peña Nieto: stop homicidal violence, seize the responsible and open dialogue."

The union has continued battling constitutional reforms passed by Mexico's Ministry of Education that would force teachers to take examinations to be approved for employment, with further tests to maintain jobs.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-N...lashes-in-Oaxaca/7771467026817/?spt=sec&or=tn
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waltky · Jul 2, 2016

Food airlifts to get around teacher's blockades...

Mexico teachers protest: Food airlifts to blockade-hit areas
Sat, 02 Jul 2016 - Mexico's air force flies grain into southern Oaxaca state to deal with dwindling food supplies there caused by roadblocks set up by protesting teachers.

Officials say 108 tons of corn will be delivered by the end of the weekend. Last month, eight people were killed in Oaxaca in clashes between the demonstrators and police. The protesters oppose reforms that allow the federal authorities to remove teachers who fail evaluation exams. Members of the CNTE union, which has a history of radical activism, have been blocking roads in Oaxaca and other states ever since the union leaders were arrested in early June.

Clashes between teachers and security forces in the town of Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, Mexico.

The roadblocks have prevented food deliveries to some remote areas in the region, the government says. In a strongly worded message on Friday, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said the unrest had hurt millions of people and "the blockades and damages to the citizenry must end". "The time is up," he said, warning that "the necessary decisions will soon be taken to allow transit on strategic roads".

The CNTE union opposes education reforms introduced by President Enrique Pena Nieto in 2013. The changes include new measures to assess teachers' performance.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-36692269
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See also:

Mexico teachers union threatens 'greater intensity' in protests over education reforms
June 30, 2016 - The Mexican government will not hold talks with the union until blockades end.

Mexico's National Coordinator of Education Workers, or CNTE, teachers union has threatened actions of "greater intensity" as it remains deadlocked with the government over constitutional education reforms. The union has held protests over constitutional reforms passed by Mexico's Ministry of Education in 2013 that would force teachers to take examinations to be approved for employment, with further tests to maintain jobs. The intensity of the demonstrations -- which have been ongoing since 2013 -- have escalated to the teachers union setting up blockades that have created shortages of fuel.

Jose Luis Escobar, a CNTE spokesman, on Wednesday said President Enrique Peña Nieto's government must revoke or revise the law, but Peña Nieto's administration has insisted the law is non-negotiable. "They hold the only solution," Escobar said, adding that though shortages have been created that Mexicans "have understood that this form of struggle is necessary in the face of the stubbornness and myopia of the government."

Escobar added that the CNTE will continue to block roads, also warning of "actions of greater intensity." The CNTE has most of its support in the Mexican states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, where the blockades and shortages are most intense. At least 100 gas stations in Chiapas are out of fuel.

In Oaxaca, at least 10 people died when riot police attempted to disperse blockading protesters. In Mexico City, tens of thousands of people protested in Sunday over the recent violent clashes between police and a teachers union. Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, Mexico's secretary of interior, on Wednesday said the government will not hold talks with the CNTE until the union stops the blockades.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-N...ducation-reforms/8941467301095/?spt=sec&or=tn
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waltky · Sep 26, 2016

Mexican Teaching School Students Still missing...

Mexico missing students: Unanswered questions two years on
Sun, 25 Sep 2016 - Two years have passed since 43 students went missing on their way to a protest in the town of Iguala but anger still burns, the BBC's Katy Watson reports

Two years have passed since 43 students went missing on their way to a protest in the Mexican town of Iguala. The violence that night also left three dead and two injured. At the time, their disappearance caused outrage. Protests in Mexico City turned violent. But while many are still angry, the events on the night of 26 September and the early morning of 27 September 2014 have faded.

Maricarmen Mendoza, mother of Jorge Anibal Cruz Mendoza

New scandals have emerged, whether it is accusations of corruption, allegations of plagiarism or the political faux pas of inviting US Republican candidate Donald Trump to the country, President Enrique Pena Nieto now boasts the unenviable accolade of having the lowest presidential approval ratings for decades. But the anger is still burning at the Raul Isidros Burgos rural teachers' college in Ayotzinapa, where the trainee teachers were studying.

Leaders 'corrupt'

Every dormitory is adorned with reminders of their missing peers. In the college's main square, pictures of the men are tied to the railings. The basketball court in the centre has 43 chairs laid out - a shrine to the disappeared. At the college, I meet Maricarmen Mendoza, the mother of missing student Jorge Anibal Cruz Mendoza. In her hand is a poster which reads: "He was taken alive and we want him back alive." As a mother, she says she still has hope and is convinced the students are somewhere. She is also convinced that there was government involvement at every level. She blames President Pena Nieto for all that has happened. "They should have given us a response by now if they were good leaders but sadly we only have corrupt leaders," she tells me.

She says she won't give up looking. "Sometimes me and my friends say it's a life for a life," she says, hinting that she would go to extremes to get her son back. In January 2015, the attorney general at the time, Jesus Murillo Karam, said the government investigation had found the "historical truth", that the students had been burned at a municipal rubbish dump after being handed over to a drugs cartel by corrupt police. But it was a scenario that has since been rejected by several teams of experts.

A year after their disappearance, a group of independent experts appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights released a report saying the government investigation was deeply flawed. Their views have since been backed up by other independent investigations. "A lot of time was wasted trying to justify what the attorney general called the historical truth," says Carlos Zazueta of Amnesty International in Mexico City. He says the government has not learned from its mistakes. "It's not that they don't know what they need to do, it's that they lack any will to do it. They have been trying to save face to manage the situation in terms of the political response," he says.

History of investigations
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waltky · Mar 13, 2018

Suspect arrested in missing students case...

Mexico missing students: Key suspect arrested
13 Mar.`18 - Federal police in Mexico have arrested a man they say is a key suspect in the disappearance of 43 students from the town of Iguala in 2014.

Erick Uriel Sandoval is accused of forming part of the gang that is thought to have killed the trainee teachers and burned their bodies. He was arrested in Cocula, the town near the rubbish dump where remains of one of the missing students were found. The disappearance of the 43 caused outrage in Mexico and abroad. Alfredo Higuera from the prosecutor's office in charge of investigating the case said that Mr Sandoval was accused of having "played a key role in the actions against the students". Local media alleged that he was one of the gang members tasked with shooting dead the students.

Vanished after protesting

The 43 were part of a larger group of students from a teacher training college in Ayotzinapa who travelled to the nearby town of Iguala to protest against what they saw as discriminatory hiring practices for teachers. As they were travelling back from Iguala to Ayotzinapa, they were confronted by municipal police, who opened fire on the buses they were travelling in. The officers maintained they did so because the buses had been hijacked, while the surviving students said that the drivers had agreed to give them a lift. The 43 missing students have not been seen since that clash on 26 September 2014.

Relatives of the missing students hold regular protests in Mexico City

According to the official government report, they were handed over by corrupt police officers to members of local drugs gang Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors). The gang then took them to a local rubbish dump, where they killed them and burned their bodies, the official report continues. However, independent experts have cast doubt on the official report, pointing out that the chain of evidence was broken when the bone fragments were tested. They also said that the government had hampered their investigation.

Key suspect

Mr Sandoval is accused of forming part of the Guerreros Unidos drugs gang and prosecutors say he had "direct contact" with the students following their disappearance. He is one of five suspects for whom prosecutors have offered a reward of 1.5m pesos ($81,000; £58,000). One of the members of Guerreros Unidos already in custody has reportedly named Mr Sandoval as one of the people who were at the rubbish dump the night the students were killed and their bodies burned. More than 100 people have been arrested in connection with the case but, two and a half years since the students' disappearance, doubts remain as to what happened to them.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-43385836
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