MEXICO CITY (AP) – New testimony from a cooperating witness directly implies the Mexican military in the disappearance of 43 students in a 2014 incident that continues to haunt the country, according to a newspaper report on Wednesday.
The Reforma newspaper said the witness, believed to be a gang member identified only as “Juan,” claims that soldiers detained and questioned some of the students before handing them over to a drug gang.
The students’ bodies were then burned in a local crematorium or dissolved in acidic or caustic solutions and discharged into the sewer, the witness said. Still other bodies were reportedly hacked and distributed near the town of Taxco.
The disclosure could further embarrass the military, which has recently been hit by allegations that a former defense secretary was employed by a drug gang. It could also mean that most students’ remains may never be found.
The Interior Department confirmed that the testimony was part of the file and said it would press charges against whoever leaked it. The department did not comment on the accuracy of the newspaper version of the testimony.
But a person familiar with the case said the testimony was new, as of early 2020, and was part of the file.
The witness said an army captain, now charged with organized crime in the case, detained and questioned some of the students at a local army base before handing them over to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang.
The police detained another group, and gang members detained others. In total, the witness said that as many as 70 to 80 people were held, handed over to the gang and killed, because the Guerreros Unidos gang believed there were criminals from a rival group among them.
The accusation is part of a series of conflicting testimonies that have given different versions of what happened to the students of a nationwide teacher training college who hacked buses when they were picked up by police and turned over to a drug gang.
During more than six years of investigation, Mexican authorities found dozens of clandestine graves and 184 bodies, but none of the missing students.
According to an initial investigation into the events in September 2014, police in the city of Iguala turned the students over to cartel members, who allegedly murdered and burned them. Charred bone fragments, however, are fully matched with only two students.
Witness “Juan” has reportedly told investigators that fragments of bone found around a garbage dump near Iguala were planted by the drug gang to abort investigations.
Prosecutors once insisted that the students had been burned in a huge funeral pyre at the dump, a version that independent forensic experts later said was not feasible.
“Juan” said that in reality some of the student’s bodies were dissolved in caustic solutions and dumped in the sewer, while others were hacked and burned at a local funeral home.
An employee of that funeral home in Iguala, known as “El Angel”, confirmed that it has crematorium facilities. It would have been a bold move involving almost complete control of the Iguala drug gang, as the funeral home is also the base for the local medical investigators’ office.
But there have been piles of conflicting testimonials in the case, including some allegedly extracted under torture by investigators in a previous government.