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Mexico's 43 students not burned in Cocula: human rights experts

Xinhua, September 7, 2015 Adjust font size:

Mexico's official version of events surrounding the fate of the 43 missing students lacks substance, according to an investigation by independent experts published on Sunday.

Findings from the six-month investigation by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts designated by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) contradict the government's "historical version" of events.

The report states it is scientifically impossible that the students from the community of Ayotzinapa were incinerated at a rubbish dump in the state of Guerrero, southern Mexico.

"We have come to the conclusion that the young people were not incinerated at the Cocula rubbish dump (in Guerrero) as the country's prosecutors have always maintained," said one of the report's authors, Francisco Cox, during a news conference.

A group of police from the municipality of Iguala, Guerrero, allegedly used guns to attack the students from the teacher training college of Ayotzinapa on Sept. 26, 2014. Afterward the students were supposedly handed over to a criminal gang that operate in the region.

On the night of Sept. 26, the students were "deprived of liberty, deprived of life, incinerated and thrown into the river," according to the former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, back in November 2014.

However, the IACHR report contested this statement. Cox said in order to completely consume the 43 bodies, 30,000 kg of wood or 13,330 kg of rubber tires would have been needed to burn for 60 hours.

Members of the criminal gang said the fire only burned for a maximum of 16 hours. Peruvian expert from Queensland University, Australia, Jose Torero, who enlisted by the independent investigation, dismissed that a fire of such magnitude had taken place in the rubbish dump. Torero also found that there was not enough fuel such as wood and rubber tires available at the site to completely burn even one body.

"It is a rather dry rubbish dump and the flames (of such magnitude)should have caused a forest fire which would have burned the area," said Cox.

Although the 550-page report does not give further insight into who is to blame for the disappearance, it does highlight elements that could help determine the students' final fate.

It also mentions channels of investigation that were not fully developed, evidence that was destroyed and errors that were committed. Endi