Mexico's president pledges no impunity in case of 43 missing students

Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto Monday pledged there would be no impunity in the unresolved case of 43 Mexican students missing and believed massacred in September last year.

The statement came a day after the results of a six-month investigation by an independent body completely contradicted the official version of the events that led to the students' disappearance in the southern state of Guerrero.

Pena Nieto said, "110 people have been arrested and we will not relent until all who are guilty of this very regrettable event are brought before the law."

"I am the first to take full interest -- not just as president, but because Mexican society demands it, and they are right -- in finding out what really happened," the president said at a ceremony inaugurating a stretch of highway in the central state of Puebla.

The report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and its group of independent experts debunked the main conclusion presented months ago by Mexico's Attorney General's Office (PGR), which claimed the students had been killed and incinerated over two days (Sept. 26 and Sept.27) at a garbage dump near the town of Iguala in Guerrero by members of a local drug trafficking gang who believed the youth were from a rival criminal ring.

The head of the PGR at the time, Jesus Murillo Karam, said "that is the historical truth," and moved to close the case, but officials were never able to present the forensic evidence to back up their version.

Pena Nieto said he "instructed the investigations into the tragic events in Iguala to take into account the elements provided by the (independent experts)."

The president also offered to meet again with the parents of the victims. Though he gave no date, the parents have demanded a meeting before Sept. 10, the daily Milenio reported.

The five-member group of experts ruled out the possibility the students were incinerated in the way and in the place the PGR had affirmed. Their report also indicated state and federal authorities had knowledge of the events as they unfolded, contradicting the initial conclusion that only corrupt local police in Iguala cooperated with the criminals.

All 43 students were enrolled at a rural teachers college, the Raul Isidro Burgos in the town of Ayotzinapa, which is known for its leftist activism.

According to the survivors, some 100 students set out aboard two buses on the afternoon of Sept. 26 towards the state capital Chilpancingo, where they planned to raise money for a longer trip to the nation's capital, Mexico City, to take part in an Oct. 2 march commemorating the "Tlatelolco Massacre," an attack on university students in 1968.

Soon after, in a clash with local police trying to stop the buses from advancing, six people were killed, 25 were injured and the 43 went missing. Endit