The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) said it did not know why 21 of the 83 arrest warrants were dismissed as investigators were making arrests, including that of Mexico’s former top prosecutor, in one of the country’s most notorious human rights scandals. “For us, it is incomprehensible why these arrest warrants were withdrawn,” GIEI member Claudia Paz y Paz told a news conference, while colleague Francisco Cox called some aspects of the government’s investigation “clumsy” and “rushed.” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in 2018 pledging to reveal the truth about the suspected kidnapping and massacre of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural School, after his predecessor’s investigation was riddled with errors and abuses. In addition to renewing the mandate of the GIEI, which was formed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2014, López Obrador also appointed a special prosecutor and created a truth commission. The special counsel leading the government investigation since 2019 resigned in September over apparent interference by the attorney general, and the government replaced him with someone unfamiliar with the case. A government truth commission report in August called the disappearances a “state crime” but muddied the waters by presenting questionable screenshots of messaging as evidence, according to GIEI. GIEI later analyzed the messages and found inconsistencies it said precluded their use as legal evidence. It also said the messages were not part of the documentation used to seek the 83 arrest warrants for military, police, local officials and others, noting that prosecutors did not base their investigation on the truth commission report. Mexico’s top human rights official, Alejandro Encinas, who heads the commission, told reporters last week that the WhatsApp messages were just one part of a broader analysis. Councilor Carlos Beristain noted that the confusion surrounding the case had grown due to “an attempt to rush the results”. However, he also said GIEI stood by the evidence gathered on the arrests. “Despite what has been said in recent weeks, the research is quite strong,” he said. Berstein added that the GIEI asked to extend its term for another two months as of Monday, asking two of its four members to continue their work to ensure the smooth progress of the case. Experts insisted there was still evidence that members of the military were closely watching the events of that night but did not intervene to save the students – or even one of their own, who had infiltrated the school known for left-wing activism. Wiretaps that are part of a drug-trafficking case in Chicago have also established close contact between members of the military and the gang that was allegedly given to the students after they were seized by police, Guerreros Unidos. Experts said they have again asked President López Obrador to order the military to share all its relevant files on the case, including wiretaps they say they have from the time of the kidnappings. On September 26, 2014, local police took the students from the buses they were running in Iguala, Guerrero. The motive for the police action remains unclear eight years later, but investigators believe drug trafficking was at least partially involved. The bodies of the students were never found, although burned bone fragments have been matched to three of the students. On Sunday, the government announced the arrest of Leonardo Octavio Vázquez Pérez, who was Guerrero’s head of state security at the time of the students’ kidnapping. A former police officer from Huitzuco, a town near Iguala, was arrested last week for his alleged involvement.
