News reports indicated a few days ago that the 43 Mexican students who disappeared in southern Mexico in September were abducted by police on order of a local mayor, and are believed to have been turned over to a gang that killed them and burned their bodies before throwing some remains in a river.
“This is the conclusion that investigators have reached”, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, said. However, he cautioned that it cannot be known with certainty until DNA tests confirm the identities and that this would be an extremely difficult task because the badly burned fragments of the bodies make it difficult to extract DNA. A report today indicated that the preliminary findings of DNA tests have not found any trace of the bodies of the students.
EI has reacted to the news reports by issuing a strongly worded protest letter to the Mexican authorities, expressing its sympathies to the families and colleagues of those who have disappeared, demanding that no efforts be spared to find them and that an independent investigation be undertaken into the whole affair.
Some of the parents of the college students reacted to the earlier news reports by suggesting that the evidence was inconclusive and insisting that their children are still alive. "We are not going to believe anything until the experts tell us it is them," said Mario Cesar Gonzalez, the father of one of the students. Another parent, Isrrael Galindo, said the government was releasing these stories in an attempt to stop protestsover the disappearance of the students and to stop the public demanding answers.
The victims were men mostly in their 20s studying to become teachers at a college in rural Ayotzinapa. On September 26, they travelled on buses and vans to nearby Iguala for a protest about lack of funding for their school. They haven't been seen or heard from since.
Three men arrested in connection with the disappearance of the students admitted to having killed a large number of people believed to be the students.
Authorities have arrested Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca, called the "probable mastermind" in the mass abduction, and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda. They were captured while hiding out in Mexico City earlier this week.
The Iguala incident has sparked protests all across Mexico, some of them violent. There have been multiple acts of vandalism in Guerrero state. Protesters have blocked roads and tollbooths in cities like Chilpancingo, the capital. They have also blocked access to shopping malls in the beach resort of Acapulco. The protests spread to the capital, where tens of thousands marched this week demanding that the missing students be found alive.