La Jornada: José Antonio Román
The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) concluded that there is no scientific evidence that a mass incineration of the 43 Ayotzinapa normal school students occurred in the Cocula garbage dump, as in the version defended by the Attorney General's Office ( PGR), made with the intent to close the case. Neither did it find evidence to establish a relationship between items recovered items in the dump-including skeletal remains of 19 people-and the disappeared students.
MV Note: In October 2014, the Argentine Forensic Team began its investigation at the request of the parents of the disappeared students. In February 2015, it presented an initial report of its review that was higly critical of the PGR report. This reinforced the convening, in March 2015, of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (IGIE), by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, with the agreement of the Mexican government, which then began its review the PGR's investigation.
In September 2015, the IGIE reported that it had reached this same conclusion about the Cocula dump. The Mexican government responded by proposing a new investingation of the dump. As the two independent investigations agree, the parents and their supporters are saying it would be a waste of time and money to carry out a third review of the evidence regarding the Cocula dump.Satellite images of the dump, obtained by the EAAF from various agencies, show that the fire area in the lower level of the dump, which the PGR indicated as the location used to burn the remains of the 43 students- had been used in previous fires since at least 2010. Therefore, it isn't possible to talk about a single event that occurred on September 26 and 27, 2014, when the young people disappeared.
The experts' opinion was made public on Tuesday at a press conference held at the premises of the Pro Juárez Human Rights Center in Mexico City, attended by parents, students of the rural normal school and lawyers. For over an hour, the methodology and the main conclusions from this independent study were presented.
The research, which took more than a year of work by a team of 30 specialists from various fields and nationalities, concluded that there were too many serious irregularities committed by personnel of the PGR. One is related to the twenty genetic profiles of the relatives of the students sent by the prosecutor to the forensic lab at the University of Innsbruck, because they were different from those submitted by the EAAF, although coming from the same individuals.
Another inconsistency occurred on November 15, 2014, when experts and prosecutors gathered evidence in the Cocula dump without the presence or alerting of the Argentine team when the agreement was that they would work together. At that time, coincidentally, 42 new cartridge cases were found ''under a rock'' in an area that had been inspected the day before without finding anything. ...Regarding the [total of] 132 cartridges that were found, they noted that they included those of long guns whose calibres mostly do not correspond to those the accused say they detonated.
Experts Dorotti Mercedes and Miguel Nieva also pointed out that in the EAAF's opinion there isn't enough scientific evidence to link the remains found in the Cocula dump with those recovered, according to the PGR, in the bed of the San Juan river, remains from which resulted the only positive identification made to date of one of the missing students, Alexander Mora Venancio.
The opinion, which includes both a site report and a laboratory report, was delivered to the PGR, which had invited the EAAF to join in a ''meeting of experts'' to analyze and compare the results achieved from various studies of the Cocula dump.
Santiago Aguirre, deputy director of the Pro Juárez Center, an NGO representing the parents of the 43 disappeared young men, said that the public and detailed presentation of the opinion of the EAAF makes it subject to public scrutiny, something that the report of the PGR has not undergone.
Among its conclusions, the Argentine team notes that the investigation regarding what happend to the Ayotzinapa students cannot be terminated, since there a significant amount of evidence is being processed. A further analysis of the skeletal remains and associated evidence is needed. This task will take several months of work. It suggests that the evidence should be interpreted in all its possibilities, without giving preference to those interpretations that only match testimonies of the accused.
The two members of the EAAF who presented the report reported that the interdisciplinary team involved in its preparation specializes in areas such as archeology, criminology, entomology and forensic botany and ballistics, fire dynamics and interpretation of satellite images, among others.
In addition, to reach the conclusion regarding the scientific impossibility of producing a fire of the size and intensity needed to reduce to 43 bodies to ashes, it was crucial compare the scientific evidence with the testimonies. The EAAF noted that the information derived from the statements of the alleged perpetrators ''presented contradictions, such as how the remains of the victims, tires, logs and other material were positioned. They varies significantly."
Therefore,
"we do not support the hypothesis that there was a fire of the required magnitude and duration stated", in the hypothesis of the PGR.Spanish original