The Interdisciplinary Group Independent experts (IGIE) said yesterday that, in investigating the Iguala case, the Attorney General's Office (PGR) has a strong tendency to return to the scene of the Cocula garbage dump, where, according to the official version, the disappeared Ayoztinapa normal school students were executed and incinerated.
They also expressed that in their second [six-month] phase of their mandate [which began in March 2015] to intervene in the investigation, "obstacles, delays and difficulties" persist. Carlos Beristain, one of the five members of IGIE, created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) said that one is the inexplicable refusal to allow them
"to interview directly soldiers of 27 Infantry Battalion who were in Iguala the day the events occurred, and whose statements could be essential in the investigation."Yesterday, Beristain, along with his fellow experts, Francisco Cox and Claudia Paz, spoke to students at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), regarding the report submitted last September [in which it concluded the students could not have been incinerated in the dump]. He said the group is "worried about these negative signs" of wanting to return to the theory the dump and the refusal to allow them to interview the military.
For his part, Francisco Cox, who also referred to the tendency of the PGR to hold onto the version of the dump - marshalled by the then Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam-, rather than advance the search for the disapppered students and in the investigation of those responsible, he acknowledged that as an adjunct group, the IGIE has had access to much information, but it has not been total.
He added that questions about the whereabouts and what finally happened to the missing youths should be raised with the State:
"We are only five people, we have no police force. We are helpers; we have done our best, but we have not been given full access. They gave us a lot of information in the first stage and now, also, but there is other information to which we have not been given access," he said.In the presentation of the report to the ITAM students, Cox said the PGR is still evaluating whether it will incorporate into the investigation the recent expert study of the Cocula dump by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), mainly because it was a study requested by the parents of the victims.
In this manner, Beristain acknowledged the work of the Argentine team, and referred to it as being broader and complementary, not only confirming the study performed by the IGIE, but also providing greater scientific evidence to determine that the incineration of the bodies of the disappeared students could not have happened at the dump. He stressed the importance of the report will be discussed at a meeting of experts with the PGR, and said that this would be part of the agenda that the team will make public in the coming days.
Even though, from his point of view, he said a new survey of the Cocula dump is unnecessary, he said the IGIE will not oppose it, but it needs to be done with the utmost professional quality, involve leading experts and use scientific criteria, so as not to create confusion among the population.
Regarding the future of the IGIE, once it has completed its second term on April 30, Claudia Paz said that, while the group is doing its utmost in the investigation and search for the youths, it ultimately will be the CIDH, together with the Mexican government and relatives of the victims, to decide the next step.
She recalled that the initial agreement was that the mandate could be renewed until it meets the purpose for which the group was created. However, Beristain himself noted that the Mexican government has already signaled its intention not to renew it. Spanish original