Yesterday, the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (IGIE) [reviewing the government's investigation into the attacks, in Iguala, Guerrero, on students from the Ayotzinapa normal school and the disappearance of 43 of them on Sept. 26 and 27, 2014] accused the Attorney General of the Republic of failing to comply with the agreements on the dissemination of data from the new study conducted in the Cocula garbage dump, where, according to the federal government, the cremation of 43 Ayotzinapa normal school students who were disappeared on September 26, 2014, in Iguala, Guerrero, occurred.
According to th IGIE, the agency headed by Arely Gómez took a "unilateral decision" that violated the confidentiality that the experts were to maintain regarding the work done and the requirement that anything that was to be made public should be agreed upon by the group.
The evening before, the PGR and one of the experts from the Collegial Group of Experts on Fire spoke without the consent and support of the rest and unveiled preliminary results of the new study that, without providing conclusive data, suggest that 17 people could have been cremated in the Cocula dump. Although this information was presented as demonstration that futher research is required to perform wider-range testing, it is clear that the management of this information generates or encourages confusion among the public and presents the IGIE as the source of contradictory versions. It is to be recalled that, months ago, the international experts had determined the unlikelihood that 43 Ayotzinapa normal school students could have been cremated in the Cocula dump.
It does not seem accidental that this episode occurs a few days before the IGIE's current term of work in Mexico ends [April 30], and at a time when the federal government has undertaken a campaign to maintain that the work of the group has already been completed, although to date the whereabouts of the disappeared students is unknown.
For several months, members of IGIE have been subjected to unfair campaigns to discredit them individually them, the authorship of which is still in the shadows and which have generated an enabling environment for an unmerited lynching and media pettiness, without any action on the part of the authorities to back the group's performance.
Now, the way in which the information was presented and the breach of the agreements reached with the IGIE make the episode seem a deliberate act of disinformation and torpedoing of the credibility of the international experts.
With such an attitude, the authorities expose themselves, in an irresponsible manner, in a major act of discrediting: first, because the version released yesterday does not shore up the so-called "historical truth" of the PGR [that all 43 students were incinerated in the dump], but also darkens the prospects for getting to the bottom of what happened the night of September 26 in Iguala. In addition, it gives the impression that the federal government has no plan to clarify the facts, and it solidifies the perception that the authorities have managed a double discourse regarding the IGIE's investigation: while in official statements it backs the group's work, it seems that, in fact, it is torpedoing it.
Perhaps it is not yet too late for the government to rectify the course it has adopted so far, recognize the damage to its image and that of IGIE, and that it is disposed, with political will and good faith, to promote a thorough, honest and objective investigation into the events that occurred in Iguala more than a year and a half ago. Spanish original