MEXICO CITY – Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed on Thursday that a witness implicated soldiers in the disappearance of 43 students in 2014 in the southern state of Guerrero, which shook the country.
The attack on Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College interns on 26 September 2014 sparked widespread protests across the country.
The witness, known as “Juan,” said soldiers arrested a group of students, questioned them at the military base in the city of Iguala and then handed them over to a gang of drug dealers, according to a copy of their testimony released by the newspaper Reforma.
Former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos, recently arrested on United States drug charges that were subsequently withdrawn, has long refused to allow investigators access to soldiers at the base because of his possible involvement in the massacre.
The witness said members of the Guerreros Unidos gang chopped up some of the students with machetes and took their remains to a gang-controlled crematorium, while others were dissolved in acid, Reforma reported.
The evidence was placed in a garbage dump, the witness said, to support a narrative that was being promoted by the federal government at the time.
The witness’s testimony is included in the investigation by the Attorney General’s Office of the case.
López Obrador confirmed that the Reforma report reflected the testimony of the investigation.
“What the Reformation published is in the prosecutor’s file. I don’t know how they did it, but it’s real, ”said López Obrador. He warned that the charges were based on only one witness.
“We cannot say that this is what happened,” he added at a regular press conference.
The witness said that military and police commanders accepted bribes from the Guerreros Unidos. His testimony also involved the Mexico City chief of police, who recently survived an assassination attempt.
The chief, Omar Garcia Harfuch, at the time worked in Guerrero. On Thursday, he “categorically denied” the charges, saying he had nothing to hide.
Lawyers for the student’s relatives expressed concern that the investigation could be compromised by the leak of witness statements.
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