MEXICO CITY (AP) – New testimony from a collaborating witness directly implicates the Mexican army in the disappearance of 43 university students in a 2014 incident that continues to haunt the country, according to a newspaper report on Wednesday.
The Reforma newspaper said the witness, presumably a gang member identified only as “Juan,” alleges that soldiers arrested and interrogated some of the students before handing them over to a drug gang.
The students’ bodies were then burned in a local crematorium or dissolved in acidic or caustic solutions and poured into drains, the witness said. Other bodies were reportedly dismembered and scattered near the town of Taxco.
The revelation could further embarrass the army, which has recently been hit by allegations that a former defense secretary was being paid by a drug gang. It could also mean that most of the students’ remains will never be found.
The Interior Department confirmed that the testimony was part of the case file and said it would file charges against those who leaked it. The department did not comment on the veracity of the newspaper’s version of the testimony.
But a person familiar with the case said the testimony was new, from early 2020, and was part of the case file.
The witness said an army captain, who now faces organized crime charges in the case, arrested some of the students at a local military base and questioned them, before handing them over to the United Guerreros drug gang.
The police arrested another group and gang members captured others. In all, the witness said that 70 to 80 people were arrested, handed over to the gang and killed, because the Guerreros Unidos gang believed that criminals from a rival group were among them.
The accusation is part of a series of conflicting testimonies that offer different versions of what happened to students at a college of rural teachers who were hijacking buses when they were arrested by the police and handed over to a drug gang.
Over more than six years of investigations, Mexican authorities have found dozens of clandestine graves and 184 bodies, but none of the students have disappeared.
According to initial investigations of the September 2014 events, Iguala city police handed over the students to members of the cartel, who allegedly killed and burned them. However, fragments of charred bones were fully compared to just two students.
The witness “Juan” allegedly told investigators that bone fragments found near a garbage dump near Iguala were planted by the drug gang to divert investigations.
Prosecutors once claimed that the students had been burned at a huge pyre in the dump, a version that independent forensic experts later said was not viable.
“Juan” said that in reality, some of the students’ bodies were dissolved in caustic solutions and poured into drains, while others were shredded and incinerated at a local funeral home.
An official at that funeral home in Iguala, known as “El Angel”, confirmed that she has a crematorium. It would have been a bold move, implying almost complete control of the gang of drug dealers in Iguala, because the funeral home is also the base of the local coroners’ office.
But there were reams of conflicting testimonies in the case, including some allegedly extracted under torture by investigators in a previous government.