Mexico's Official Story on Ayotzinapa a Product of Torture

By teleSUR

22 November 16

 

An internal report produced by the Mexican Attorney General serves to support claims that the missing 43 students were not burned in a dump.

leaked internal report has revealed that the much-maligned “official version of events” about the forced disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college put forward by the Mexican government was based on intelligence gathered through torture and the official previously in charge of the investigation committed a series of serious irregularities, which together completely undermine the government's story.

Proceso magazine reviewed a 177-page report, a product of an internal investigation by the Office of the Mexican Attorney-General, detailing the alleged irregular actions of Tomas Zeron de Lucio, the former director of criminal investigations responsible for overseeing the Ayotzinapa case.

Zeron was also one of the most vocal defenders of the government's official version of events.

Distrust in Zeron and his investigation grew to be so great that the relatives of the missing students cut off talks with the Mexican government after he resigned for allegedly tampering with evidence.

Though there have been two changes at the top of the office of the Attorney General, the government has yet to repudiate its official version of events, which asserts that local police apprehended the students and handed them over to the gang known as Guerreros Unidos, who authorities claim killed the students and burned their bodies in a garbage dump in the town of Cocula.

Zeron is accused of conducting investigations at the Cocula dump without the accompaniment or permission of the Public Prosecution. It was during an unauthorized visit to the dump that garbage bags purportedly containing human remains were found.

On a visit to the dump, Zeron brought with him a man by the name of Agustin Garcia Reyes, a member of Guerreros Unidos who was detained in late 2014 and “confessed” to having killed the students.

In the report, Garcia tells investigators from the Attorney General's office that he was instructed to take Zeron and other officials and point out the location of the garbage bags.

“I was detained ... I was in a cell and they just took me out and they took me to the helicopter and onboard the helicopter they told me they were going to take me to the San Juan River bridge, and that there were some bags that I had to point out, that if I did not do so, they were going to torture me,” Garcia told officials investigating Zeron's alleged misconduct.

Garcia said once at the site of the dump, he was cautioned to remember what he had been told. He said he followed instructions and pointed out the bags that purportedly contained remains linked to the missing students.

According to a separate investigation, Garcia already presented signs of torture before he was taken to the dump, suggesting he was tortured into confessing and later cooperating with investigators.

Relatives of the missing 43 students regularly denounced Zeron throughout his time leading the investigation, accusing him of mishandling the case and refusing to pursue other lines of investigation.

Zeron stepped down from his post in September 2016 but President Enrique Peña Nieto rewarded him with a higher paying position as technical secretary of the National Security Council.

The Mexican government committed itself to looking into his alleged irregular actions but the report was never made public and was not even made available to the relatives of the students.

The actions of Zeron and the revelation that Garcia was instructed to identify the location of the garbage bags completely undermine the credibility of the government's version of events.

An investigation by the Interdisciplinary Group of Experts that accompanied the official investigation, stated unequivocally that the government's official version of events was impossible.

In its damning final report, the GIEI said that federal authorities manipulated evidence and refused to follow key lines of investigation, and protected perpetrators from facing justice in order to uphold the official story.

Another separate investigation found that the immense size of a blaze necessary to burn 43 people was simply not possible in the dump.

The internal report by the Attorney General's office effectively confirms that the official version of events is unreliable.