Mexico's army accused of withholding info on missing students

Mexico
# 01 April 2023 14:20 (UTC +04:00)

An independent commission investigating the 2014 disappearance of 43 Mexican students has accused the armed forces of deliberately withholding information about the case, APA reports citing France 24.

Officially, cartel members killed the students and incinerated their remains. But exactly what happened to them has been hotly disputed.

In August, a government-backed truth commission branded the tragedy a "state crime", and said the military shared responsibility -- either directly or through negligence.

There was "an internal decision not to provide more information" about the incident, Carlos Beristain, a member of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), told reporters Friday.

He said the commission's experts had seen a document from the General Staff of the Mexican Defense Secretariat with instructions "to give an agreed response".

"That for us is not acceptable," Beristain said, adding that witnesses had also informed the commission that intelligence documents were dispersed to various locations to hide them.

#
#

THE OPERATION IS BEING PERFORMED