Missing Mexico students not among
28 bodies found in mass grave
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto vowed Tuesday to take action 'to avoid a repeat of
events like those in Iguala.'
October 15, 2014 11:54
Relatives and mates of the 43 missing students take part in a mass at the Cathedral
in Chilpancingo, Guerrero state on Oct. 14, 2014.
The mystery over the fate of 43 Mexican students missing
since an attack by gang-linked
police deepened Tuesday after authorities said
none was among 28 bodies found in a mass grave.
Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam announced the arrest of
14 other local police officers
in the state of Guerrero accused of abducting
the students and handing them over to a drug gang.
Murillo Karam cautioned that authorities were awaiting DNA
results for an undisclosed number
of corpses found in other graves outside the
city of Iguala, 125 miles south of Mexico City.
A new mass grave was found on
Tuesday.
But, he said, "we have some (DNA) results for the first
pits and I can tell you that they do not
match the DNA that relatives of these
young men have given us."
Two hitmen have told investigators that they killed 17 of
the students, but authorities stress that
none of the deaths will be confirmed
until DNA results are finalized.
But law enforcement officials said 300 federal police were
actively searching for the students
and treating their disappearance as a
kidnapping in a case that has sparked international
outrage and violent protests
in Guerrero.
Authorities say municipal police officers colluded with the
Guerreros Unidos gang in a night
of violence in Iguala on September 26 that
left six people dead and the 43 aspiring teachers
missing.
Witnesses saw several students being taken away in patrol
cars. Authorities have arrested 26
Iguala police officers and eight other
people, including four Guerreros Unidos members.
Parents of the students have never believed that their sons
had died and they held a candle-light
vigil at a church in Guerrero's capital
Chilpancingo on Tuesday, one day after protesters burned
part of the regional
government's headquarters in anger.
One of the mothers broke down in tears at the news that the
students were not in the mass grave.
"I didn't know. It gives us hope," she said,
declining to give her name.
President vows no repeat
The case has highlighted Mexico's struggle to purge corrupt
police and officials in towns
dominated by drug cartels.
President Enrique Pena Nieto vowed Tuesday to take action
"to avoid a repeat of events like
those in Iguala."
Murillo Karam said members of the police force in the
neighboring town of Cocula participated
in the students' disappearance and that
14 were arrested.
The officers, he said, took the 43 students from their
Iguala colleagues and "then handed them in
the city limits of Iguala and
Cocula" to the Guerreros Unidos.
A Cocula police administrator was also detained for changing
the numbers of the town's patrol
cars to conceal their role in the mass
disappearance.
The attorney general said around 50 people have been
detained in the case but that authorities
were still hunting for those who
ordered the abduction. He did not identify those suspects.
But Iguala's mayor, his wife and police chief are on the run
and wanted for questioning, amid
allegations that they unleashed the officers
on the students to stop them from showing up at
municipal events.
The students, from a teacher training college near the state
capital Chilpancingo, say they were
in Iguala for fundraising activities and
seized buses to return home.
In addition to the new arrests in Guerrero, authorities said
a Guerreros Unidos leader,
Benjamin Mondragon, killed himself rather than
surrender to federal police who had
surrounded him in the neighboring state of
Morelos on Tuesday.
National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said
two nephews of Mondragon,
known as "El Benjamon," were detained in
the operation and that the gang leader's pregnant
wife had been there.
The announcements came a day after hundreds of protesters
ransacked Guerrero's state
government offices and clashed with riot police
outside the regional congress.
More riot police were deployed in Chilpancingo after
protesters warned they would
step up their actions if authorities failed to
provide answers about the students.
Protesters have called for the resignation of Governor Angel
Aguirre, who said the violent
protests were political and an attempt to
destabilize the state.
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