Mexico: two suspected gang members admit killing 17 students
28 bodies were found in mass graves. The link with 43 students missing on 29 September remains well mysterious.
Doubt on the fate of the 43 Mexican students missing on 29 September at Iguala is dramatically reduced Sunday evening: two alleged members of a criminal gang, allied with local police, have confessed to having killed 17 of them, announced a regional prosecutor. Inaky Blanco, Attorney of the State of Guerrero, also announced at a press conference that 28 bodies had been recovered so far in mass graves near the city of Iguala. But it will take at least two weeks to establish with certainty that there are among these bodies some of the missing students, he said. "All this is a lie. (...) Young people are alive, we, as parents, we are aware, we feel,"said Maria Castrejon, aunt of one who disappeared.
The 43 young missing since 10 days are students of school Atzoyinapa normal, near Chilpancingo, the capital of the State of Guerrero, known to be a hotbed of protest. These students came on 26 September with dozens of others from the same institution in Iguala, 100 kilometres around their school, according to their account, raise funds and show. They were then seized by three local public transport buses to return home. Municipal police and armed men unidentified had fired on these buses, killing three people, and other shootings in the evening had caused three other deaths. Then it remained without news of 43 students. Witnesses provided have seen dozens of students being taken shortly after in police cars to an unknown destination.
"El Chucky"
The Prosecutor Blanco announced that two suspected criminals from the Guerreros Unidos Group - on the 30 people arrested in this case - "reported having directly participated in the murder of students". The killers have sent down a bus students, "took 17 of them to transfer them to the heights of a hill of Pueblo Viejo (municipality of Iguala) where they have clandestine graves and where they say have slaughtered", said the Prosecutor.
Two prisoners have ensured that the order to go to the scene where the students were had been given by the Director of public safety of Iguala. Order capture and murder would be given by one of the leaders of the Guerreros Unidos, nicknamed 'El Chucky'. The Director of public safety as the Mayor of Iguala, José Luis Albarca, fled after the shootings. They are currently wanted by justice.
"Avoid violence"
In those graves discovered Saturday, authorities exhumed so far "28 bodies in total, some complete, others broken with signs of calcination", also told the Attorney. "In the pits located in Pueblo Viejo, have implemented a layer of branches and trunks on which were placed the bodies of the victims, that they have sprayed a flammable substance, diesel, gasoline or oil", he detailed.
Argentine specialists, led by anthropologist and forensic Mercedes Loreti, will participate in the work of identification of corpses. Representatives of normal school students agreed to participate. In day Sunday, a lawyer for the families, Vidulfo Rosales, had indicated that 35 relatives of the victims had already provided DNA samples. But this work is likely to last: "experts in the field consider that the process to determine the identity of the remains will oscillate between 15 days and two months," said the Prosecutor.
While families waited for news in anguish, hundreds of members of the student teachers have blocked the highway leading from Chilpancingo in Acapulco, expressing their anger to the authorities. Guerrero Governor Angel Aguirre has launched a call for calm and to "avoid violence". If it is confirmed that the bodies found are those of missing students, it would be one of the worst massacres in Mexico since the beginning of the war launched in 2006 against drug traffickers, which was more than 80,000 dead.