MEXICO CITY – The 43 students who died last September 26 from Iguala, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, were killed by assassins of the group of drug dealers Guerreros Unidos . And their bodies were set on fire. The federal attorney general, Jesus Murillo Karam, announced that three men arrested in recent days in the investigation confessed to being the perpetrators of the massacre.

“I am aware of the enormous pain that this news can cause”, said Murillo, adding that the three – all belonging to the narco Guerreros Unidos group – said they had taken delivery of the boys, stopped by the municipal police of Iguala, and of having them taken to the nearby town of Cocula. About 15 would die of asphyxiation before arriving at the dump where the others would be killed. “The inmates said that they threw the bodies into the lower part of the landfill, where they burned them. They took turns to make sure the fire burned for hours, pouring fuel, tires and other objects over it,” the prosecutor said. pointing out that some students were “still alive when they were set on fire”.
The flames burned all night and the heat released was such that the killers had to wait until the evening of September 27th to remove the ashes, break up the remains of the bones and pour them into black plastic bags for garbage, which they then threw into the near the San Juan River, where they were found by police divers. Murillo added that the state of poor student remains makes identification difficult and will be sent to a specialized laboratory in Austria to analyze DNA traces.

The students, all in their 20s, had been arrested by corrupt agents and handed over to members of the powerful local drug trafficking cartel. In recent days, the police arrested the former mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, and his wife on charges of having ordered the murder of young people guilty of organizing a protest during one of his meetings. The public safety officer of the former prime minister is still at large.

(07 November 2014)