News   /   Mexico

UN set to probe Mexico government over missing students

People take part in one of several marches commemorating four months of the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico City on January 26, 2015. ©AFP

The United Nations has announced plans to probe the government in Mexico over the case of the 43 students who have been missing and feared murdered in the country’s Guerro State since last September.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) said it is set to start two days of talks with Mexican officials in the Swiss city of Geneva on February 2.

Meanwhile, parents of the missing students said they would send a separate delegation to meet with the UN panel in Geneva.

On September 26, 43 student teachers disappeared in the southern city of Iguala in the state of Guerrero following an attack by police forces suspected of having links to drug gangs. The incident took place during a protest over teachers’ rights.

Violent protests have erupted in Mexico since officials announced that members of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel had confessed to killing the young men and burning their remains after receiving them from corrupt police officers.

The UN commission further said it is tasked with monitoring compliance with an international convention to protect people against forced disappearance, to which Mexico and 43 other states are signatories.

“I am going to make an accusation of enforced disappearance against the police who took part in the case, the mayor of Iguala, the police chiefs and all officials who may have had something to do” with the case, said the Mexican attorney general, Jesus Murillo Karam.

Karam added that his team had interviewed 99 individuals, including members of a criminal gang thought to have murdered the students.

The remains of only one of the students, identified as Alexander Mora, were earlier identified after his badly burnt bones were sent to a laboratory in Austria for DNA analysis. The lab said, however, that it was not possible to identify any others due to the bad condition of the remains believed to belong to the students.

Parents of the students said that without proof, they would continue to believe their children were still alive. The families insist that there has been a lack of conclusive forensic results.

GMA/MKA/SS


Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Press TV News Roku