Mexico to Create New Prosecutor for Country’s Disappeared

The students disappeared September 26, 2014, in the city of Iguala.

Activists hold signs during a rally to protest the Mexican governments handling of the Ayotzinapa 43 incidence outside the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights as the commission is to hear testimonies on General Human Rights Situation in the State of Guerrero, Mexico March 20, 2015 in Washington, DC.

Family members of 43 missing students who went missing past year announced an upcoming hunger strike to mark the first anniversary of their disappearance after riot police and protesting students clashed on a highway in southwestern Mexico Tuesday.

Enrique Pena Nieto spoke for nearly three hours with parents of those missing in a Mexico City museum ahead of Saturday’s first anniversary of a tragedy bedevilling his administration.

Sanchez said after the meeting that there was not a clear timeframe for when the demands would be answered, but that it would be done promptly.

Eduardo Sanchez, the president’s spokesman, told reporters after the closed-door meeting that the families had presented eight demands and that Pena Nieto had instructed his Cabinet to analyze each and get back to them.

AI blasted the Mexican government, saying its “unshakable determination to convince the world that the students were killed by a drug gang and their remains burned in a dumpster is distracting from any other valuable lines of investigation”. “You and I are looking for the same thing”.

“We went today to try and make the government take off its mask, be transparent and help us find our children”, one of the mothers said at the press conference.

The IACHR experts urged the government to investigate whether the students were attacked because they inadvertently seized a bus used by the cartel to transport heroin. The country’s chief prosecutor would also create a team of forensic experts to re-examine evidence and the crime scenes.

The attempt to locate 43 missing teacher trainees in the vicinity of the southern Mexican city of Iguala, a search mainly carried out by groups of civilians, has brought to light dozens of clandestine graves containing more than 100 bodies and revealed the alarming level of violence in that municipality.

Among the families’ demands is that the government should look into the possible role of the army in the disappearance of the students.

Pena Nieto, meanwhile, will travel to New York that night for the United Nations General Assembly, despite past criticism for taking trips at times of tension in the country.