Investigators Say Mexico Has Thwarted Efforts to Solve Students’ Disappearance
Source: New York Times
Investigators Say Mexico Has Thwarted Efforts to Solve Students’ Disappearance
By Azam Ahmed New York Times April 23, 2016
MEXICO CITY — An international panel of criminal investigators brought to Mexico to probe the disappearance of 43 students says it cannot solve the case because of a sustained campaign of harassment, stonewalling, and intimidation against it.
The investigators say they have endured carefully orchestrated attacks in the Mexican news media, a refusal by the government to turn over documents or grant interviews with essential figures, and even a retaliatory criminal investigation into one of the officials who appointed them. For some, the inevitable conclusion is that the government simply does not want the case solved.
“The conditions to conduct our work don’t exist,” said Claudia Paz y Paz, a panel member who earned international recognition for prosecuting a former Guatemalan dictator on charges of genocide. “And in Mexico, the proof is that the government opposed the extension of our mandate, isn’t it?”
The pressure on the investigators — described by four of the five panel members in an interview with The New York Times — undermines promises by the Mexican government to fully cooperate and uncover what happened to the students, in what is believed to be one of the worst human rights abuses in the country’s recent memory.
Read more: http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2016/04/23/investigators-say-mexico-has-thwarted-efforts-solve-students-disappearance/kxwLBUN7lERw1SvVSII0UP/story.html
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