MEXICO CITY — Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Wednesday his administration will accept a truth commission to investigate the case of 43 teachers-college students missing since Sept. 26, 2014, drawing rare praise and expressions of hope from the long-suffering parents of the victims.
Wednesday marked the fourth anniversary of the students’ abduction by corrupt police in the southern city of Iguala. Prosecutors say the police turned the students over to a drug gang, which allegedly killed them and incinerated their bodies. But apart from charred bone fragments matched to one student, their bodies have never been found.
Parents of the 43 missing youths met with Lopez Obrador, and in a tear-filled news conference afterward said they had hope for the first time in four years.
“This is the first day in all these last four years that we parents feel hope that we will get the truth,” said Epifanio Alvarez, his voice shaking. “This is the first day that a government has said to us, ‘We are going to help, we are going to get to the truth.’”
Another parent, Maria Elena Guerrero, said the new investigative commission would be coordinated with a group of experts from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, the United Nations and Mexico’s own Human Rights Commission. “Without truth there is no justice,” she said.
Lopez Obrador said he would issue a decree to create the commission when he takes office Dec. 1. He called the parents of the 43 “an example for everyone fighting for justice in […]
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