Mexican court orders new investigation into missing students

A federal court in Mexico said Monday that it has ordered the investigation into the 2014 disappearance of 43 college students be done again under the supervision of a truth commission.

Accusations that suspects were tortured to give confessions convinced the court in the northern state of Tamaulipas that it was necessary to conduct a new investigation.

The court called for the creation of an Investigation Commission for Truth and Justice, according to a statement. The commission would be made up of victims’ representatives, the National Human Rights Commission and federal prosecutors.

The federal Attorney General’s Office said it did not immediately have a comment on the order.

On Sept. 26, 2014, the 43 students from a teachers college disappeared in the town of Iguala in the southern state of Guerrero. The Attorney General’s Office said local police working for a drug cartel handed the students over to cartel members.

A few months after the disappearance, the attorney general at the time said investigators had arrived at the “historical truth” of what happened: That the students were killed and their bodies incinerated in a huge fire at a garbage dump outside Iguala.

But subsequent investigations by outside experts cast doubt on that version.

In March of this year, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report saying that 34 of the 129 people arrested in connection with the students’ disappearance had suffered torture.

The report accused federal investigators and marines of extracting confessions through torture and called for those statements to be thrown out.

At the time, the Mexican government responded that all of the cited incidents were under investigation.

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