Mexican Tribunal Creates Committee to Investigate Ayotzinapa Students' Disappearance

Almost four years after security forces kidnaped 43 students from a rural teachers' school of Ayotzinapa in southwest Mexico, a tribunal in Tamaulipas has ordered the creation of an independent commission to investigate the case and has called for the families of the missing students to be allowed to participate due to irregularities in the original investigation.

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The tribunal made its decision after hearing arguments from an attorney representing the families of the victims and ordered an investigation by Investigation Commission for Truth and Justice, the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) and the Federal Public Ministry.

“(The investigation) by the federal prosecutor wasn’t quick, effective, independent or impartial,” as requested by the UN and the Inter-American Court on Human Rights' a press release from the court said. 

Adding: "There is enough evidence to conclude that torture was used to obtain the confessions of the accused."

The tribunal's decision said the relatives of the missing students and officials from the CNDH must be allowed to have input into the investigation since their statements were ignored during the first investigation and over the last few years.

The families of the missing students claim members of the military were involved in the disappearances and attempts have been made by officials to conceal their role. 

In 2015, the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH), said the investigation into the case was filled with a series of inconsistencies and called for a complete review of the matter.

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The work of the GIEI refuted the State's official version of the event that the students were killed and murdered by a cartel in a landfill in Cocula, Guerrero, near the place local police kidnapped them in 2014.

“The sentence... confirms that the truth of the Ayotzinapa case has not been told, that the victims' whereabouts have not been clarified and that the current Federal Government committed several irregularities during the investigation,” said the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center representative in the case.

Mexico's Chief Prosecutors office said that they weren't informed of the Tribunal's decision, but they disagreed with the criteria used to arrive at it, suggesting Tribunal officials were “unaware of the division of powers.”

Alberto Elias Beltran, head of the public ministry, said that the torture allegations are currently under investigation following the Protocol of Istanbul and that the office had already opened the inquiry suggested by the CNDH and the CIDH.

Mexico's Public Ministry is not independent of the State, which hampers its ability to conduct free and impartial investigations. The tribunal's decision gives the families of the victims a new mechanism and hopes to shed some light on the case.

“For the first time the parents of the missing students will be able to present evidence as main actors, something that should have happened since the beginning,” the Colombian ex-attorney Angela Buitrago, who was a member of the GIEI, told Reuters.

On September 26, 2014, students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' School of Ayotzinapa went to Iguala for a political event when confronted and kidnapped by local police. According to the official version, they were later handed over to the "Guerreros Unidos" (United Warriors) cartel, murdered and incinerated.

Witnesses and evidence, however, suggest there was greater involvement by the military in the events.