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Opinion by Ricardo Raphael*
After last Sunday it will be very difficult to rescue the explanation given by authorities about the disappearance of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa (that they were burned beyond recognition at the dump of Cocula and then tossed into a river in plastic bags by a criminal gang colluded with local police).
Even if some are determined to discredit the report submitted by Interdisciplinary Group of International Experts of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAHRC), the scientific arguments and contradictory testimonies may have washed that truth away for good.
Nobody is denying the possibility that one or more corpses were burned at the dump. But that all 43 corpses were incinerated is not believable.
Investigations will reveal what happened to each of the different groups of students, but it is likely that they did not have a similar fate. However it is still early to reach conclusions. The group of experts has not submitted all its information.
However one thing is clear: if the investigation lines presented on Sunday prove to be true, the charges against more than one hundred people who were allegedly involved in the students disappearance would be at risk of collapse.
What charges? For example, the self-incriminating statements made by the members of the gang Guerreros Unidos, that according to former attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam were the alleged perpetrators of the crime.
The experts report concluded that the testimonies may have been obtained under torture and the analysis of what happened at Cocula dump makes this version plausible.
But the historical truth could go even further. Since the Attorney General's Office (PGR) assumed responsibility of the investigation in October 2014, it said that José Luis Abarca, former mayor of Iguala now behind bars, was the mastermind of the operation. However, it is intriguing that the experts report said little regarding the alleged responsibility of Abarca.
On Sunday Carlos Beristain, head of the experts group, said that under Abarca enforced disappearance increased in the state, but he did not present the former mayor as the mastermind behind the crime.
This might be because no conclusive evidence was found or because evidence pointing to other individuals as the real culprits was found.
Among the arguments shared by the group of experts there is an interesting statement: the testimony of a man who drove one of the buses that was taken on September 26 to a safe house, white and with a black gate at Iguala's downtown, where he stood before an individual with athletic appearance who might have been the head of the criminal operation.
Who was this man? José Luis Abarca?
It is difficult to assume that the driver did not recognize Abarca, especially if his testimony was taken once the former mayor was already a public figure.
Also it is hard to believe that the mayor had so much power to mobilize municipal, state and federal police forces against the students and ensure that the military would behave as passive witnesses of the atrocities.
ZOOM: This would not be the first time that a “scapegoat” helps authorities get by. If the lie about the dump of Cocula aroused strong passions, bumping into other falsehood could have even more serious consequences.
*To learn more about the author: http://ricardoraphael.com/
@ricardomraphael
