Mexico government insists students were incinerated

Mexican authorities insisted on Sept.7 that a large number of the 43 students who disappeared last year were incinerated at a landfill, after an independent probe contradicted the official conclusion.

Tomas Zeron, the director of investigations at the attorney general's office, said the authorities had a "conclusive" expert analysis from scientists at Mexico's top university to back the official probe.
 
"We are sure that what happened was that there was a big fire" at the garbage dump, Zeron told Imagen Radio.
 
"A large group of students was burned there, without being able to confirm that it was all 43, but it was a large group of students," he said.
 
While the top investigator stood by the original line of investigation, he confirmed that a new forensic investigation would be conducted at the dump in order to "validate" the official conclusions.
 
Zeron spoke a day after investigators from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights released a report saying there was "no evidence" of any massive funeral pyre at the site.
 
The panel's nearly 500-page report ripped apart the government's investigation in a case that caused international outrage and sapped President Enrique Pena Nieto's approval rating.
 
The independent experts called on the authorities to check private and public crematoriums around the area where the students disappeared.
         
Prosecutors concluded last year that local police in the southern city of Iguala shot at buses that had been seized by the unarmed students on the night of September 26-27.
 
The officers delivered 43 students to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, which killed them, burned their bodies at the landfill in the nearby town of Cocula...