Published by proceso.com.mx. Read the Spanish version here.
At least three of the five experts of the GIEI will resume the Ayotzinapa case
BY GLORIA LETICIA DÍAZ , JULY 17, 2019
MEXICO CITY - On the eve of four years and ten months after the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa school teachers, "we are about to complete our research team,” to continue with the investigation to locate the young people, announced Cristina Bautista, mother of Benjamín Asencio, one of the students who disappeared on September 26, 2014.
At the end of the seventh meeting of the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa case, Bautista stressed that on Wednesday the Under Secretary for Human Rights, Population and Migration, Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez, confirmed that three of the members of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) will arrive in Mexico to resume the inquiries.
For the time being, the Ministry of the Interior issued a press release indicating "the members of the GIEI will be invited to the work that will be headed by the president of the IACHR, Esmeralda Arosamena, on July 31 and August 1st.
"The undersecretary said that Angela Buitrago, Carlos Martin Beristain and Francisco Cox are returning; we asked them to also bring Claudia Paz y Paz and Alejandro Valencia, because they all know the case well. Mr. Encinas said they were going to talk with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in order to reach an agreement and bring them all,” said the mother of Benjamín Asencio.
In addition to confirming the names of the members of the GIEI that will resume the investigations of the case, as technical assistants, at the meeting Encinas Rodríguez and the Secretary of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) Arturo Herrera also committed to allocate the necessary funds in order to complete the investigation, and from the beginning to finance the stay of the experts.
"We were told that our experts are going to be able to spend as much time as they think is necessary, that is very important for us, our hope is growing more, because it was what we needed, that this group that is already formed will resume research, that they will not start from scratch because our experts know the case well,” said Cristina Bautista.
It should be remembered that the members of the GIEI, assembled by the IACHR to respond to the precautionary measures issued to locate the 43 normalistas, presented two reports on the Ayotzinapa case, and based on them, six lines of investigation were recommenced but not followed during the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto.
With the creation of the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa Case, these six lines of investigation will be resumed, and the review of the facilities of the 27th Infantry Battalion will begin.
"We were told that the first thing we are going to do is review the facilities of the Iguala military barracks, and we hope that we will be given the information we requested on June 26, in a meeting we had with the National Defense Secretariat (Sedena) , which has to do with videos and photographs that they have and that are not in the file; on that date we were told that they would look in their files and that they would give us all the information they had,” added Bautista.
Given the commitment made by Encinas that it would follow up on the six lines of research established by the GIEI, "the Cocula dump (where the official version indicated that the bodies of the young people were incinerated) was eliminated, because there is no evidence that happened," he said.
Optimistic from the results of this Wednesday's meeting, Cristina Bautista stressed that for the parents of the 43 missing teachers "hope will grow more,” with the confirmation that at least three of the five members of the GIEI will collaborate to clarify the case.
"They did not tell us when they will start working, only soon, and we think that since we have waited a long time, we can wait another bit, because we know the research is not going to start from scratch, they will continue.”
"We feel we took another step forward, because the finance secretary said that we should not worry, that resources will not be lacking for the experts to come,” said Cristina Bautista.
In a statement, the Ministry of the Interior informed that the meeting was also attended by the Deputy Representative in Mexico of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jesús Peña Palacios, and the representative of the Special Follow-up Mechanism of the Ayotzinapa Case of the IACHR, Fiorella Melzi.
La Segob highlighted that the Peña Palacios "presented the legal framework of the benefits and incentives for effective collaborators, in accordance with the national legislative framework and international human rights standards that can be implemented by the Presidential Commission."
Melzi indicated that on July 31 and August 1, "the first official meeting of the commissioned president Esmeralda Arosamena de Troitiño and the commissioner Ernesto Vargas will take place, to continue with the Work Plan of the Special Mechanism of Follow-up for the Ayotzinapa Case, to which members of the GIEI will be invited."
The unit said that "an additional meeting of the Presidential Commission will be convened to delve into the progress in the pending research lines."