Mexico City, Sept 28 (EFE).- Parents of the 43 missing Mexican students from Ayotzinapa demanded Thursday to criminally investigate all those involved in the events, including then-President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).
“Because there was a meeting of authorities in which former President Enrique Peña Nieto and other higher-level authorities participated, we are asking that a thorough criminal investigation be opened, that the people who appear there be prosecuted and punished, including the expresident,” said the families’ lawyer, Vidulfo Rosales, at a press conference.
Rosales accompanied the families of the young people who disappeared on September 26, 2014, in the southern state of Guerrero, in a sit-in outside Military Camp 1.
They demanded that the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador hands over the information that the Army has, so the investigation can continue.
“We don’t know what those files contain, the information in the military archives, but we are sure that it is related to the whereabouts (of the 43),” said Rosales.
The family members asked to investigate those who appear in the files presented so far, including the current aspirant to the Mexico City government leadership, Omar García Harfuch, who was coordinator of the Federal Police in Guerrero in 2014, when the crime occurred.
According to them, García Harfuch also created the “historical truth,” the controversial version with which Peña Nieto sought to terminate the investigation.
This “historical truth” claimed that corrupt police officers detained the students and handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos cartel, which murdered them and burned them in the Cocula landfill.
In addition, the families believe that Mexico’s former attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam, now detained, could not act without an order from Peña Nieto.
“They materialized the ‘historical truth,’ but other authorities participated in its construction. All those authorities who participated in the construction must be investigated,” insisted the lawyer.
The parents asked López Obrador to fulfill his promise to deliver the truth, as they affirmed that they had not been given any reason about the young people’s whereabouts, as promised by the president since his campaign in 2018.
This is after the controversy raised in recent days about the files that the Army did not deliver, and that is essential to continue with the investigation, according to the parents, their representatives, and the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI).
The parents announced the suspension of the sit-in. Still, they stressed that they would return if they do not receive the necessary information.
The controversy is growing amid the ninth anniversary of the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa youths because time is running out for López Obrador to fulfill his promise to resolve the case in his last year in office, which ends in October 2024.
The families, who initially supported the president, now accuse him of protecting the Army, for which they also announced that they will evaluate the government’s cover-up in the coming months. EFE
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