Forensics Experts Identify Remains of One of 43 Missing Mexican Students

MOSCOW, December 7 (Sputnik) — Forensics experts from the University of Innsbruck in Austria have identified the remains of one of the 43 Mexican students that went missing in September, Mexican officials told the press on Saturday.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP and AFP that the University of Innsbruck lab, which had been given the task of identifying the remains by an Argentine forensics team, had found a positive match.

“One of the pieces (of bones) belongs to one of the students,” one of the officials told AFP. The student, identified as Alexander Mora, age 19, was among the 43 students of a teacher’s college who were kidnapped by corrupt police officials and murdered by a drug cartel in a scandal involving police corruption, gang violence, and government apathy which has rocked Mexico over the past several months.

The families of the missing students, who continued their protests in Mexico City on Saturday near the capital’s Monument to the Revolution, were informed about the find on Friday by the Argentine forensics team which is working with the Mexican Attorney General’s Office.

Last month, Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam had said that his office had detained over 70 people, including gang members, police officers and Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca in the state of Guerrero in an ongoing investigation of the killings. His office had revealed that three members of the Guerreros Unidos gang had confessed that the students had been handed over to them on Abarca’s orders following protests in the city of Iguala over a speech by Abarca’s wife. The gang executed them, burned their bodies, wrapped their remains in garbage bags and dumped them into the San Juan River in Cocula, about 22 kilometers from Iguala, the Attorney General said.

Before the officials’ revelation Saturday, the Attorney General’s Office had earlier noted that the condition of the remains was such that it was unlikely that any would ever be identified, leading the students’ parents to hope that their children may still be alive. Dozens of graves and sets of remains have been found in the violence—riddled state of Guerrero since the search for the students began, adding to the confusion.

Despite the grim news, many of the teens’ parents continued to hope that their children would still somehow turn up alive. Felipe de la Cruz, the father of one of the students, stated that “if they think one confirmation will leave us simply to mourn, they’re wrong,” AP noted.

Omar Garcia, a student who had attended the same teachers’ college as the missing students, said that Alexander Mora’s father told him that he “will never give up…will never get over his pain, but what he wants to tell all of you, and what we all want to say is this: We want justice!”

Protests continued on Saturday in Mexico City over the missing students; the demonstrators shouted “Justice!”, “We want them alive!” and “Pena Out!”, referring to embattled Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has been called upon by some of the protesters to resign. The Mexican President had announced a series of reforms late last month amid growing calls from his countrymen to do something about the extreme levels of violence that plague the country.

At least 120,000 people are said to have been killed, with over 27,000 reported missing, since the country’s drug-fueled gang warfare flared up in 2007. The problem has been amplified by corruption and indifference on the part of the government, issues which President Nieto hoped to address through his proposals for security reform.