Crime · updated 1h ago · 3 min read
Mexico’s Federal Investigators Link Guerreros Unidos Calls to Ayotzinapa Funeral Homes
Phone tracing links Ayotzinapa disappearances to funeral homes and Iguala’s forensic service. Mexico opened four new investigation lines identifying 17 new suspects.
Whether a funeral-home family is the key focus.
5 of 6 outlets skipped it: funeral-home-linked evidence includes unregistered crematorium.
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WWashington Post
“Authorities say new evidence points to the involvement of a family”Read the original ↗
NewsNation
“Nearly 20 new suspects have been identified and arrested 12 years after the 2014disappearance of 43 male students”Read the original ↗
The Washington Post emphasises a specific funeral-home family, while NewsNation highlights newly arrested suspects from phone-call analysis.
New leads, old wound
Mexican federal officials said they believe they are closer to cracking the case of the 43 rural college students who were taken into police custody in September 2014 and then vanished. President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters Tuesday, "It’s been an open wound for all Mexico," and she said, "But sometimes, these processes move at their own pace." Investigators said new evidence points to the involvement of a family that owned two funeral homes in Iguala, Guerrero, where the students were last seen, and phone records show members of the local cartel Guerreros Unidos placed calls to Rodolfo Rueda Sebastián on the night of the disappearance.
Mauricio Pazarán, who is directing the federal investigation, said investigators found "unregistered skeletal remains, bodies with duplicate files, and remains with dates that reference back to 2014." Authorities said the funeral parlors’ owner, three family members and several state employees were arrested and jailed late last year in connection with the case and charged with forced disappearance.
Phone trails and protests
Thousands of people attended an annual march in Mexico City to demand justice for 43 young men studying to be rural teachers in Ayotzinapa, in the violence-hit state of Guerrero, and the investigation suggests police handed the students over to a local cartel. Mauricio Pazaran said a new analysis of phone calls made on the night of the students' disappearance led to the arrests of the 17 new suspects, and he said the analysis revealed communications between public officials, police officers, individuals linked to organized crime groups, and private citizens.
Edith Olivares Ferreto, Amnesty International’s executive director in Mexico, warned that the new report presented by the Mexican government does not guarantee families’ access to the truth and said, "From Amnesty International we warn that opening new lines of investigation should not imply that those that remain pending are closed or ignored." Maria de Jesus Tlatempa told CBC News, "Everything points to the military," and she said, "Up to this day, we don't really know what happened to our sons."
What is at stake next
The investigation now involves 168 people being prosecuted in the case, 130 of whom were in pretrial detention, and authorities said only three bodies have been recovered. Mauricio Pazarán said investigators found an illegally obtained weapon, a bone and unregistered bone fragments and teeth at a funeral home, and he said a public employee and a municipal police officer had used the cellphones of two students days after their disappearance. The government opened four new lines of investigation to clarify the disappearance of the 43 students, and Arturo Medina said, "For the Government of Mexico, clarifying what happened at Barandilla is a priority line of investigation."
“He said that a total of 168 people are being prosecuted in the case, 130 of whom were in pretrial detention.”
Amnesty International urged the Mexican Government not to substitute previous findings with "new narratives" that center the explanation of the events solely in the local realm, and it said the investigation must be "serious and independent" to clarify the actions of prosecutors, police, and the Armed Forces at all levels. The Washington Post reported that in September 2014 dozens of students aged 15 to 25 traveled from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School to Iguala, where a squad of municipal police officers allegedly in collusion with Guerreros Unidos opened fire and 43 were detained by police and haven’t been seen since.W