Case of Mexico's 43 missing students persists among tens of thousands of disappearances

MEXICO CITY (AP) — All countries have crimes that resonate. In Mexico, one of the modern day ones is the disappearance of 43 students from a rural teacher’s college in 2014.

Ten years later, it’s still not clear where the students from the Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa are. Authorities believe they were killed, but have only turned up small bone fragments from three of them.

The families, with the support of the school known for its radical activism, continue to demand justice. They maintain a lack of political will is responsible for not finding the truth. If it was a “state crime” as the current administration says, the government must know what happened and who is hiding information.

In a country with more than 115,000 registered disappearances, this case continues to hold the public’s attention because it combined cartel violence and corrupt authorities and remains stubbornly unresolved.

It’s considered an emblematic case and another example of abuses that occurred decades ago in Mexico’s dirty war and were never corrected.

The students were attacked by security forces linked to a local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, in Iguala, when the students were stealing buses to transport themselves to a protest.

During the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), authorities said the students had gone to Iguala, Guerrero to protest at an event — the mayor, now jailed, was linked to local gang Guerreros Unidos. They were allegedly mistaken for members of a rival gang.

The Peña Nieto administration said that Guerreros Unidos had abducted and killed the students, burned their bodies in a huge fire and tossed their ashes into a river.

But investigations by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the successor Attorney General’s Office and a Truth Commission created in 2019, found that the fire at a dump was a lie built on false statements extracted under torture and manipulated evidence.

Those subsequent investigations found that an enormous operation was put in motion that night involving members of Guerreros Unidos, but also local, state and federal police. And the army was aware of everything that was happening because it had a base in Iguala, soldiers in the streets and spies among the students.

Investigators said members of the army were involved with the gang in smuggling heroin from the mountains of Guerrero on buses to the United States. Prosecutors said the decision to hide the truth was taken at the highest levels of government.

There are more than 100 people in custody and dozens have been charged, but no one has been convicted.

At the end of the previous administration, Mexican courts determined that the investigation was plagued by errors and manipulation. There were dozens of cases of torture.

Those abuses and missteps led to many of those involved being released. Some have been arrested again under the current administration.

The highest-ranking person charged is former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, who is accused of torture, forced disappearance and obstruction of justice. There are also 16 soldiers, most of whom are awaiting trial on house arrest, which infuriates the students’ families.

López Obrador had promised to find the students and hold those responsible accountable. But in 2022, when more and more evidence pointed toward the military’s involvement in the attack and cover-up the administration’s tone changed.

The president had ordered the military to open its archives to investigators. That didn’t happen. Instead, López Obrador shifted more power and responsibility to the military than any president in recent history.

The prosecutor leading the investigation, Omar García Trejo, was suddenly demoted after he sought arrest orders for two dozen soldiers. He was replaced by someone unfamiliar with the case.

There was also growing political pressure to show results, said Santiago Aguirre, one of the families’ lawyers. The administration presented some evidence that did not appear to come from reliable sources and the government’s searches turned slipshod.

Where do the families want the investigation to go?

Their lawyers point out key arrests are still lacking, among them the man who led the investigation during the Peña Nieto administration, Tomás Zerón. In videos, Zerón is seen interrogating and threatening prisoners. He sought refuge in Israel, which has not agreed to extradite him despite Mexico’s request.

They also say they want to see military intelligence records from that night that they still haven’t had access to. They want too more cooperation from the United States government, which has prosecuted members of Guerreros Unidos in drug trafficking cases that also revealed their ties to the military.

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First-year students gather in the dining hall at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Political posters and stickers hang inside the print shop at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

FILE - People protest the disappearance of 43 students from Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School and demand authorities find them, in Chilpancingo, Guerrero state, Mexico, Oct. 8, 2014. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

FILE - Mexico's Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam attends a press conference in Mexico City, Friday, Feb. 28, 2014. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

Classmates of the 43 Ayotzinapa students who went missing almost 10 years ago march to demand justice for their loved ones in Chilpancingo, Mexico, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Photos of 43 students who have been missing for 10 years cover the stairs at their former Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

BEIRUT (AP) — For almost a week, ophthalmologist Elias Jaradeh has worked around the clock, trying to keep up with the flood of patients whose eyes were injured when pagers and walkie-talkies exploded en masse across Lebanon.

He has lost track of how many eye operations he has performed in multiple hospitals, surviving on two hours of sleep before starting on the next operation. He has managed to save some patients’ sight, but many will never see again.

“There is no doubt that what happened was extremely tragic, when you see this overwhelming number of people with eye injures arriving at the same time to the hospital, most of them young men, but also children and young women,” he told The Associated Press at a Beirut hospital this past week, struggling to hold back tears.

Lebanese hospitals and medics were inundated after thousands of hand-held devices belonging to the Hezbollah militant group detonated simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, killing at least 39 people. Around 3,000 more were wounded, some with life-altering disabilities. Israel is widely believed to have been behind the attack, although it has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

Although the explosions appear to have targeted Hezbollah fighters, many of the victims were civilians. And many of those hurt in the attack suffered injuries to their hands, face and eyes because the devices received messages just before they detonated, so they were looking at the devices as they exploded.

Authorities have not said how many people lost their eyes.

Veteran and hardened Lebanese eye doctors who have dealt with the aftermath of multiple wars, civil unrest and explosions, said they have never seen anything like it.

Jaradeh, who is also a lawmaker representing south Lebanon as a reformist, said most of the patients sent to his hospital, which specializes in ophthalmology, were young people who had significant damage to one or both eyes. He said he found plastic and metal shrapnel inside some of their eyes.

Four years ago, a powerful blast tore through Beirut’s port, killing more than 200 people and wounding more than 6,000. That explosion, caused by the detonation of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrates that had been stored unsafely at a port warehouse, blew out windows and doors for miles around and sent cascades of glass shards pouring onto the streets, leading to horrific injuries.

Jaradeh also treated people hurt in the port explosion, but his experience with those wounded by the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies has been so much more intense because of the sheer volume of people with eye injuries.

“Containing the shock after the Beirut port blast was, I believe, 48 hours while we haven’t reached the period of containing the shock now,” Jaradeh said.

Jaradeh said he found it hard to dissociate his job as a doctor from his emotions in the operating theater.

“No matter what they taught you (in medical school) about distancing yourself, I think in a situation like this, it is very hard when you see the sheer numbers of wounded. This is linked to a war on Lebanon and war on humanity,” Jaradeh said.

A man who was injured in the explosion of one of the handheld devices, lies inside an operation room ahead of an eye surgery at the Eye Specialist hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A man who was injured in the explosion of one of the handheld devices, lies inside an operation room ahead of an eye surgery at the Eye Specialist hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A man who was injured in the explosion of one of the handheld devices, lies inside an operation room ahead of an eye surgery at the Eye Specialist hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A damaged eye of a man who was injured in one of the handheld exploding devices is seen through a screen, inside an operation room during an eye surgery at the Eye Specialist hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Elias Jaradeh, a legislator and an ophthalmologist, left, who has conducted dozens of operation for victims of this week's attack in Lebanon, makes an eye surgery operation for a man who was injured in the explosion of one of the handheld devices, at the Eye Specialist hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A man who was injured in the explosion of one of the handheld devices, sits outside the Eye Specialist hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Doctors make an eye surgery operation on a man who was injured in the explosion of one of the handheld devices, at the Eye Specialist hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A man who was injured in the explosion of one of the handheld devices, lies inside an operation room ahead of an eye surgery at the Eye Specialist hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Elias Jaradeh, a legislator and an ophthalmologist, center, who has conducted dozens of operation for victims of this week's attack in Lebanon, makes an eye surgery operation for a man who was injured in the explosion of one of the handheld devices, at the Eye Specialist hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)