Mexican authorities conclude 43 missing students are dead

World Today

The 43 Mexican students that have been missing since September are dead, Mexico’s Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said Wednesday, citing findings from an investigation. The news brought despair to the students’ parents, as controversy continues to surround the case. CCTV America’s Franc Contreras reported this story from Mexico City.

Anguished families have been waiting since late Sept. 2014 for news on their missing sons, who attended a rural teachers college in southern Guerrero state.

Authorities said local police took them into custody, then handed them over to a criminal gang that executed them.

Karam said forensic evidence, along with confessions by some of the perpetrators, prove that the students were murdered, their bodies burned at a trash dump, and thrown into a river.

“It clearly shows the dimension and the depth of the investigation, and it gives us the opportunity and the legal certainty that the students were killed under the described circumstances,” Karam said.

The Attorney General said the case will not be closed until all those responsible are brought to justice. So far, 99 people have been arrested.

Family members of the students reacted with anger, claiming Karam did not have enough proof to rule the young men dead.

“We repudiate and reject the fact that today the attorney general wants to close the… case this way,” Felipe de la Cruz, a father of a missing student said.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has urged citizens to heal from this tragic event.

“I am convinced that this moment in Mexico’s history of sorrow, tragedy, and pain, should not leave us trapped. We cannot stay there,” Peña Nieto said.