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Group queries Mexico students probe

A team of Argentine forensics experts have questioned a Mexican investigation into the disappearance of 43 students.

Forensic experts operating at a garbage dump of the municipality of Colula, Guerrero State, Mexico, where 43 Mexican students were allegedly killed.
Forensic experts operating at a garbage dump of the municipality of Colula, Guerrero State, Mexico, where 43 Mexican students were allegedly killed.

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Source: AAP


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Argentine forensics experts have questioned Mexico's investigation into the disappearance of 43 students, saying the evidence doesn't support the government's conclusion the youths were killed and burned to ashes.

The team, hired on behalf of the victims' parents as an independent party, issued what it said was a list of discrepancies in the case.

The Argentine team had access to forensic evidence and crime scenes along with federal prosecutors and Mexico's own forensic investigators.

Its statement said Mexico's government presented biased analyses of the scientific evidence to support its conclusion that the bodies of the college students were burned to ashes in Cocula in southern Guerrero state and their remains thrown into a river to hide the evidence.

So far only one of the students has been identified from charred remains found at the river.

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The team "would like to reiterate that it doesn't exclude the possibility that some of the students met the fate described by the attorney general," the experts said in the statement issued after they met with parents.

"But in our opinion there is no scientific evidence to support that in the Cocula garbage dump."

The Attorney General's Office didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on the statement from the Argentine team, a nonprofit forensics science organisation that investigates human right violations around the world.

It was established in 1984 to investigate cases of at least 9000 missing under Argentina's 1976-1983 military dictatorship.


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