MEXICO CITY, Mexico (Reuters) — Parents of Mexico’s 43 missing students announced on Monday (February 22) they would embark on a convoy from Mexico City to the northeastern Tamaulipas state to demand local police officers who were arrested in connection with the case remain in detention.
The parents fear that the 22 policemen, who are currently being held in the Tamaulipas city of Matamoros, could file an appeal and potentially be released due to a lack of evidence. But the parents of the missing students are imploring the government to keep the officers locked up. The police were captured in Iguala and Colcula, towns in the southern state of Guerrero at the centre of the case.
Local media reported that relatives of the students hope to meet with district judges in Matamoros on Friday (February 26), to request they continue to hold the officers. The parents say they also hope to study records related to the case.
The parents held a protest against the potential release of the officers on Monday in Mexico City. The lawyer for parents of the missing students, Vidulfo Rosales, said the families had not received “objective” information on the detained officers, who have been held over a year. He called for more transparency for the families.
“The parents believe that access to justice is a right of the victims and it has been denied, has not been present, which is why today we start the convoy for truth and justice, with the clear purpose so that these courts can report, provide all the proceedings which have been made and explain what’s needed to carry forward with these processes,” Rosales said.
Rosales added the parents have not been informed on how the investigation is proceeding and want to know why more concrete punitive action has not been taken.
“We understand that the processes are dotted with irregularities because the prosecutor did not carry out sufficient tests, especially in the crimes of murders of Julio Cesar Mondragon, Cesar Ramirez Nava, Daniel Solis Gallardo [referring to four of the missing students] and today there is imminent risk that the preventive police, both from Cocula and Iguala could obtain their freedom,” Rosales added.
The convoy will make stops in the states of Queretaro, San Luis Potosi and Nuevo Leon to hold meetings and protests before arriving to Matamoros.
On Sunday (February 21) a committee of independent experts organised by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) said the investigation into the students’ disappearance has been fragmented, which makes access to valuable information difficult.
The experts also said that obstacles remain to help them carry out the task at hand.
The group said the prosecutor’s office involved in investigating organized crime cases is involved in at least 11 parallel investigations into the case.
Experts from the IACHR said they had not been informed of the parallel investigations, leaving without access to relevant data about what happened on the night of September 26, 2014. That’s when the students were reportedly abducted by police in Iguala, Guerrero, one of the most violent states in the country, who in turn are suspected of handing them over to criminal groups.