Mexico: Missing Students Declared Dead

Mexico’s attorney general said Tuesday that confessions and forensic evidence show that the 43 student-teachers who went missing four months ago are dead. Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam declared that “the evidence allows us to determine that the students were kidnapped, killed, burned, and thrown into the river,” revealing images of charred remains, video clips of confessions, as well as the crime scene. Karam also said that thousands of fragments of human remains were recovered and 39 confessions were obtained among the almost 100 people arrested in connection to the abduction. Authorities have come under fire from the victims’ parents and protesters who believe the government mishandled the case. A European lab was able to identify the DNA of only one student and said the rest of the remains were too damaged. The students went missing in Mexico’s Guerrero state in September after police allegedly detained them before handing them over to a drug gang.