President-elect López Obrador has renewed his pledge to establish a truth commission to investigate the case of 43 students who disappeared in Guerrero in 2014.

The future president’s promise, made yesterday during a press conference in Guanajuato, came in response to remarks by the head of legal affairs at the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), who claimed that a new investigation would not be objective.

“Sedena . . . believes that that the truth commission is not provided for in the Mexican legal system nor is it provided for in any international treaty . . . We think that an investigation by an institution that representatives of the victims will be in charge of won’t have the objectivity and impartiality that is required,” Alejandro Ramos Flores told the newspaper El Universal.

But López Obrador, who will be sworn in as president on December 1, said it was imperative to establish exactly what happened to the 43 students in Iguala on September 26, 2014 and that the creation of the truth commission was not in any doubt.

“Taking care of the army means finding out the whole truth about what happened to the young men from Ayotzinapa. You don’t take care of the army, you don’t protect an institution by hiding the truth. He who owes nothing fears nothing, so yes, the truth commission is going ahead,” López Obrador said.

The Tamaulipas-based First Collegiate Tribunal ordered in June the creation of the commission to undertake a new investigation into the case of the students who disappeared in Iguala and later were presumably killed, ruling that the original investigation “was not prompt, effective, independent or impartial.”

The court said the truth commission would be made up of victims’ families and their representatives and the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) who will together direct and oversee the work of prosecutors from the federal Attorney General’s office (PGR).

But the current government has resisted the court order and launched legal action against it.

In contrast, López Obrador appears intent on getting to the bottom of what really happened and reminded reporters that he told parents of the missing students last week that “everyone,” including the army and Federal Police, will be investigated in relation to the case.

According to the federal government’s “historic truth,” corrupt police in Iguala handed over the students to the Guerreros Unidos criminal gang whose members executed them and burned their bodies at a municipal dump in the nearby town of Cocula.

But that version of events has been widely rejected by independent forensic experts, human rights groups, journalists, family members and others who suspect that the army may have played a role in the students’ disappearance and deaths.

Source: El Universal (sp)