The head of the Austrian Forensic Medicine laboratory considers extremely difficult for more identifications to come out of the remains found in the Cocula dump, thus the investigation remains uncertain.
Even after the identification of one of the 43 missing Ayotzinapa Teacher’s Training School, the possibilities of identifying any other are extremely small due to the terrible conditions of the remains found in a dump in Cocula, on the southern state of Guerrero, according to the opinion of head specialist from the Innsbruck Legal medicine Institute, Richard Scheithauer.
Thus, it still remains unclear if all of the 43 students were actually dumped in the same place and had the same luck than Alexander Mora Venancio.
The director of the Austrian Legal Medicine Institute, declared there were extremely low possibilities of obtaining any more results identifying the remains collected by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) at Cocula.
On the night of September 26-27, the local police of Iguala, Guerrero, shot at several buses carrying the Ayotzinapa students, killing three of them and another three civilians. Then, according to authorities, the police “arrested” 43 students and handed them to the local gang known as United Warriors.
Since then, Mexico has been hit by sustained protests demanding the return of the students.
The remains of Alexander Mora Venancio were identified running Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) analysis on a bone fragment and a dental piece.
Scheithauer declared the most advanced techniques were used on the analysis of the remains handed to them by the EAAF, and that the results are only delivered to the responsible authority who requested the exams, on this case the EAAF and Mexico’s General Prosecutor (PGR).
The scientist also said that due to the disintegration and conditions suffered by the rest of bone fragments delivered to them, it will be complicated to identify more bodies, as the incineration suffered by the corpses defies even the most modern analysis techniques.
The specialist considered employing additional techniques, such as a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis, a long term process, but even so, “the expectatives for further result are low, due to the extreme nature of the samples.”
The prosecutor’s version, presented by Mexico’s general prosecutor Jesus Murillo Karam and discredited by the relatives of the missing students, tells that the students were abducted by Iguala’s local police and handed over to members of a drug cartel who later murdered and incinerated them.
The result on the identification of Mora Venancio apparently confirms Murillo version of the facts, but the inconclusiveness of the rest of the results casts a doubt on the official version, hastily issued as a way to “close the case”, as the relatives of the 43 declared.
[Reprinted from TeleSUR English. See all of TeleSUR's indepth coverage on the missing students.]
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