http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/opinion/2-years-after-mexican-students-vanished.html 2016-10-06 10:24:12 2 Years After Mexican Students Vanished Mexico promised to diligently investigate the disappearance of 43 students, but it has become clear officials are more interested in damage control than the truth. === The State Department quietly notified Congress last month that it had decided, after considerable deliberation, to certify that Mexico had made enough progress in upholding human rights to justify receiving its full security aid package of about $155 million. That reversed While Mexico has announced a series of initiatives to curb the use of torture, and it promised to more dutifully investigate forced disappearances, its commitments cannot be trusted, not least because of the stunning mishandling of the investigation into the suspected massacre of 43 university students two years ago. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who sought the aid conditions, said Mexico had not made sufficient progress in ending torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings. “Instead, we have seen a pattern of failing to investigate, destroying evidence, threatening witnesses and covering up for corrupt and abusive soldiers and police,” he told The Times. “It is not only the cases on the front pages of the newspapers; it is thousands of nameless Mexicans who are victims of the officials whose job is to protect them.” Emblematic of the shortcomings of Mexico’s justice system is the government’s failure to offer a credible account of what happened to the students from Ayotzinapa after they vanished on the night of Sept. 26, 2014. In April, an exhaustively documented report by a panel of international experts charged that Mexican officials had misplaced, disregarded and fabricated evidence, raising the possibility of a cover-up. The government’s account held that the students, who were traveling in buses, were killed by drug cartel members after local police officials had pulled them over. The independent experts found one important piece of evidence that not only casts doubt on the official version of events but signaled that senior law enforcement officers may have been involved in the cover-up of the massacre. This was a video recorded on Oct. 28, 2014, showing Tomás Zerón de Lucio, then the chief criminal investigator at the attorney general’s office, near a river not far from the site of the students’ disappearance. It included images of a bag containing charred human remains. In its official narrative, the government claimed that marine divers found those remains in the river the day after the video was shot. Last month, the attorney general’s office