A witness to the disappearance of 43 Mexican students in 2014 has told investigators that federal and municipal police were present when the youths were forced from their bus, according to the country’s national human rights commission.



The new testimony suggests that federal officers at least allowed local police to abduct some of the students – who have never been found – and may have actively participated in one of Mexico’s most notorious recent human rights atrocities, said commission member José Larrieta Carrasco.



Larrieta also said that businesses had impeded the investigation by hiding evidence. He would not identify the companies or say whether they were the bus lines involved.

Federal authorities have blamed the disappearance of the students in southern Guerrero state on the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel with the help of local police from the towns of Iguala and Cocula. Thursday’s revelations suggest the cartel had even broader influence and implicate federal police as well as local police from another town in the region.

“The facts released today could constitute clear evidence of the co-opting of municipal institutions by criminal organizations in Iguala, Cocula and, now with the information being released, probably Huitzuco”, with the participation of municipal police officers from those towns in the disappearance of the students, Larrieta said. “In the same way it could be an example of the alleged involvement of federal police officers.”

On 26 September 2014, a total of 43 students from the Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa disappeared in Iguala after hijacking buses, a common tactic they used to acquire transportation to protests.



One bus had left the station with students aboard and was on a federal highway leaving Iguala when local police in pursuit shot out its tyres, forcing it to stop under an overpass known as the Chipote bridge, Larrieta said.

Iguala police surrounded the bus and began breaking its windows with rocks and sticks. Students responded with their own rocks until police tossed teargas into the bus, forcing them to exit. Police pushed them to the ground and handcuffed them. They were loaded into Iguala police patrol trucks.

Relaying the witness’s account, Larrieta said: “One police officer told another that no more students would fit. The second officer said it was no problem, because police from the town of Huitzuco were on their way. Three police vehicles from Huitzuco arrived shortly thereafter and the rest of the students were loaded into them.”

When two federal police officers arrived in two patrol vehicles, one asked an Iguala policeman what they were doing, Larrieta said.



According to the witness, the local officer told the federal police officer that the students had “messed with one of their own” and they were taking them to Huitzuco where “the boss” would decide what to do with them.

Larrieta said the witness account was corroborated by other statements from Iguala police already in custody.

The commission urged the federal attorney general’s office to investigate Huitzuco police and find the identities of the two federal police who were at the scene. It also said authorities should investigate the possibility that state officials were also present.

Associated Press contributed to this report.