(Mexico City) Hundreds of protesters clashed with law enforcement outside a military site in Mexico City on Friday, demanding renewed justice in the case of the 43 students who disappeared just eight years ago in Mexico.
Posted at 6:17 p.m.
To cries of “assassins”, some threw improvised explosive devices inside Military Camp 1, three days before the anniversary of the disappearance of the “43” of Ayotzinapa and after new revelations implicating the ‘army.
PHOTO FERNANDO LLANO, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The police protect themselves with shields while objects and smoke grenades are thrown in their direction.
Demonstrators tore down railings and briefly entered the military compound, during this third day of clashes after a demonstration Wednesday in front of the Israeli embassy and a clash with the police Thursday in front of the general prosecutor’s office.
The police pushed them back with water jets, AFP journalists noted.
The same morning, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who allowed new progress in the investigation, had condemned the violence.
PHOTO FERNANDO LLANO, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The students disappeared on the night of September 26 to 27, 2014 in Iguala, in the state of Guerrero (south), where they had gone to “requisition” buses in order to demonstrate in Mexico City.
According to the official investigation in force so far, the 43 young people were arrested by the local police in collusion with the Guerreros Unidos gang and then shot and burned in a landfill for reasons that remain unclear. Only the remains of three of them could be identified.
President Lopez Obrador has set up an “Ayotzinapa Truth Commission”, according to which the Mexican military bears part of the responsibility for this crime, one of the worst cases of human rights violations in Mexico where has some 100,000 missing.
Ex-Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam was arrested after the commission’s report was published in mid-August. He is to be tried in criminal court for the disappearance of 43 students.
Mexico asks Israel for the extradition of Tomas Zeron, ex-head of the Criminal Investigation Agency during the time of former President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018). He is accused of manipulating evidence in the case.