The Mexican government’s claim that 43 missing students were killed and burned in a local trash dump in the state of Guerrero nearly a year ago has been discredited by a six-month investigation from an international working group.
The inquiry, published Sunday, also found that the police who allegedly attacked and abducted the students last Sept. 26 could have been acting directly under the orders of drug traffickers to reclaim a cargo of illegal heroin stashed in at least one of the buses in which the students were traveling at the time the attacks occurred.
The kidnapping, disappearance and presumed deaths of the students in the city of Iguala has been one of the biggest scandals to rock the administration of Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto since he took power three years ago.