Photos of attack against Ayotzinapa students in Iguala go missing

By Silber Meza

A member of the military intelligence who witnessed the attack against a group of students of the teachers training college of Ayotzinapa in Iguala by municipal police on September 26, 2014 took four or five photos of the incident with his cell phone, downloaded them to his computer and handed them over to his superior at the 27th Battalion of Iguala.

However, he deleted the photos from his cell phone because he did not consider them important. Now those images are missing from the file of the investigation, as well as the video taken by security cameras installed in the same government building.

The attack in front of the Justice Palace is one of the least documented in the Ayotzinapa file. The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights investigating the case says that all the students traveling on the bus Estrella de Oro No. 1531 disappeared.

The driver of this bus said in his statement that he was intercepted by at least two police cars in Iguala. “Around 20 police officers, most of them hooded, stepped down from their cars, fired some shots, cut the tires of the bus with a knife and yelled: 'We will kill you all.' A police officer said to me: 'I will also kill you mother f***er, while he put his gun against my chest through the bus window.”

In his statement the soldier that took the photos said that the bus was surrounded by members of the municipal police of Iguala traveling in five Pick-up trucks who tried to force the students to leave the bus, but they couldn't because the students threw stones at them.

He added that three more police vehicles arrived at the place and threw two tear grenades inside the bus. When the students (around ten of them) left the bus they were handcuffed and forced to lay on the floor, belly down.

The driver and the soldier are the only two witnesses of the incident other than the students. On several occasions the experts have requested to interview the members of the 27th Battalion of Iguala, but the Mexican government has refused.