The disappearances were earlier linked to police at a local level colluding with drug cartels
Mexico has expanded its probeinto the 2014 disappearance — and suspected killing — of 43 students in the southern city of Iguala, with new developments indicating the possible involvement of national and state-level law enforcement.
A special federal prosecutor handling the investigation said he recently received 100 declarations from 19 federal and 39 state police personnel in the Mexican province of Guerrero, Reuters reports. The prosecutor, Alfredo Higuera, said declarations had been made by “individuals from all forces.”
The Iguala students, all of them teachers-in-training, are believed to have been abducted by corrupt local police from the buses they were traveling to Mexico City in. According to a heavily-contested government report, they were then handed over to a prominent drug cartel, which subsequently killed them. However, a witness to the abduction had said earlier this year that at least two federal police officers were present, and Higuera said an analysis of hundreds of official phone conversations has revealed additional information.
“This is an investigation that goes beyond any situation, both because of the number of victims and the number of people who took part in it,” he added.
The fate of only one of the students — whose charred remains were found in garbage — has been definitively ascertained.
