Investigator: Bodies of 43 Students Not Burned in Landfill as Mexican Government Claims

Investigator: Bodies of 43 Students Not Burned in Landfill as Mexican Government Claims

Researchers have begun disproving the claims made by the Mexican government that the bodies of 43 education students that had been executed by a drug cartel were incinerated in a public landfill.

The claims were recently made earlier this month by Mexico’s Attorney General Jose Murillo Karam, and based on confessions from cartel hitmen. On September 26, corrupt cops kidnapped 43 students from the town of Ayotzinapa in the State of Guerrero and then turned them over to the cartel Guerreros Unidos.

The hitmen then executed the students and dumped the bodies at the local landfill. Using diesel and old tires they torched the bodies for almost a day leaving mainly ashes that they later dumped in a river.

The announcement of the massacre caused Mexico to descend into chaos as thousands of protesters throughout the nation voiced their despair after losing hope of finding the missing students and the worsening security conditions in that country. 

However, Alfonso Palacios Blanco, an arson and explosives expert who spoke with Mexico’s Proceso magazine claims that there is no evidence of an incineration at the landfill. 

During the announcement made by Murillo Karam about the incineration he said that the bodies were burned with diesel and tires at 1,600 degrees Celsius, however according to Palacios, metal melts at 2,500 degrees Celsius.

Based on that, the landfill should be full of metal fragments from the tires since according to Palacios each body should have required four to five tires to incinerate.

Palacios is just one of the many forensic scientists that Proceso and other news outlets have quoted voicing out their concerns about the party line being doled out by Mexican authorities about the fate of the missing students.

Follow Ildefonso Ortiz on Twitter @ildefonsoortiz

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