Experts ask for Mexico to check new leads in 43 missing case

A regional human rights body investigating the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico has asked police to inspect two sites that parents of the missing hope could shed light on the case.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said Monday that relatives of the aspiring teachers have given the group two "very concrete" locations related to the September 26 mass disappearance in southern Guerrero state.

The families gave exact geographic coordinates for one location, while they believe the second one is suspicious because the area appears to have changed and "could have been used" in the disappearance, commission expert Carlos Beristain said, refusing to provide more details.

"We have given the information to the federal police chief for the police to analyze it and give a response to the families about these locations," Beristain told a news conference, adding that the commission has not verified the reliability of the data.
The commission began its work in early March with the government's consent in a case that sparked protests against President Enrique Pena Nieto. The body is due to give its conclusions on the case in September.

The attorney general's office says the 43 young men were abducted in the town of Iguala by municipal police in league with a drug gang, which slaughtered the students and incinerated their remains.

But relatives refuse to believe the government's conclusions. Only one student has been identified among a set of charred remains found in a landfill and river near Iguala.

The commission said last month that the experts still "do not have any certainty" about what happened to the students, who had gone to Iguala in stolen buses to raise funds for their protest activities.
On Monday, the panel said it had visited Iguala to reconstruct the scene of the attack and had developed new lines of investigation.

"We have given the attorney general's office a series of ideas," said commission member Francisco Cox, declining to give details about their theories.

"The formula for a line of investigation to fail is to make it public."