Whoever had Alexander Mora's bone fragment must have information about the whereabouts of normalistas: Mercedes Doretti

For Mercedes Doretti, founder and director for Central and North America of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), the origin of the remains of the Ayotzinapa student Alexander Mora Venancio, which were found in the San Juan River in October 2014, could shed light on the fate of the the rest of the students who, seven years away from the events in Iguala, Guerrero, are still missing.

In an interview with journalist Carmen Aristegui on her radio program Aristegui Noticias, Mercedes Doretti highlighted the presentation of the video released by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) last Monday, where elements of the Navy manipulate evidence in the Cocula garbage dump on the morning of October 27, 2014, hours before the official start of the investigation into the crime.

He considered that the presence of seafarers at the crime scene gave rise to many questions.

“Obviously this, in any investigation, is very serious. It immediately needs to be investigated. Who were the people who were there? What have you been doing? why were they there? , who authorized them to be in that place? because also as the GIEI report comments, the garbage dump was already under some protection from the security forces,” he said.

He confirmed that the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team had no knowledge of the presence of the Navy since 6:30am on October 27, 2014, hours before the arrival of the experts.

Doretti recalled that the team was received by the then prosecutor Jesús Murillo Karam, who told them that the garbage dump was one of the places to be investigated and he asked them to work together with the PGR experts.

Murillo told them that some detainees indicated that there might be remains that correspond to the students instead. “There were, of course, many people who had already arrived at the scene, but within what we assumed they were still part of an official diligence; we had no knowledge that Navy personnel had been there at 6:30 in the morning and outside the official stage there,” he said.

He stressed that an explanation should be sought about the fire that appears in the video.

“This area was also under investigation, wasn't it? Although the remains were found in the lower area of the dump and the fire appears in the upper area, it was also an area absolutely under investigation, because according to the historical version in the upper area it is where students would have been killed and their remains later lowered, therefore it was an extremely important area in terms of research”, he stressed.

“So, putting a fire in this area is incredible, let's say, it's like putting a fire exactly on a crime scene; regardless of the reasons, you have to investigate it clearly and the same thing you have to investigate those white packages to what they correspond to,” he stressed when referring to the three white packages that are seen in the video, right next to the Navy vans and which subsequently disappear.

The Argentine expert emphasized that this situation is similar to what happened in the San Juan River on October 28, 2014, where activities were carried out prior to the official stage where the remains of Alexander Mora Venancio were allegedly found.

He clarified that the bone remains that appeared in the place were not found by the EAAF, but was presented to them in a bag and they were told that it had been found there.

“It was already on a table and they tell us that they found it in a bag and we reported this since 2014 in a press release,” he said.

That is why, he stressed, the question remains where that fragment that corresponds to Alexander came from.

“It didn't come out of the bag found in the river. Where did it come from and how did federal authorities come to obtain that fragment? Without a doubt, the identification is scientifically correct and whoever was in possession of that fragment must have information about what happened to the rest of the students,” he said.

“But that fragmentation was, as we also noted at that time, very different from the previous ones. It was much larger, it was practically not burned and in that sense it had possibilities of DNA being extracted from it, much more than from the others, from which practically nothing could be extracted. It was a very unusual fragment compared to the rest of the set of remains that had been found at that time. It immediately caught our attention and we also noticed it,” he stressed.

He recalled that the remains found in the “La Carnicería” canyon, one kilometer away from the garbage dump, allegedly belonged to Christian Alonso Rodríguez Telumbre and Joshivany Guerrero Cruz; Mercedes Doretti

“I understand that the prosecutor (special Omar Gómez Trejo) is investigating it; in the statements that came out last year from the protected witness under the pseudonym Juan, some possible explanations appear, but hey, it is a testimony of a protected witness,” he said.

“The investigation obviously has to be extended far beyond those sayings, where he points to the possibility that the ministerial police were acting by receiving some remains as an exchange with organized crime from federal authorities. But that is a testimony that was leaked to the press, which has to be strengthened by more facts and more investigations, right? But the traceability of where that sample came from would undoubtedly have to reveal an important part, which is what happened here,” he insisted.

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