MEXICO CITY, (Reuters) – One of Mexico’s top crime fighters is under investigation over a key incident in the probe into the apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers in 2014, the attorney general’s office said yesterday, adding a twist to a case that has shaken the country.
The probe into officials including Tomas Zeron, head of the attorney general’s criminal investigation agency, was triggered by a report by a panel of experts questioning the circumstances in which a charred bone fragment was discovered in a river.
The fragment belonged to the only one of the 43 whose remains have been definitively identified, evidence which has sustained the government’s version the teachers were murdered by a drug gang, incinerated and dumped into the river.
Zeron came under the spotlight on Sunday when the team of international experts presented video and photographs suggesting he was at the site where the bone was found a day before its official discovery, but made no report of his visit.
The attorney general’s office said in a statement an internal disciplinary body would “investigate the actions of the public servants of the institution in these events.”
Zeron’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But responding to the panel’s disclosures on Wednesday, Zeron said the visit was legal and that he had been accompanied by representatives of the U.N. human rights office. He did not explain why the trip was not officially documented.