Mexican protesters torch presidential palace doors after 43 students' killers confess

[SoleSurvivor]

Mexican protesters torch presidential palace doors after 43 students' killers confess

Protesters, bereived families refuse to accept confession pending a DNA test, clinging to hope the students are alive

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 09 November, 2014, 1:16pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 09 November, 2014, 3:50pm

Agence France-Presse in Chilpancingo

Demonstrators set on fire a door of the National Palace in Mexico City. Photo: EPA

Protesters set fire to the wooden door of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s ceremonial palace in Mexico City’s historic city centre late on Saturday, denouncing the apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers.

The group, carrying torches, broke away from what had been a mostly peaceful protest demanding justice for the students. They used metal barricades as battering rams in an attempt to break open the National Palace door. They briefly set the door on fire and spray-painted the words “we want them back alive” on the 16th-century building.

Police put out the flames and enforced fencing designed to keep the protesters away. The palace is used mainly for ceremonies and now houses Mexico’s finance ministry.

Peña Nieto lives in a presidential residence across town, and was not in the palace at the time.

Earlier, other protesters torched several trucks and tossed firebombs at a southern Mexico government building on Saturday after authorities said gang hitmen confessed to slaughtering 43 students in a case that angered the nation.

More than 300 students, many wearing masks, descended on the Guerrero state building in Chilpancingo, threw rocks at its windows and burned around 10 vehicles, including trucks and a federal police vehicle.

“We are asking the same thing as usual. We want to see our comrades alive,” a masked student said.

Firefighters extinguish fire on a car after a protest in support of the missing students in Mexico. Photo: Reuters

Others chanted “they took them alive, we want them back alive” outside the building, which was partially torched in a protest over the case last month.

In Mexico City, thousands of people marched in the capital in the latest demonstration over a case that has repulsed the nation and triggered the biggest crisis of Nieto’s administration.

Protesters loudly counted from one to 43 and held candles during the evening march. Some chanted “Peña Nieto out!” and “the people don’t want you!”

Gang-linked police attacked busloads of students in the Guerrero city of Iguala on September 26, in a night of violence that left six people dead and the 43 missing.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said Friday that three Guerreros Unidos gang members confessed to receiving the students from the police, killing them and incinerating their bodies.

The confessions appeared to bring a tragic end to the mystery.

But relatives of the missing and fellow students at their teacher-training college near Chilpancingo refuse to believe the authorities until they get DNA results from independent Argentine forensic experts.

“It appears that the federal government, with great irresponsibility, is interested in closing this matter because it’s all based in testimony. There is nothing definitive,” said Meliton Ortega, uncle of a missing student.

In taped confessions, gang suspects said they bundled the students in the back of two trucks, took them to a landfill in the town of Cocula, killed them and used fuel, wood, tires and plastic to burn their bodies for 14 hours.

The students had travelled to Iguala to raise funds but hijacked four buses to return home, a common practice among the young men from a school known as a bastion of left-wing activism.

Demonstrators take part in the march for the 43 missing students of the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa. Photo: Xinhua

Prosecutors say the city’s mayor, worried that they would interrupt a speech by his wife, ordered the police to confront them. The officers shot at several buses, leaving three students and three bystanders dead.

Authorities have arrested 74 people, including the ousted mayor, Jose Luis Abarca, his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda, 36 police officers and several Guerreros Unidos operatives.

If the confessions are true, the mass murder would rank among the worst massacres in a drug war that has killed more than 80,000 people and left 22,000 others missing since 2006.

The Iguala case has undermined Peña Nieto’s assurances that authorities were finally reducing the cycle of murders plaguing the country.

Mexicans fed up with the unrelenting violence rallied behind the Twitter trending topic #YaMeCanse, or #I’mTired, after attorney general Murillo Karam was heard uttering the words at the end of his hour-long press conference on Friday.

Protesters spray-painted #I’mTiredOfFear on the attorney general’s office late on Friday.

Murillo Karam stopped short of declaring all the students dead, and said an Austrian university would help identify the remains. But he warned that evidence indicated it was them.

A burning truck is seen during a protest in support of the missing students. Photo: Reuters

Parents of the missing say they will not accept they are dead until independent Argentine forensic experts deliver DNA results.

Last month, two hitmen had already confessed to killing 17 of the students and dumping them in a mass grave near Iguala. But officials later said none of the students were among the bodies.

“It hurts to imagine that what they are saying is true,” said a mother of a student named Antonio, who like many, refused to give her name.

Some parents said the announcement of the confessions was aimed at allowing Peña Nieto to leave Sunday on a major trip to China and Australia, which has been shortened due to the crisis.

“They want Peña Nieto to go on this trip,” said Felipe de la Cruz, a spokesman for the families.

With additional reporting from Reuters