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Mexico's future government, led by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, has formally requested the presence of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) which investigated the Ayotzinapa case, said Mario Patron, the lawyer for the relatives of the students who disappeared in 2014, said Thursday.
The Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center (Prodh), for which Mario Patron is the director, stated that there has been a formal request for the GIEI's return. "What they have referred to us is that the new government has requested that the Inter-American Commission (IACHR) continue with assistance and cooperation through the return of the GIEI."
Also, on Thursday, the First Collegiate Court of the Nineteenth Circuit declared as valid the creation of a Truth and Justice Commission for the Ayotzinapa case. This court ruling comes despite the fact that appeals have been filed, in at least 10 other instances, against the establishment of the commission, arguing that only the government's Public Ministry has the capacity to investigate.
"Even in the case, there are formal investigations recognized by the Attorney General's Office itself, by the National Commission of Human Rights, the United Nations Organization and the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts," the collegiate court statement read.
Prodh states that the ruling "opens, again, the opportunity for the incoming government to order the creation of the Commission of Inquiry and to reinforce international supervision through the return of the GIEI and the IACHR and the participation of the UN."
The presence of the GIEI, the independent body that investigated the case until they left Mexico in 2016, has been one of the main requests the families of the disappeared students has made to the government.
On Sept. 1, AMLO announced that, on Sept. 26, he will meet with the parents of the 43 Ayotzinapa students, on the fourth anniversary of their disappearance. It is anticipated that the IACHR and the GIEI will be present at the meeting.
The investigations by the GIEI discredited the Enrique Peña Nieto government's official version of the Ayotzinapa case findings, commonly known as the "Verdad Historica" (Historic Truth), which theorizes that the 43 students were likely killed and their bodies incinerated by criminal groups.
On Sept. 26, 2014, students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' School of Ayotzinapa went to Iguala, Guerrero, for a political event where they were reportedly confronted and kidnapped by local police.
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