Six of the 43 Mexican students that disappeared in 2014 were kept alive in a warehouse for days before the commander of a local army base ordered their executions, a Mexican government official has said.
Interior Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas, who is leading a Truth Commission examining the disappearances, made the revelation with little fanfare during a lengthy defence of the commission's report, first released a week earlier.
Last week, when the report was released, Mr Encinas made no mention of six students being turned over to Colonel Jose Rodriguez Perez, but did declare the abductions and disappearances a "state crime" and said that the army watched it happen without intervening,
On Friday, Mr Encinas said authorities had closely monitored the students from the radical teachers' college at Ayotzinapa from the time they left their campus through to their abduction by local police in the town of Iguala that night.
A soldier who had infiltrated the school was among the abducted students, and Mr Encinas asserted the army did not follow its own protocols and try to rescue him.
"There is also information corroborated with emergency telephone calls where allegedly six of the 43 disappeared students were held during several days and alive in what they call the old warehouse and from there were turned over to the Colonel," Mr Encinas said.
"Allegedly, the six students were alive for as many as four days after the events and were killed and disappeared on orders of the Colonel."
The defence department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the allegations Friday.
Long-held suspicions of army involvement
The role of the army in the students' disappearance has long been a source of tension between their families and the Mexican government.
From the beginning, there were questions about the military's knowledge of what happened and its possible involvement.
The students' parents demanded for years that they be allowed to search the army base in Iguala. It was not until 2019 that they were given access, along with Mr Encinas and the Truth Commission.
The commission report says the army registered an anonymous emergency call on September 30, 2014, four days after the students' abduction.
The caller reportedly said the students were being held in a large concrete warehouse in a location described as "Pueblo Viejo". The caller proceeded to describe the location.
That entry was followed by several pages of redacted material, but that section of the report concluded "As can be seen, obvious collusion existed between agents of the Mexican state with the criminal group Guerreros Unidos that tolerated, allowed and participated in events of violence and disappearance of the students, as well as the government's attempt to hide the truth about the events."
Later, in a summary of how the commission's report differed from the original investigation's conclusions, there is mention of a Colonel.
"On September 30 'the Colonel' mentions that they will take care of cleaning everything up and that they had already taken charge of the six students who had remained alive," the report said.
In a witness statement provided to federal investigators in December 2014, Captain Jose Martinez Crespo, who was stationed at the base in Iguala, said the base commander for the 27th Infantry Battalion at the time was Colonel Jose Rodriguez Perez.
'It was the state'
Through a driving rain later on Friday, the families of the 43 missing students marched in Mexico City with a hundreds of other people, as they have on the 26th of every month for years.
Parents carried posters of their children's faces and rows of current students from the teachers' college marched, shouted calls for justice and counted off to 43.
Their signs proclaimed that the fight for justice continued and asserted: "It was the state."
Clemente Rodriguez marched for his son Christian Alfonso Rodriguez Telumbre, who was a second student identified by a tiny burned bone fragment.
Mr Rodriguez said the families had been told last week, before the report was released, about the Colonel and the six students.
"It's not by omission anymore. It's that they participated," he said of the military.
"It was the state, the three levels of government participated."
He said the families had not yet been told that any of the arrest orders announced last week for members of armed forces had been carried out.
On September 26, 2014, local police took the students off buses they had commandeered in Iguala.
The motive for the police action remains unclear eight years later. The students' bodies have never been found, though fragments of burned bone have been matched to three of the students.
Last week, federal agents arrested former Attorney-General Jesus Murillo Karam, who oversaw the original investigation.
On Wednesday, a judge ordered that he stand trial for forced disappearance, not reporting torture and official misconduct.
Prosecutors allege Mr Murillo Karam created a false narrative about what happened to the students to quickly appear to resolve the case.
Authorities also said last week that arrest warrants were issued for 20 soldiers and officers, five local officials, 33 local police officers and 11 state police officers as well as 14 gang members.
Neither the army nor prosecutors have said how many of those suspects are in custody.
It was also not immediately clear if Colonel Rodriguez Perez was among those sought.
Mr Rodriguez, the student's father, said Mr Murillo Karam's arrest was a positive step.
Mr Murillo Karam "was the one who told us the soldiers couldn't be touched," Mr Rodriguez said. "And now it's being discovered that it was the state that participated."
In a joint statement, the families said the Truth Commission's confirmation that it was a "state crime" was significant.
However, they said, the report still did not satisfactorily answer their most important question.
"Mothers and fathers need indubitable scientific evidence as to the fate of our children," the statement said.
"We can't go home with preliminary signs that don't fully clear up where they are and what happened to them."
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has given Mexico's military enormous responsibility.
The armed forces are not only at the centre of his security strategy, but they have taken over administration of the seaports and been given responsibility for building a new airport for the capital and a tourist train on the Yucatan Peninsula.
The President has said often that the country's army and navy are the least corrupt institutions and have his confidence.
AP
