By Nancy Caouette
MEXICO CITY
A little less than a month after 43 students disappeared from a southern Mexican town, a prominent religious leader said Wednesday they were kidnapped and then burned alive.
Father Alejandro Solalinde told The Anadolu Agency that five witnesses who have had contact with police gave him the information on the missing students .
“The witnesses said that police officers forced the students to climb in patrol cars. All of them said to me that some of the youth were burned alive with wood and diesel, others were killed,” Solalinde said, adding that “some of the 43 missing students might be still alive.”
The 2012 Mexican National Human Rights Award winner has been in contact with several students from Ayotzinapa college, where the students attended, who participated in the Sept. 26 protest in Iguala just prior to their disappearance, and with relatives of the victims.
Solalinde is categorical on one point: no organized crime members were implicated in that crime, according to the testimonies he heard.
“None of the five witnesses has mentioned an implication of drug cartel members in this crime. Nevertheless, there is a missing link in that story. We don’t know who killed and burned these youth,” he said while stressing that abduction and torture involving the police and army abound in Mexico’s recent history.
Earlier this week, Solalinde visited the attorney general’s office in Mexico City to provide information he has in the case but he said authorities did not have time to receive him. The priest, however, is looking forward to meeting Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam on Thursday, who extended a formal invitation to meet with the human rights activist.
“I will give all information that I received from the witnesses,” he said. “I will also indicate to the attorney general the place where, according to the testimonies, some of the students have been buried.”
When asked Solalinde if he feared reprisals, he said that he recently received threats and has been living with "death threats for many years now" but that will not prevent him from "pursuing [his] mission."
Solindade is the founder and coordinator of Hermanos en el camino, or Brothers on the path, a migrant shelter in Ixtepec, and one of a few activists who denounced the San Fernando massacre, in which 72 illegal migrants were executed by organized crime members in 2010 in the northern state of Tamaulipas.
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