MEXICO CITY — There is strong evidence that Mexican police tortured some of the key suspects arrested in the disappearance of 43 students, according to a report released Sunday by an outside group of experts.
A study of 17 of the approximately 110 suspects arrested in the case showed signs of beatings, dozens of bruises, cuts and scrapes, experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said.
One man said he was nearly asphyxiated with a plastic bag, and medical studies showed another had been slapped on the ears so hard his eardrums broke and his ears bled.
The torture allegations could endanger any chance of convicting anyone in the disappearance of 43 students, who have not been heard from since local police took them in September 2014.
The government's version of events — that corrupt police handed the students over to drug gang members who killed them and burned their bodies at a trash dump — hangs in large part on the testimony of some drug gunmen who said they were tortured into confessing.
"It is a lie the way they said they caught us," said Patricio Reyes Landa in testimony the report made public. "They went into the house, beating and kicking. They hauled me aboard a vehicle, they blindfolded me, tied my feet and hands, they began beating me again and gave me electric shocks, they put a rag over my nose and poured water on it, they gave me shocks on the inside of my mouth and my testicles. It went on for hours."
Read Monday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.