Mexican authorities are preparing to arrest dozens of people involved in the abduction and alleged murder of 43 students in southern Mexico three years ago, the prosecutor in charge of the case said on Friday.
Prosecutor Alfredo Higuera told a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Bogota that he had received new evidence to file charges against 30 people, including local police officers.
The disappearance of 43 student teachers on September 26, 2014 in the city of Iguala in the state of Guerrero caused an international outcry, which struck Mexico's reputation and undermined the popularity of President Enrique Pena Nieto.
Guerrero has become Mexico's deadliest state as a growing number of gangs fight to control poppy fields used to produce opium, the main ingredient in heroin.
An initial government investigation said the 43 had been abducted by corrupt police officers who handed them over to members of a local drug gang, who then killed them, burned their bodies in a landfill and dumped their ashes into a river.
However, an international team supported by IACHR revealed irregularities in the case that undermined the conclusions of the formal investigation.
Higuera launched a new investigation in 2016 and said on Friday that he had developed new research lines.
In a radio interview later Friday, Higuera said he ruled out the possibility that students, who ordered buses to the Mexican capital to protest, had unknowingly taken a bus with a secret heroin shipment.
Mario Patron, director of the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Center for Human Rights (Centro Pro), which represents the family members of the missing, told the IACHR that there were doubts about the progress of the new investigation.
He said that no new charges have been filed since December 2014.