t the end of the night of Sept. 26, 2014, in the Mexican city of Iguala, it rained. The lifeless
bodies of Daniel Solís and Julio César Ramírez, two students from a rural teachers college in the nearby town of Tixtla, lay drenched on the asphalt. No one had been able to help them. Their classmates, who had traveled to the town to steal buses to drive to a political protest, had run off in terror as an unidentified shooter opened fire. Everyone tried to escape the chaos at the same time, but Daniel and Julio didn’t make it.
The authorities arrived around 3:20 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 27, about three hours after the killings, to take away the bodies and gather evidence from the corner of Juan Alvarez and Periférico streets. Reports written by forensic experts leave no doubts about the severity of the violence inflicted against the students, who only had rocks to defend themselves. Three buses had been shot up and dozens of empty rounds lay on the ground, along with a fragment of a finger, pools of blood and leather sandals. Their owners were either dead, hiding or disappeared.
Tens of thousands of Mexicans have gone missing in recent years, but the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students has become a rallying point for much of the Mexican public, and provoked the most serious political crisis for the federal government in decades. Once the darling of the international media, President Enrique Peña Nieto saw his domestic approval rating and his image abroad plummet because of repeated accusations that his administration mishandled the investigation into what became of the 43 students.
As dusk fell on Sept. 26, a group of more than 100 Ayotzinapa students traveled toward the city of Iguala to steal buses, a common tradition among the state’s leftwing college pupils, who often use them to go to political protests. That night, after taking the buses, the students were attacked three times. The first one was at 9:40 p.m., when the municipal police fired shots into the air. Then around 10 p.m., the students were shot at by both the municipal police and the federal police. In the third attack, around midnight, the students were once again shot at, this time by a group they could not identify.
By the end of the night, three students and three bystanders had been killed, more than 15 students had been wounded – and 43 had been abducted.
Eight months have passed since then, but more questions than answers remain about what happened that night. Federal prosecutors, whose case rests partly on confessions that appear to have been given during torture, allege that Iguala Mayor José Luis Abarca ordered the attacks on the students to prevent them from disrupting a political event for his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda. (In
fact, the political event that night ended two hours prior to the first attack.) They say local police took the 43 missing students from Juan Alvarez street in Iguala, where the violence took place, and brought them to the Iguala police station at 11:30 p.m. From there, the federal attorney general’s office says two police patrol trucks from the nearby municipality of Cocula carried the students away, to be handed off to the drug gang Guerreros Unidos, who prosecutors say killed the students and incinerated their bodies in a dumpster in Cocula.
But a magistrate judge who spent the entire night of Sept. 26 in the Iguala police station offers a completely different account. In an exclusive interview as part of an investigation supported by the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley, former Magistrate Judge Ulises Bernabé García describes what he says really happened in the Iguala police station that night. It’s the first time a member of the security forces present at the police station that night has spoken publicly about what happened there – calling into question the government’s official investigation.
ernabé García worked in the municipal police station in Iguala through the night when the 43
students from the rural teacher’s college of Ayotzinapa disappeared, and into the next morning. Speaking in a Mexican border city before crossing into the U.S. to ask for asylum, he said the missing students were never brought to the station, and police from neighboring Cocula never visited the station either, as the Enrique Peña Nieto administration claims.
Bernabé García says that at the time when the federal attorney general maintains the students were brought to the Iguala police station, a captain with the 27th Infantry Battalion was at the station with a group of soldiers. Shortly after that, Guerrero State assistant Attorney General Víctor León Maldonado arrived and took control of the station. If the students had been there, Bernabé García says, the army and the state attorney general’s office would have seen them.
Furthermore, he says, it would have been difficult to transport that many students into the police station in the first place.
“Let’s consider the fact that the students don’t fit in the squad trucks, much less with the police in there too,” Bernabé García said. “It’s not logically possible, right? Did the police officers walk behind the squad trucks?"
The transfer of the students to the Iguala police station is a key link in federal prosecutors’ case against the local government, and one that distances the state and federal government from the attacks and abduction. Removing that link leaves a gaping hole in the version of events offered by federal and Guerrero state authorities. Without it, we don’t know who took the 43 students, when it happened or where they were taken.
Bernabé García testified before federal prosecutors on Nov. 21, who then sent him home. Shortly after that, the military went looking for him. Police from the neighboring town of Chilpancingo tried to find him at his home, where he lives with his mother. Bernabé García wasn’t there, but several of his family members were.
“They entered illegally, they didn’t have a warrant or anything,” he said. “They went in, drew their weapons in front of my family -- my mother, my sister who was at the house at the time, my nephews who are 7 and 9 years old. In front of another nephew, who’s 5 years old, they drew their weapons.”
On Jan. 15, the federal attorney general’s office issued an arrest warrant for his alleged participation in the kidnapping of the students and for alleged connections to organized crime. Fearing for his safety, he fled to the United States and filed a petition for asylum. U.S. authorities routinely detain asylum seekers while their cases move forward in the courts. Since April 20, he’s been stuck in an Arizona immigrant detention center.
ernabé García, 29, started working for the local government in Iguala five years ago, focusing on rural
development. During local elections in 2012, he served as a personal assistant to the Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate for mayor, Eric Catalán. Catalán lost the 2012 election, and two months after the next mayor, José Luis Abarca, took office, Bernabé García asked to be transferred to the municipal police to avoid being fired. He took a job there as a legal consultant.
In July of last year, the magistrate judge took a leave of absence and Bernabé García temporarily took over the gig. His job mostly consisted of writing tickets and handing down jail time for administrative
offenses: public intoxication, disturbing the peace, urinating in public. He was scheduled to return to his old job on Sept. 30.
“What happened to me was bad luck more than anything,” Bernabé García said.
His name is mentioned in investigations opened by both the state and federal attorney general’s offices, which accuse him of interrogating the students in the police station and then handing them over to Cocula police. He paints a different picture.
Bernabé García says only six detainees entered the police station the night of Sept. 26. All were between 30 and 35 years old, and all of them were arrested for drinking in public. Each one received a ticket and was placed in a holding cell. The last one arrived around 9:30 p.m.
Bernabé García’s version checks out against testimony offered Sept. 27 by local police, who said only six people had been detained that night -- one was arrested near a bakery, while the other five were arrested while driving drunk.
Meanwhile, the students left Ayotzinapa about 6 p.m. in two buses and arrived in Iguala two hours later. By the time they entered the town, they were already being monitored by state and federal police. At the bus station, the students began to steal additional vehicles. At 9:40 p.m., after the students had taken three buses and left the bus station, police near them shot into the air. The buses continued on their way, followed by police. Sometime between 10 and 11 p.m., the three buses turned onto Juan Alvarez street, which was being blocked from the front by municipal police. As the students’ buses were trapped by the police, near the road’s intersection with Periférico, they were shot at once again. In depositions and in videos they recorded during the attack on their cell phones, the students identified both the federal and municipal police.
By 11 p.m., the police had left, and the survivors called the press and their friends for help.
ernabé García said he didn’t find out about the attack right away because as an administrator, he didn’t have
access to police communications equipment. Around 11:30 p.m., the police officer guarding the station’s front door came to tell Bernabé García that a military officer wanted to see him.
The military already knew about the attacks on the students, but the captain entered the station, accompanied by five men, all armed and in uniform, under the pretext of looking for a white motorcycle. He inspected every corner of the station: cells, bathrooms, offices. The six drunk detainees were still there. None of them were students from the Ayotzinapa teacher’s college.
He identified himself as “Captain Crespo.”
“It was the first time I’d seen him and it felt a bit suspicious because he patted me on the back,” Bernabé García said. “He talked as if we knew each other. I gave him all the freedom he wanted: ‘You can search the station.’” The inspection lasted about 15 minutes. Then Crespo left.
Shortly after 11 p.m. that night, some students gave a press conference on the corner of Juan Alvarez and Periférico streets, where the initial attacks had taken place. Around that time, a truck carrying local soccer players – who some believe were confused for Ayotzinapa students – were assaulted by unknown gunmen on the Iguala-Chilpancingo highway. Three people died and several others were injured.
Then around midnight, as the students and journalists gathered for the press conference, an unidentified group of people opened fire on them. It was this third attack that killed Daniel Solis and Julio César Ramírez. The next morning, another student, Julio César Mondragón, was found dead a few kilometers away, with skin torn from his face.
Students and their attorneys say some of the students were abducted during the second attack, and others were taken while fleeing the third attack.
Around midnight, several students fled to Cristina Hospital, a few blocks away from the shooting, according to a deposition taken from surviving student Francisco Trinidad Chalma. They brought a student who had been shot in the face. The army followed.
“The [person] in charge of those [military] units asked if we were the Ayotzinapa students looking for help for our friend who was bleeding profusely, and he told us that we’d ‘have to have balls to face this situation, just as you had the balls to make this goddamned mess,’” Trinidad Chalma’s statement says. “They searched through the whole clinic … looking for weapons, but we weren’t armed.”
Another student, Omar García, said in an interview that the military arrived quickly. “They came in, cocked their guns as if they were – I don’t know – facing criminals. They accused us of breaking into the hospital. [They said] they were going to take us all, because we were criminals.” The officials took photos of the students and asked them to give their real names, saying that if the students lied, the officials would find them anyway.
Mexico’s 27th Infantry Battalion filed at least four reports detailing what happened, which were obtained by journalist Marcela Turati. In two of the reports, the battalion omitted all the activities of the military. But in another two, they acknowledged that groups of soldiers, including Cpt. José Martínez Crespo, were in the streets of Iguala from 11:20 p.m. until 5:20 a.m. the next day -- when the worst violence occurred. They also noted that Martínez Crespo went to the hospital where the students had fled with their badly injured colleague. Yet in the first days after the attack, the federal government denied the military was in the city at all that deadly night.
ccording to Bernabé García, after the military’s visit, Iguala’s head of public security, Felipe Flores, visited
the police station with Guerrero Assistant State Attorney General’s Víctor León Maldonado. They saw who had been detained, and gathered together the staff. They said said shots had been fired against the students and asked the municipal police to hand their guns over for forensic tests.
The assistant attorney general left, but the police station was left under the control of the state attorney general office. Around that time, family members of the people detained in the drunk tank began arriving.
“They gave me their names and paid their fines, the minimum,” Bernabé García said. “In that moment, they’d already told us what happened,” he added, referring to the authorities who had visited the station. The last detainee left at 2:20 a.m. When the assistant attorney general returned, he was irritated that those arrested for public intoxication had been released, though Bernabé García says he wasn’t told they should be held.
To try to quell the assistant attorney general's anger and to cover his bases, the ex-magistrate judge said he then showed him the tickets documenting that the detainees were booked and released, and that days later he also submitted a report to both the state and federal attorney general’s offices with copies of the tickets.
The morning of Sept. 27, local police gathered at the state police station. “They sent me directly to the assistant attorney general and asked me, ‘Where are the students?’” Bernabé García said. “What students? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says he answered.
León Maldonado then insisted that students had been at the station, which Bernabé García denied. Bernabé García then wanted to testify to prove he wasn’t lying, but the police didn’t take his statement. They didn’t detain him either, so he went home.
According to the Guerrero attorney general's investigation, Iguala police officer Hugo Hernández Arias accused Bernabé García of holding the students in the police station’s patio, though documents indicate the testimony appears to be altered. Hernández Arias’ first deposition doesn’t mention the students or Bernabé García; a later copy of the deposition included in the investigation is the same word for word, with two additional questions at the end in which Hernández Arias implicates the magistrate judge. Hernández Arias had never returned to elaborate on his testimony.
ow the 43 students disappeared still remains a mystery to their mourning families, who are
demanding answers and accountability. In October, the federal attorney general’s office arrested police officers from Cocula, accusing them of participating in the disappearance of the 43 students. Eleven of them testified that they had been involved in arresting the students, but the testimonies contradicted one another regarding the time, manner and other details on how the students were taken.
Medical reports, which in Mexico are taken routinely in criminal investigations when police or military officials transfer suspects or witnesses to prosecutors for questions, showed signs of torture – burns, scars, bruises from beatings and red marks revealing electrocution.
In May, the head of Iguala’s police force, Francisco Salgado Valladares, was arrested. He testified before federal prosecutors that the students were brought to the station at 10 p.m. the night of Sept. 26, despite that his testimony contradicts the federal attorney general’s own public statements.
Moreover, Bernabé García continues to deny that he ever interacted with the students or had anything to do with their disappearance. If the accusations against him were true, he says, other police officers and administrative personnel at the station would have also testified that the students had been there, because the patio where they were held is in the middle of the station. All of the offices have windows that overlook the patio, which reporters confirmed during a visit to the station. The military and officials from the state attorney general’s office would have seen the students too.
Repeated attempts to locate or interview then-Assistant Attorney General León Maldonado, who left his job in April according to his Facebook account, were unsuccessful. A representative of the 27th Infantry Battalion said Cpt. Martínez Crespo continues to work there, but he did not respond to an interview request. The federal attorney general’s office also declined to comment about Bernabé García’s statements.
ince December 2014, Bernabé García has been on the run because he fears that if Mexican
authorities arrest him, they will “disappear” him or torture him, like they tortured his colleagues.
“I can’t invent something that never happened,” Bernabé García said, in what are his first public remarks. “At what time could [the students] have arrived if the military was there at 11:30 p.m. to inspect the area? They didn’t find anything. … If the students had been there, they would have known.”
Bernabé García knows his police department colleagues were forced to give depositions under torture, but he fears for the security of his family more than he fears for himself.
“Let them say, ‘The magistrate is talking about things that did happen, that the army came to inspect the station,’ and let them leave some space to admit that maybe they had something to do with it,” he said. “I’m not saying they did have something to do with it, but I’m showing the proof that they were out [on the streets] that night, because they were saying that they were not.”
Bernabé García says he’s been an honest man his entire life.
“It is sad that they accuse me of being a criminal,” he said. “I am simply telling the truth as it is.”
And he finds it gut-wrenching to watch grieving parents search for their disappeared children. “But it pains me more that they’re blaming me when I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said, “while those who might be responsible for it are walking freely on the streets.”
***
A version of this story was published Sunday in Spanish in the Mexican magazine Proceso.
Anabel Hernández is a leading Mexican journalist who has covered politics and organized crime for two decades. She is the author of Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and their Godfathers, a ground-breaking rethinking of the people and politics driving Mexico’s drug war.
Steve Fisher is an investigative journalist who focuses on immigration and the relationship between the United States and Mexico. Last year, he produced the award-winning documentary “Silent River,” which follows a family’s efforts to combat the contamination of one of Mexico’s most polluted rivers.
Both Hernández and Fisher are fellows at the University of California, Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program, which has sponsored their reporting on the disappearance of the 43 students. They can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].
Jean Wehner in 1970. (Photo: Jean Wehner)
"You see what happens when you say
bad things about people?"
Journalists don’t like to admit they are being affected by their work, let alone reveal that they are dealing with a psychological disorder.
ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images
What kind of drug war is this where a cartel gets stronger, becomes the most powerful cartel in the world, and on the other hand, drug production reaches historic levels in Mexico?
A
B
B
B
A
H
S
A Visit From The Military
A Key Witness Comes Forward
The Attorney General’s Office Takes Control
Unanswered Questions
‘They’re After Me Because I’m Telling The Truth’
5:59 PM
The Students Leave
The C4 of Chilpancingo, a communications system used by security forces, receives a call reporting that the students are leaving the Ayotzinapa teachers school in two buses: 1568 and 1531.
6:30 PM
The Mayoral Couple's Event Begins
The mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, and his wife, María de los Angeles Pineda Villa, begin a massive political event in the main square of Iguala. She gives a report about her activities as first lady of the city.
7:30 PM
The Event Ends
The mayor’s wife's event finishes.
8:00 PM
The Police Follow The Students
One of the buses arrives at a tollbooth 20 minutes outside the city of Iguala. According to testimonies of the students, the intention was to take some buses and use them to go to a protest in Mexico City on Oct. 2 in remembrance of the Tlatelolco massacre of students of Oct. 2, 1968. When the students arrive at the tollbooth, police forces from Guerrero as well as the federal police arrived to monitor students.
8:30 PM
Iguala's Mayor And First Lady Leave The Square
The mayor and his family leave the main square and go to dinner on the opposite side of the city.
8:30 PM
Students Take A Bus
When students take one bus, the driver explains that he must transport all the passengers to the bus station downtown, promising that when arrives, he will give them the bus.
9:00 PM
The Driver Locks Them Inside
The bus arrives to the station, but the driver locks the door, trapping the students in the bus. They make phone calls to the students still at the tollbooth. Riding in buses 1568 and 1531, the other students go to the bus station to rescue the trapped students.
9:20 PM
The Students Take Three Buses
The state police of Guerrero report that students arrive at the bus station and begin to break windows and the door of the bus where the students are trapped. The state police, the municipal police and the federal police notice what was going on through the C4 command center in Iguala. The chief of the municipal police, Felipe Flores, talks directly to Dorantes Garcia, chief of the federal police’s base. The students take three buses, meaning they now had five -- the first two and then an additional three. They leave the bus station. Two buses take the correct route to go back to the school, and the others take a wrong turn.
9:40 PM
The First Shots Are Fired
The first shooting begins at Bandera street. People who were there later say municipal police fired in the air. No one is hurt. On the next street, some police officers -- it's unclear whether they were municipal police, state or federal police -- fire directly into the buses. The state police of Guerrero reported that the emergency phone line, 066, starts receiving numerous calls related to the shooting.
10:00 PM
A Second Attack
The second attack takes place on the corner of Juan Alvarez and Periférico streets. According to witnesses, the three buses were trapped -- in front by the municipal police and behind by the federal police, who close the road. The attack lasts between 40 minutes and one hour. In their depositions and in a video recorded by students during the attack, they say both the local police and the federal police were present.
10:50 PM
Students Begin To Disappear
Students say some of their colleagues were taken from the third bus while the municipal and the federal police were there. They don't know where all the students were taken, but some others were taken to the hospital.
11:00 - 11:10 PM
Another Attack
A bus carrying members of the soccer team Avispones, mistaken for students from Ayotzinapa, is attacked on the Iguala-Chilpancingo highway. One player, one driver and one woman in another car are killed, and several others wounded. The victims don't see who fired the shots. One report from the the 27th Infantry Battalion says that when the army arrived, the federal police were already there.
11:00 PM
Police Leave
All the police leave the scene. The Cocula Police said they were in Juan Alvarez Street at aproximately 11 p.m. They said they stayed a few minutes and then left along with the other police.
11:00 PM
Investigation Launched
Guerrero's state attorney general receives a call from a doctor at the general hospital saying three of the Ayotzinapa students were being treated for wounds. The Guerrero attorney general's office begins the official investigation to find out what happened and arrest those responsible.
11:20 - 11:40 PM
The Army Visits The Hospital
The 27th Infantry Battalion reports that members of the army go to the general hospital. In the first report, written by Cpt. José Martínez Crespo, the army members report no news. In a second report written by the base commander, they report that three students have been wounded. They return to the base at 23:40.
11:30 PM
Students Supposedly Dropped Off At Iguala Police Station
According to the federal attorney general's version of events, at this time students are taken to the municipal police station in Iguala. Over a 20-minute period, they supposedly unload the students and load them onto Cocula municipal police patrol trucks.
11:30 PM
The Army Searches The Police Station
Cpt. José Martínez Crespo goes with 11 soldiers to the Iguala police station, talks with the jail magistrate and inspects the station for 15 to 20 minutes, finding nothing.
11:50 PM
Army Patrols The City
The 27th Infantry Battalion reports that members of the army carry out patrols in Iguala and around the city at this time, returning at 3:10 a.m. and reporting no news.
12:00 AM
Students Attacked A Third Time
A third attack occurs on Juan Alvarez Street as the surviving students are giving a press conference supported by more students and teachers. Two students are killed and several others wounded. In the reconstruction of the events done by the students and their lawyers, it is discovered that several of the 43 missing students were taken during this third attack.
12:00 AM
Students Allegedly Handed Off To Drug Gang
According to the attorney general of Mexico, the 43 students are taken to a location called Loma de Los Coyotes by Cocula and Iguala municipal police and handed over to the cartel Guerreros Unidos. The cartel kills the students and burns their bodies in the Cocula landfill throughout the night, according to the federal Attorney General's office.
12:05 AM
Students Hospitalized
More than 20 students arrive at the Hospital Cristina about a third of a mile from the attack, including one student who was shot in the face. Cpt. Martínez Crespo also visits the hospital. In their first depositions, students said the captain threatened them, took their photos and asked them their real names. In one report from the army, with a date of Sept. 27 but no time noted, they say the captain found two bodies in Juan Alvarez Street and then he went to the hospital Cristina and found the students.
12:15 AM
Deputy AG Takes Over Police Station
The deputy attorney general for Guerrero state, Victor Leon Maldonado, comes to the Iguala police station and takes control of it. There are six men detained from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. for public intoxication. The police who were there turn over their guns so forensics tests can be carried out on them. The men from the state attorney general’s office stay there until the morning of Sept. 27.
12:30 AM
Nothing To Report'
The 27th Infantry Battalion reports that one group goes to carry out patrols in Iguala and around the city and returns at 3:10 a.m. with no news.
12:40 AM
More Army Patrols
Another report says that Cpt. Martínez Crespo carries out patrols in Iguala and around the city and returns at 5:20 a.m.
2:40 AM
State Attorney General Visits Hospital
The attotney general of Guerrero goes to the General Hospital. There are more than 15 people being treated for wounds resulting from the attacks that night.
3:20 AM
Bodies Recovered
At this hour the state attorney general and forensics team go and recover the bodies of the dead students, as well as the initial evidence.
Sept. 26, 2014
What We Know About The Events Of Sept. 26:
A Timeline
5:59 PM
September 26
The Students Leave
The C4 of Chilpancingo, a communications system used by security forces, receives a call reporting that the students are leaving the Ayotzinapa teachers school in two buses: 1568 and 1531.
6:30 PM
September 26
The Mayoral Couple's Event Begins
The mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, and his wife, María de los Angeles Pineda Villa, begin a massive political event in the main square of Iguala. She gives a report about her activities as first lady of the city.
7:30 PM
September 26, 2014
The Event Ends
The mayor’s wife's event finishes.
Sept. 27, 2014
A woman walks by the empty barracks of the municipal police in Iguala, Mexico, on Oct. 6, 2014. (Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images)
Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández is seen during a press conference in Mexico City, Nov. 30, 2010. (ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images)
Bernabé García (Steve Fisher for HuffPost)
Relatives of missing students protest in front of the entrance to the 27th Infantry Battalion base in Iguala, Mexico, on Dec. 18, 2014. Relatives of the 43 missing students blocked the entrance to the base in protest over the army's alleged responsibility or lack of response during the night of Sept. 26 when 43 students were taken by police. (AP Photo/Félix Márquez)
Clemente Rodriguez holds a photo of his missing son, 19-year-old Christian Rodriguez Telumbre, at his home in Tixtla, Mexico. Rodriguez and his wife hold fast to the belief that their son, who loved folk dancing, is alive. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
The mother of student Julio César Ramírez puts his trumpet on his coffin during his wake in Ayotzinapa, Chilpancingo, Mexico, on Sept. 30, 2014. (Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images)
43 Disappeared Mexican Students:
A Map of Events
Key locations during the night of the attacks against the Ayotzinapa students.
WATCH: Ulises Bernabé García Interview