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MEXICO CITY, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Authorities should try to locate Mexico's 43 missing students "with the same determination" they used to capture escaped drug lord Joaquin "EL Chapo" Guzman, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) said on Friday.
"A state that has shown the capability to trigger the mechanisms to capture 'El Chapo', is a state that can locate the ... disappeared," IACHR representative Paulo Vannuchi said at a hearing on the case, according to the daily Milenio.
Mexican government launched a massive and persistent manhunt to locate serial escapee Guzman, who was recently extradited to the United States, where he is serving a prison sentence.
The hearing at the agency's headquarters in Washington comes two and a half years after 43 students of a teacher's college in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero were attacked, tortured, abducted and likely massacred in a crime that shocked Mexico and the world.
The bodies of the victims were never found, though two were confirmed dead after DNA tests positively identified burnt remains recovered near a river in the town of Cocula.
The official version of the mass kidnapping on Sept. 24, 2014 maintains the students from Ayotzinapa were targeted for their political activism by the mayor of nearby Iguala, rounded up and handed over to a local drug trafficking and criminal organization.
The government says it has arrested scores of suspects, mainly local police officers, believed to have been working in collusion with the criminal ring. The small-town mayor and his wife have been imprisoned.
Parents of the victims attending the hearing accused the government of a cover up to protect other officials involved, including, allegedly, members of the military and federal police.
