Report: Mexican Police Tortured Suspects in Students’ Case

Relatives of the 43 missing students from the Isidro Burgos rural teachers' college march and hold pictures of their missing loved ones during a protest in Mexico City on Dec. 26, 2015. Mexico's national human rights commission said April 14, 2016, that it had found a witness to the 2014 disappearance of the college students who reported that federal and municipal police were present when the youths were taken off a bus and disappeared. AP Photo/Marco Ugarte

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.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expert group says that a study of 17 of the approximately 110 suspects arrested in the case showed signs of beatings, including, in some cases, dozens of bruises, cuts and scrapes.

One suspect 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.

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