Investigators recall surreal moments during years-long investigation in Mexico’s missing students

By MARÍA VERZA
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Independent investigators leaving Mexico after eight years searching for answers to the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from a teachers’ college say they experienced a “double reality” that was unlike anything they had encountered in other international missions. Spanish physician Carlos Beristain says, “It’s like you’re in a movie, things are happening and you say, ‘This isn’t real.’” He says they had to figure out together what was true and what wasn’t to make quick decisions and avoid being fooled. Beristain and former Colombian prosecutor Ángela Buitrago were two members of the team sent by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2015 to help clear up the so-called Ayotzinapa case.