MEXICO CITY -- An international panel of experts that arrived in Mexico to investigate the disappearance of 43 students said it cannot solve the case because of a sustained campaign of harassment, stonewalling and intimidation against it.
The international investigators said their job is far from complete. But they will nonetheless leave Mexico in the coming days -- pushed out, they say, by a government many suspect of covering up what happened on the night in September 2014 when the college students were abducted by the police and never seen or heard from again.
The investigators said they have endured carefully orchestrated attacks in the Mexican media, a refusal by the government to turn over documents or grant interviews with essential figures, and even a retaliatory criminal investigation into one of the officials who appointed them.
By contrast, the Mexican government said it has fully cooperated with the experts, completing the vast majority of their information requests, while it is still processing the rest.
For some, the conclusion is that the government does not want the experts to solve the case.
"The conditions to conduct our work don't exist," said Claudia Paz y Paz, a panel member who earned international recognition for prosecuting a former Guatemalan dictator on charges of genocide. "And in Mexico, the proof is that the government opposed the extension of our mandate, isn't it?"
The pressure on the investigators -- described by some of the five panel members -- undermines promises by the Mexican government to cooperate fully and uncover what happened to the students, one of the worst human-rights abuses in the country's recent memory.
The case ignited a global outcry. Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets to protest the disappearances, sending President Enrique Pena Nieto's approval ratings plummeting and contradicting his effort to depict Mexico as a progressive nation ready to assume its place on the world stage.
For the families of the missing, young men training to be teachers in impoverished areas of rural Mexico, the experts' departure will be devastating. All along, they have refused to believe the government's version of events -- that their children, who were in the city of Iguala as part of a protest, were kidnapped by local police officers working for powerful criminal gangs, then killed and incinerated in the garbage dump of a nearby town. In its version of the story, the government never gave a clear motive for the attack.
For many Mexicans, the case represents something far greater than 43 deaths: It is a window onto the tens of thousands of others who have disappeared during the nation's decadelong drug war, and the anguish visited on their families. Caught between cartel violence and a government either unwilling or unable to help, they are victims twice.
"This is something that will probably haunt us for a long time," said Francisco Cox, a Chilean human-rights lawyer and another member of the group of experts. "But it didn't make sense to stay here, because in a certain way it's giving legitimacy to something deep inside you know isn't right."
Although the group's final report will be issued this morning, the case is far from solved. The remains of only one of the 43 have been found and identified; the rest are still missing.
Another question is how high the collusion between the drug gangs and the government goes. Although the government's investigation focused on the complicity of the local authorities, the expert panel uncovered evidence that state and federal officials and even military personnel were present on the night of the students' disappearance.
"It was clear in the government's investigation and the official account that there was an intention to keep this case at a municipal level, in terms of responsibility," said Carlos Beristain, another expert in the investigation. "But we revealed the presence of state and federal agents at the crime scenes and furthermore that their participation implied responsibility."
The government insisted that the parting of ways with the international experts will be amicable, and it has thanked them in public for their work. The experts were not forced out, according to the government. They ran out of time.
A Section on 04/24/2016