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A Mexican judge seeking asylum in the United States revealed a new version of what happened in Iguala, in the violent southern state of Guerrero, the night of Sept. 26 when 43 students from a college in Ayotzinapa were forcibly disappeared to investigative journalists writing for Proceso magazine.
His version of events suggests federal and military officials were directly involved in the targeting of the trainee teachers, contradicting official investigations.
The attorney general's office, known as the PGR, made public a criminal report into the disappearance of the 43 students, assuring that only municipal police were involved. It said that after the students were detained at the local jail, corrupt officers handed them over to the local drug cartel Guerreros Unidos, whose members burned them at a local garbage dump and threw their remains in a nearby river.
RELATED: The Forced Disappearance of 43 Students in Mexico
But the exiled judge, Ulises Bernabe, who was in charge of administrative procedures at Iguala's police station, told respected Mexican journalist Anabel Hernandez and Steven Fisher of the University of Berkeley, who have written extensively about the Ayotzinapa case, that the students were never taken to the jail.
He also spoke of an army official he identified as “Capt. Crespo” and five soldiers who went to the police station looking for the students. Bernabe says the army captain was there for about 15 minutes and later left. Hernandez and Fisher identified the captain as Jose Martinez Crespo, an army official assigned to the 27th battalion in Iguala.
Bernabe added that the state Deputy Attorney General Victor Leon Maldonado arrived at the police station after the captain and his men left and took control of the facility until 8 a.m. the following day.
The former judge explained that federal police and the army were patrolling the streets of Iguala at the same time the PGR’s investigation claims the events took place, which suggests that these federal security forces were aware of what was happening to the Ayotzinapa students and were somehow involved in their disappearances.
According to Bernabe's accounts, the captain and his men later went to Catalina Hospital in Iguala, where some of the students had gone to have their injuries treated. Once there, Crespo threatened the students and told them they would be arrested, but he stopped short of taking the students with him due to the number of possible witnesses at the hospital.
The testimonies of the survivors of the tragic night of Sept. 26, when six were killed on top of the 43 who were disappeared, corroborate with Bernabe's accounts.
Bernabe testified this information to the PGR in November, but was later threatened with death, which is why he fled to the United States.
According to both journalists, the PGR has issued an arrest warrant against Bernabe alleging he participated in the enforced disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students along with the Guerreros Unidos.
WATCH: Mexico Marks 8th Month Anniversary of Ayotzinapa Disappearances
Proceso, a Mexican magazine critical of the government, had previously found similar evidence to Bernabe’s revelations. It proved how the current Peña Nieto administration has continued the Mexican government’s attempts to undermine certain teacher training schools and their fight for education.
Ayotzinapa's is one of 16 teacher training schools that still exist in Mexico as a legacy of the Mexican Revolution. These schools were created explicitly for the children of campesinos in an effort to raise literacy rates and open up the country’s education system to the rural poor. Since then the schools, especially those in Guerrero, have become politically active and have even raised famous guerrillas and movements, like those of Lucio Cabañas and Genaro Vasquez.
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