Mexico mounting new investigation into missing students

Mexico's government will mount a new search in tandem with international experts for the remains of dozens of students training to be teachers who were abducted and apparently massacred a year ago, bowing to widespread domestic and international pressure.

The plan, which includes a new investigations team and the use of drones and satellite technology, could help President Enrique Pena Nieto restore public trust in his government's ability to act against corruption and a perceived culture of impunity.

"There will be a new task force that will re-launch the investigation," Eber Betanzos, Mexico's deputy attorney general for human rights, said in Washington on Tuesday at a meeting of the experts looking into the case.

Mexico government says that 43 students were abducted by corrupt municipal police, and then handed to be massacred by a local drug gang that believed the students had links to a rival outfit in the crime-racked, impoverished state of Guerrero.

Forensic experts have already identified the remains of one of the group from a bone fragment, and have identified a possible match for a second victim.

But forensic experts from Argentina found flaws in Mexico’s investigation and another international team of experts reviewing the case last month questioned the government account of how the gang members incinerated the students' remains, ground up the charred bodies, and then dumped the ashes in a river, arguing its investigation was sloppy and full of holes.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) is questioning the government's investigation as well.

The government signed an agreement with the experts, from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, to use satellite technology and land and water drones to look for the students and any hidden graves.

One of those experts, Angela Buitrago, a Colombian, said the new search will be carried out "with a strategy based on lines laid out by the group, including the use of technology, mapping of clandestine graves and other locations and establishing a path of action agreed upon by the families".

Buitrago said her group still hopes to question troops because they consider their evidence to be crucial to the investigation.

However, the government still insists outside experts cannot directly question military personnel who were on duty the night of the disappearance in September 2014, and who were told not to interfere while the students were attacked by local police.

Al Jazeera with wire services