Thread: Former Mexican president named in arrest warrant

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... i-news-hed

Former Mexican president named in arrest warrant

By Hugh Dellios
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published June 30, 2006


MEXICO CITY -- With only two days to go before Mexico's presidential election, a judge issued a house-arrest warrant Friday for Luis Echeverria, a former president facing genocide charges in an infamous mass killing of student protesters in 1968.

It was the first time a former Mexican president had ever been ordered detained and it breaks a long string of setbacks for President Vicente Fox, who promised justice for atrocities during Mexico's so-called dirty war.

A Fox-appointed special prosecutor and student activists from the era celebrated the decision, dismissing questions about the timing of the ruling and whether it could help Fox's party ally, Felipe Calderon, in Sunday's vote.

"This decision surpasses any electoral coincidence," said Felix Hernandez, a member of the Committee of '68, which has lobbied for years for Echeverria's prosecution.

Ignacio Carrillo, the special prosecutor charged by Fox with uncovering the truth about Cold War-era violence in Mexico, said in an interview that the ruling was expected and came on the last day that the appeals court judge, Jose Angel Mattar Oliva, was handling the case.

But others couldn't help suspecting a political motive. A spokesman for Roberto Madrazo, the presidential candidate of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, to which Echeverria belongs, called the ruling a "dirty" and "anti-democratic" campaign trick.

"It's a desperate act from a government that's trying to tilt the electoral balance," David Penchyna was quoted as saying by Reforma newspaper.

Mattar is a veteran appeals court judge who has handled many organized-crime and politically charged cases, including one in which he ruled in favor of dropping charges against a prominent PRI official, according to Mexican media.

Calderon, from Fox's National Action Party, has been running neck-and-neck in the presidential race with ex-Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the left-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party. The PRI's Madrazo has been trailing in a distant third in opinion polls.

Echeverria, 84, was informed of his arrest at home by two investigators from the special prosecutor's office. He has been in and out of hospital care over the past two years.

The ex-president is accused of playing a role in two alleged massacres of student protesters in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Mexican government was trying to control dissent.

The charges leading to Friday's arrest stem from Oct. 2, 1968, when Echeverria, as Mexico's interior minister, allegedly oversaw hundreds of sharpshooters who opened fire on protesters in the downtown Tlatelolco plaza just before Mexico City played host to the 1968 Olympics.

Human-rights activists say more than 300 may have been killed, although the government at the time put the number at about two dozen.

Echeverria also is blamed for a second mass killing of protesters three years later, when he was president.

Because the events took place three decades ago, Carrillo has been trying to charge Echeverria with genocide against a "national group" because most other serious legal accusations would be prohibited by statute-of-limitation restrictions.

The Supreme Court threw out genocide charges against him in another case last year. That ruling does not specifically apply to the 1968 case, but the arrest warrant and current charges will probably be appealed on the same grounds.

Echeverria's lawyer, Juan Velazquez, rejected the accusations against his client Friday, repeating the ex-president's consistent denial that the killings were part of any government policy and saying that the protesters also were shooting.

"The deaths resulted from a crossfire," Velazquez said.

Carrillo said the charges could ultimately result in Echeverria being jailed. But Velazquez said he was confident the ex-president would not serve any jail time because of his advanced age and frail health.

Fox created the special prosecutor's office soon after being elected in 2000. He promised investigators would use newly opened police and army archives to reveal the dirty war under the long-ruling PRI, considered one of Mexico's darkest secrets.

Hundreds of people disappeared during the Cold War-era campaign, which the government said was aimed at communist insurgents.

But Fox has come under bitter criticism because little has come of his promise.

Carrillo, the special prosecutor, complained of short staffing, lack of funds and resistance from army and police officials. In a report released last month, Human Rights Watch lamented that only a few lower-ranking officials have faced charges.

In February, a leaked draft of the final report of Carrillo's staff alleged the army was ordered to torture, rape and execute people as part of the campaign. Fox's government said it would soon release the report after making a few corrections but hasn't done so to date.

The report said the most brutal acts took place under Echeverria's presidency, when "concentration camps" were allegedly set up at military bases and the government "implemented a genocide plan that was closely followed during his reign."

The report said the army also carried out "illegal searches, arbitrary detentions, torture, the raping of women in the presence of their husbands and the possible extrajudicial executions of groups of people."

http://today.reuters.com

Mexican ex-president ordered arrested in massacre
Fri Jun 30, 2006 5:03 PM ET

By Lorraine Orlandi

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A judge on Friday ordered the arrest of Mexico's former President Luis Echeverria for a 1968 student massacre in a surprise move just two days before a presidential election.

The judge ruled that there was enough evidence to support the charge of genocide brought against Echeverria, 84, by special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo.

The arrest order, after two failed attempts in recent years to charge Echeverria with genocide, is a breakthrough in outgoing President Vicente Fox's halting drive to punish those responsible for past government brutality. Fox leaves office in December.

"For the first time in Mexico's history a president will be tried in this way," Carrillo said. "This will work against a repetition of abuse of power, to impede it forever."

Echeverria is expected to be held under house arrest due to his age and health concerns, defense attorney Juan Velasquez said after the judge's ruling. Echeverria was president from 1970 to 1976, at the height of a so-called dirty war against leftists.

Echeverria was interior minister in charge of national security when government troops stormed a student rally in Mexico City on October 2, 1968, days before the opening of the Olympics here.

"This is an historic accomplishment after a long struggle by many for justice and truth in the face of a criminal state in the Echeverria era," said Joel Ortega, who witnessed the massacre as a student protester.

Voters go to the polls on Sunday in the first presidential election since 2000, when Fox ousted the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for seven decades, at times using repression to crush dissent.

It was not immediately clear what impact the arrest order could have on Sunday's vote, but it was unlikely to help PRI candidate Roberto Madrazo. He is in third place in opinion polls and his party has repeatedly criticized the investigation into past rights abuses.

Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has a wafer-thin lead in opinion polls over ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon.

Officials said about 30 people died in what came to be known as the Tlatelolco massacre. But witnesses and rights activists put the death toll as high as 300. Echeverria has denied responsibility for the blood bath.

Carrillo, named by Fox to investigate and prosecute dirty-war crimes, says Echeverria oversaw a bloody campaign to stamp out dissidents when he was interior minister and president.

Fox took office pledging to shed light on Mexico's dark past and punish former high-ranking officials who planned and carried out state crimes, raising hopes for justice among survivors.

But the prosecutor has had little success, with few arrests and no convictions. Fox has been widely criticized by survivors and rights groups for falling short on his promises. He is barred by law from seeking re-election.