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 Editorials | Issues | December 2006 
Former Protesters Applaud Arrest Warrant for Mexican Ex-President Over 1968 Massacre
 Associated Press
| | Former Mexican President Luis Echeverria (C), seen here mobbed by the press July 2002, was placed by a judge under house arrest for his role in a 1968 massacre of a student march, his lawyer and court officials said. (AFP/Jorge Uzon) |
Participants in 1968 student protests in which at least 25 demonstrators were killed by the military said Thursday the reinstatement of an arrest warrant for former President Luis Echeverria was a victory for all Mexicans.
Wednesday's court decision came just four months after a federal judge had dismissed the same charges of genocide against Echeverria.
"It's a validation of the fight that we have all been pursuing," said Fausto Trejo, a member of the Coalition of Pro-Democracy Teachers Movement of '68. "This is really a triumph for public opinion, for all the people, and for us a satisfaction because we have been the participants in this struggle."
The government news agency reported that federal police agents had been posted outside Echeverria's large, luxurious compound in a neighborhood on the city's south side, a practice consistent with house arrest — the only kind of detention he is likely to face because of his age, 84.
Echeverria's lawyer, Juan Velasquez, confirmed the arrest warrant had been reinstated on an appeal by prosecutors.
The court accepted prosecutors' arguments that Echeverria was essentially protected from prosecution until he left office on Dec. 1, 1976, and that the 30-year statute of limitations should be calculated from that date.
Velasquez said he was appealing.
Echeverria, who was president of Mexico from 1970 to 1976, was the country's interior secretary on Oct. 2, 1968 when soldiers opened fire on a student pro-democracy demonstration in Mexico City's Tlatelolco Plaza just before the capital hosted the Olympics. Official reports said 25 people were killed, but human rights activists say as many as 350 may have died.
Prosecutors have had little success in their attempts to try Echeverria or other top former officials for killings and disappearances under a government campaign against leftists in the 1960s and '70s known as the "dirty war."
Echeverria was placed under house arrest in Mexico City in June — the first time a warrant has been served against a former Mexican president. But the case was dismissed in July after a judge ruled the statute of limitations had expired.
It is unlikely Echeverria would go to jail in any case, since a 2004 law designed to reduce costs in the criminal justice system allows judges to grant house arrest for suspects 70 and older.
The former president has been briefly hospitalized twice in the past year and is considered to be in poor health.
Current President Vicente Fox, who leaves office Friday, promised to prosecute Mexico's past crimes after his 2000 election victory which ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Fox appointed special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo in 2002 to investigate the dirty war.
Carrillo's probe led to the arrest of several former officials from the federal government as well as the Pacific coast state of Guerrero.
Carrillo first sought Echeverria's arrest in July 2004 in connection with another student massacre in 1971 and for the disappearance of leftist activists during his term. All of the charges had been thrown out or blocked by courts. |
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