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 Editorials | Issues | March 2008 
International Human Rights Commission Files 'Dirty-War' Complaint Against Mexico
 BYLINE
| | During their investigations of forced disappearances, the Special Prosecutor's office reviewed documents produced by the Federal Security Directorate (Dirección Federal de Seguridad-DFS), including their prisoner files. These detainee registries included many individuals who were detained extra judicially, and held in clandestine security facilities where they were subject to torture. The above image is from chapter 8 of the Special Prosecutor's report, detailing the role of the DFS in forced disappearances. | | |
Mexico City – An international court will review for the first time allegations that Mexico's government failed to adequately resolve the disappearance of a guerrilla sympathizer during the country's “dirty war.”
The complaint was submitted to the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights on March 15 at the request of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, Alejandro Juarez, a spokesman for the independent organization, said Tuesday.
The case involves the disappearance of Rosendo Radilla, 25, in the southern state of Guerrero on Aug. 25, 1974. He was allegedly detained by soldiers in the city of Atoyac, then a hotbed of activity by leftist guerrilla groups.
“The Mexican government will be called to judgment for the first time in the case of a Mexican victim of disappearance,” the term commonly used in Latin America for unresolved counterinsurgency kidnappings, said Juarez.
Radilla's supporters, who claim the Mexican government has not done enough to resolve Radilla's case or punish those responsible, will have two months to present their case to their court, after which it will schedule hearings.
Mexico's Foreign Relations Department did not respond to requests for comment on the case.
Human rights activist Julio Mata welcomed the development.
“For us it is very important to show that in Mexico, their is no recourse to justice. There is no adequate mechanism to defend human rights of those subjected to disappearance in Mexico,” he said.
While such cases have been brought in Mexican courts, this is the first time they have been taken to the Inter-American court.
Mexico's governmental National Human Rights Commission said in a 2001 report that an estimated 275 people had been disappeared, mainly in the 1970s and 80s, though other rights activists say the figure could be 1,200 or more. |
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