Posted on 07/23/2004 12:51:01 PM PDT by sarcasm
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A Mexican prosecutor has brought criminal charges against former President Luis Echeverria for a 1971 attack on student protesters that killed at least 25 people, government sources said on Friday.
Echeverria, 82, of the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is the first former president in Mexico's modern history to face indictment.
Echeverria's lawyer, Juan Velasquez, said a criminal court judge would receive the charges Friday and decide whether to issue an arrest order within 24 hours.
The former president had been widely expected to be charged in the June 10, 1971, attack by a paramilitary band on student protesters in Mexico City.
Hundreds of Mexicans died or disappeared at the hands of security forces under PRI rule from the late 1960s to the early 1980s in a Cold War-era campaign against leftists. President Vicente Fox ousted the PRI in 2000 elections, ending the party's 71-year rule and pledging to punish its past crimes.
The sources said special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo filed the charges against Echeverria and several other former officials at a federal courthouse in Mexico City on Thursday night.
Echeverria, who was in office from 1970-76 at the height of the ``dirty war'' against dissidents, has said he was not responsible for the 1971 attack or other atrocities.
Leaders of the PRI, now the main opposition party, have closed ranks around Echeverria and reacted angrily.
``The so-called dirty war is a government smoke screen that seeks to take us back to the past and risks our institutions and the state itself,'' party president Roberto Madrazo said.
Carrillo made no public comment after presenting the charges but he has said the 1971 massacre was part of the ``state's continuous design ... to crush all dissidence, not just armed resistance or aggression.''
Newspapers said Echeverria was charged with genocide, as Carrillo had earlier promised, though the prosecutor's office did not confirm the charge on Friday.
In Mexico, the genocide charge can apply if victims were targeted as members of a group, such as the student movement.
Fox pledged to punish crimes in high places but survivors of past repression, victims' families and rights leaders have questioned that commitment.
ping
From 1971, huh... Still waiting for Janet Reno to be held accountable for Waco. Still waiting...
I can see why --- he waits until the guy is 82 years old for a 60's crime? Also where are the punishments for more recent crimes and reforms he promised? We'll know when things begin to improve over there --- when there aren't a million people moving over to the USA each year.
Nothing will change in Mexico until the people revolt and throw out the corrupt oligarchy.
Shortly after hearing of it, Terry McAuliff and the DNC issued a statement finding the timing of this revelation "questionable".
That's optimistic --- when I listen to Mexicans discussing this --- I think they may be right --- corruption exists on every level, is so engrained --- if they rid the country of the corrupt oligarchs now in power, they'll just be replaced by more corrupt oligarchs.
Unfortunately, I know Mexico too well. They'll replace the corrupt Spaniards with corrupt Aztecs - same result,
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