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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2005 
Mexico Says Done All It Could For Dirty War Trials
 Reuters
| | Former Mexican President Luis Echeverria speaks to the media in Mexico City in this July 9, 2002 file photo. (Photo: Daniel Aguilar) |
Mexico City - Mexican President Vicente Fox's government on Friday admitted there was little else it could do to punish former officials for their past repression of leftist dissidents after a court dealt the administration another legal setback this week.
A judge this week refused to issue arrest orders for former Mexican President Luis Echeverria and seven others for a 1968 student massacre by police and soldiers.
It was the latest setback to Fox's attempts to bring to justice former members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, who committed atrocities against leftists for decades. The PRI ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century.
"The federal government has done what was in its power to investigate and find the facts, identify those responsible and open the way for the application of justice," Fox's spokesman Ruben Aguilar said.
"Now it is up to the law courts to rule on the case," he said, referring to the Echeverria accusations.
The judge found insufficient evidence for the genocide and kidnapping charges against the ex-president and former Attorney General Julio Sanchez, and said it was too late to try the other defendants.
Special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo's office said it would appeal Wednesday's ruling on Echeverria, but that process could take some time.
Echeverria, 83, was interior minister during the 1968 massacre, which occurred days before the Olympic Games opened in Mexico City. Officials said police and soldiers killed about 30 people at the leftist student rally, but witnesses put the death toll as high as 300.
In July, another judge found insufficient evidence of genocide to indict Echeverria and his former interior minister for a 1971 massacre.
Echeverria denies the charges in both cases.
Fox ousted the PRI in historic elections in 2000 after it spent 71 years in power. The president also appointed a special prosecutor to bring former top officials to trial for the leftist repression, or so-called dirty war, in which several hundred people died.
The government's only major success so far has been the arrest last year of former spy chief Miguel Nazar Haro on kidnapping charges.
A handful of other dirty war suspects are on trial and others are on the run. Those cases are expected to continue.
The government said that even if courts did not convict ex-leaders, history would judge them.
"No matter what, Mexican society already knows the historical truth about those painful and regrettable events, and everyone is aware of them," Aguilar said. |
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