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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | November 2006 
Mexico IDs 2 Killed in '70s Campaign
 Eduardo Castillo - Associated Press
| | The two men were killed on Dec. 2, 1974, along with legendary guerrilla leader Lucio Cabanas (above), in a gunbattle with authorities in the village of Otatal in southern Guerrero state. |
Prosecutors said Tuesday they have identified the remains of two men gunned down more than 30 years ago in a government campaign against suspected rebels and their supporters.
Investigators said they were able to identify the skeletal remains of Lino Rosas Perez and Esteban Mesino Martinez from DNA samples taken from their sisters.
The two men were killed on Dec. 2, 1974, along with legendary guerrilla leader Lucio Cabanas, in a gunbattle with authorities in the village of Otatal in southern Guerrero state.
Juan Carlos Sanchez Ponton, the investigative director for the special prosecutor's office on past crimes, said investigators were certain that government forces were involved in the killings, though it's unclear whether they were shot by local police, federal officers or the military.
Cabanas' remains have never been located, but the bodies of the two other men were buried by local residents in a nearby cemetery. They were exhumed by investigators in June 2005.
The men were presumed to have been members of Cabanas' Party of the Poor, a guerrilla group that fought several skirmishes with authorities in the early 1970s.
The government launched a so-called Dirty War in the 1960s and 1970s to counter attacks by small bands of Marxist guerrillas against the army and federal agents. The National Human Rights Commission has documented the disappearance of at least 275 people from that time.
President Vicente Fox created a special office to investigate past crimes, but it has had little success in prosecuting former top government officials. |
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