Mexico Accused of Human Rights Abuses During Revolt : Report: Amnesty International says soldiers terrorized Indian villagers. Army has denied violating the law, but government refuses to help with probe.

A leading human rights group charged Monday that Mexican soldiers terrorized Indian villages--beating, torturing and kidnaping inhabitants--in the aftermath of the New Year’s uprising in the southern state of Chiapas.

Amnesty International investigators, in a report expected late Monday, accused the army of gross human rights violations and cited disappearances and summary executions among the abuses.

Attempts to probe suspected executions have been stifled by the government’s failure to allow foreign forensics experts to examine bodies or autopsy files, according to the report.

The government has also refused to exhume corpses from 48 unmarked graves in a cemetery in the state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez, said investigators from other human rights groups.

The army has issued blanket statements denying any violations of the law but refused repeated requests for information about specific charges.

The charges came as U.S. and Canadian politicians and citizens groups are questioning their countries’ closer economic ties to a government that may have permitted brutalization of civilians in its efforts to put down the rebellion by an estimated 2,000 Indians.

Amnesty investigators said about 70 Indians are being held without charge in the Chiapas state prison. Most claim to be victims of army roundups of villagers suspected to have ties to the Zapatista National Liberation Army, the rebels who on New Year’s Day took over four county seats in Chiapas, an impoverished state on the Guatemalan border.

As the guerrillas pulled out of the towns into the jungle a few days later, an estimated 15,000 troops moved in. The army closed off the roads into formerly rebel-held areas and, according to eyewitness accounts cited by Amnesty, began a brutal search for insurgents.

Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.) has scheduled a hearing for Feb. 2 on allegations of army abuses. Clinton Administration officials have also expressed concerns that Mexico is not demonstrating the sensitivity to human rights that they would expect from a partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect Jan. 1.

The government struck a conciliatory tone toward the rebels after a chorus of national and international protests greeted the army’s attempts to defeat them during the first week of the uprising.

That change in strategy came after Jan. 7, the morning soldiers entered the village of Morelia, near the previously occupied town of Altamirano, residents told Amnesty investigators.

That day, the men of Morelia were assembled and told to lie face down on the basketball court that also serves as the town square, townspeople said. Three men were taken into the church; their screams could be heard for the next three hours.

According to the Amnesty report, the men were then taken away in an army ambulance, one of them bleeding profusely, and have not been seen since.

Another group was taken to the state prison, where Amnesty investigators interviewed them Friday. The rest lay on the court until the soldiers left at about 6 p.m.

“There was a general brutalization of people,” said Amnesty investigator Carlos Salinas.

The human rights group based its findings on photos of bodies, interviews with villagers and a visit to the state prison, he said. Following a week of futile attempts, human rights workers were allowed into the prison Friday after Torricelli complained directly to President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who is not related to the human rights investigator.

Interviews with prisoners also provided important evidence, said human rights activist Salinas, that seven bodies found in the market of another town, Ocosingo, site of the rebellion’s fiercest fighting, were victims of executions.

The bodies were found lined up with their hands behind their backs and bullet wounds in their heads.

Prisoners reported having been bound with yellow cord similar to that found next to the Ocosingo bodies, and cuts on their wrists were similar to those in photographs of the corpses, Salinas said.

Amnesty had to base its report on photos taken by the first news photographers to arrive in Ocosingo after the fighting, because the government’s National Human Rights Commission refused to let the organization see autopsy reports.