Ex-President of Mexico Indicted

In Mexico’s first effort to bring a former leader to justice for human rights abuses, a special prosecutor Friday charged ex-President Luis Echeverria with responsibility for the deaths and disappearance of up to 280 people in the so-called Corpus Christi massacre 33 years ago.

A judge overseeing the case is expected to rule today on a request by the prosecutor, Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, to order the arrest of Echeverria, two former Cabinet ministers and the generals who commanded army units that fired on a leftist student protest on June 10, 1971, in Mexico City.

The prosecutor handed the indictment to Judge Cesar Flores in a private meeting, then made a cryptic announcement at a news conference, avoiding any mention of the former president. Echeverria’s attorney, Juan Velasquez, acknowledged that his client was named in the indictment, reportedly along with ex-Interior Secretary Mario Moya Palencia and former Atty. Gen. Julio Sanchez Vargas.

The judge can issue an arrest warrant, throw out the indictment for lack of evidence, or send the case back to the prosecutor for more work.

Human rights experts said the possibility of an ex-president ending up behind bars was significant in Mexico.

“This is a good sign, that the Fox government took such a difficult decision. It’s a signal that the fight against impunity is a serious one and that the concept of accountability may be incorporated into the Mexican language,” said Sergio Aguayo, a leading activist.

President Vicente Fox named Carrillo as special prosecutor in January 2002 to fulfill a campaign promise to go after the highest-ranking perpetrators of misdeeds during the 71-year rule of the ousted Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Yet legal experts doubt that Echeverria, 82, will be brought to trial or face prison time because of his age and the time that has elapsed since the deaths. Even those backing Fox’s action acknowledge that the case against Echeverria appears weak, with no known evidence linking him directly to the killings.

People familiar with the prosecutor’s case, which has never been spelled out publicly, say it relies heavily on documents proving that Echeverria set up the Falcons, the special army unit that carried out the 1971 killings, and received frequent updates on the events that day from the chief of his secret police.

Carrillo said Friday that the charges in his indictment included genocide. He could not bring homicide charges because the statute of limitations had expired, but there is no time limit for genocide -- a crime, he once insisted, that encompasses systematic efforts to repress an entire sector of society, such as students.

Lawyers familiar with the case said the prosecutor’s definition of genocide was untested in Mexican courts.

Any attempt to arrest Echeverria would touch off much controversy in a society deeply divided over how to approach its violent past. Many view the case as a politically motivated effort that would only reopen old wounds. Mexico’s defense secretary, Gen. Ricardo Vega Garcia, said the nation should pardon those responsible for the crimes of the past.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos agreed, telling reporters Thursday that Mexico is “stuck in all aspects because we always revert to memory and never look toward the future.”

Relatives of those killed in the 1971 massacre praised the prosecutor. Among them was Maria Salgado, who says she has been looking for her son Alberto since he disappeared the day he marched in the Corpus Christi demonstration.

“What I hope for is that the prosecutors will really punish the ex-president and all those who ordered and participated in the massacre of that time,” said Salgado, who demonstrated with others outside the special prosecutor’s office.

Leaders of the PRI, whose rule ended with Fox’s election in 2000, have said in recent days that Echeverria’s arrest would end any hope of cooperation between their party and the president during the two remaining years of his term.

Fox has made a special case of Echeverria. During a campaign speech in 2000, Fox said, “Echeverria is not my friend. He is responsible for starting all the disgraces of this country.”

The Corpus Christi massacre, named for the feast day 60 days after Easter, took place as about 10,000 protesters, mainly students, marched near Mexico City’s National Polytechnic Institute to call on the government to dedicate more funds to education.

Truckloads of Falcons, members of special army units trained by the Mexican government to quash student demonstrations, swung truncheons and opened fire on marchers as police stood by. The death toll was first put at 25 but was raised by the special prosecutor to 80. In addition, about 200 people were arrested who were never seen alive again, he said.

Echeverria has denied ordering the shootings -- one of the key events in the Mexican government’s “dirty war” on dissidents and guerrilla groups in the 1970s and 1980s. Echeverria was president from 1970 to 1976, at the height of the PRI’s power, when many of the killings and disappearances occurred.

“This is a time of reckoning in Mexico,” Kate Doyle, director of the Mexico Project for the Washington-based National Security Archive, said Friday. “The question of state responsibility in the murder of citizens ... has been taken up by other Latin American countries over the past 10 or 12 years. But because of the structure of the authority in Mexico ... the leadership has been dodging this responsibility. Today’s indictment is a real shot across the bow.”

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Kraul reported from Mexico City and Boudreaux from New York. Cecilia Sanchez in The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.