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Case files: Former Mexican president ordered killings

MEXICO CITY - A special prosecutor is accusing former Mexican President Luis Echeverria of "harming humanity" by ordering government thugs to kill protesters during a 1971 leftist demonstration, based on case files released to a Mexican freedom of information group.

The released files contain 691 pages of arguments and evidence that federal authorities have prepared in their attempts to charge the 83-year-old ex-president with genocide. The files say Echeverria helped draw up elaborate plans to attack antigovernment activists.

Prosecutors say he also played at least an indirect role in ordering killings during a Mexico City march on June 10, 1971, which has become known as the Corpus Christi massacre, named after the day on the Roman Catholic calendar when it occurred.

The office of special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo has attempted to formally charge Echeverria, but a judge refused to issue an arrest warrant, saying the statute of limitations on the killings had run out. The Supreme Court has agreed to review the matter.

Echeverria's lawyers say he was not involved in the killings.

Prosecutors argue that from his first day in office on Dec. 1, 1970, Echeverria ordered an elite force of plainclothes state fighters known as the Halcones, or Falcons, to crack down on reputed government enemies.

The files detail the Halcones' role in the killings. The state forces used sticks and guns to slay protesters during the demonstration.

An estimated 11 to 50 protesters were killed, but the exact toll may never be known.

In perhaps the most important test of Mexico's new transparency laws, a government panel ordered Carrillo's office to turn 691 pages of its more than 9,000 pages of Echeverria files over to a civil organization, Mexico's Freedom of Information Group, last week. It is the first time that such an indictment of a high-level official has been made public. All but 121 pages had been partially or completely blacked out by prosecutors for security reasons.

The files, which grew out of two years of investigations by Carrillo's office, provide the most complete glimpse to date of President Vicente Fox's administration's efforts to investigate reported crimes of past governments, collectively known as Mexico's "dirty war."

It details the creation of the Halcones in 1966 by a military official on leave from the Mexican army, reporting that the group was ordered to keep watch on government property in Mexico City to ensure they were not attacked by leftist guerrillas.

At its height, the Halcones had more than 1,000 members, prosecutors believe. Police in the capital considered Halcones operatives above the law.

Carrillo has charged 11 people, including Echeverria, top former members of his government and five members of the Halcones, with ordering or actively participating in the beating or shooting deaths of 12 people during the demonstration.

Months before the protest, Echeverria's government provided scholarships for Halcones members to travel to the United States, Europe and Japan for military training, according to the files.

Echeverria, first as interior secretary in the 1960s and then as president, allegedly fought a decadelong counterinsurgency campaign against the student prodemocracy movement, as well as leftist guerrilla groups. He left office in 1976.

The documents will be available starting Monday on the Web site of the Freedom of Information Group at www.limac.org.mx

Information from the New York Times was used in this report.

[Last modified February 13, 2005, 01:09:06]