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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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 Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 7:59 am Post subject: Former Mexican president faces arrest |
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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A judge on Friday ordered the arrest of Mexico's former President Luis Echeverria for a 1968 student massacre in a surprise move just two days before a presidential election.
An appeals court found enough evidence to support the charge of genocide brought against Echeverria, 84, by special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo and hold the former president for trial, reversing a lower court decision last year.
The arrest order, after two failed attempts in recent years to charge Echeverria with genocide, is a breakthrough in outgoing President Vicente Fox's halting drive to punish those responsible for past government brutality. Fox leaves office in December.
"For the first time in Mexico's history a president will be tried in this way," Carrillo said after receiving Judge Jose Angel Mattar's 1,200-page resolution in the complex case. "This will work against a repetition of abuse of power, to impede it forever."
Echeverria is expected to be held under house arrest due to his age and health concerns, defense attorney Juan Velasquez said. Echeverria was president from 1970 to 1976, at the height of a so-called dirty war against leftists. |
Last edited by Hater Depot on Sun Jul 02, 2006 9:22 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 5:11 pm Post subject: |
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Mexico's tragedy unfolded on the night of October 2, 1968, when a student demonstration ended in a storm of bullets in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas at Tlatelolco, Mexico City. The extent of the violence stunned the country. When the shooting stopped, hundreds of people lay dead or wounded, as Army and police forces seized surviving protesters and dragged them away. Although months of nation-wide student strikes had prompted an increasingly hard-line response from the Diaz Ordaz regime, no one was prepared for the bloodbath that Tlatelolco became. More shocking still was the cover-up that kicked in as soon as the smoke cleared. Eye-witnesses to the killings pointed to the President's "security" forces, who entered the plaza bristling with weapons, backed by armored vehicles. But the government pointed back, claiming that extremists and Communist agitators had initiated the violence. Who was responsible for Tlatelolco? The Mexican people have been demanding an answer ever since.
Thirty years later, the Tlatelolco massacre has grown large in Mexican memory, and lingers still. It is Mexico's Tiananmen Square, Mexico's Kent State: when the pact between the government and the people began to come apart and Mexico's extended political crisis began.
To commemorate this thirtieth anniversary, the National Security Archive has assembled a collection of some of our most interesting and richly-detailed documents about Tlatelolco, many recently released in response to the Archive's Freedom of Information Act requests, all obtained from the secret archives of the CIA, FBI, Defense Department, the embassy in Mexico City and the White House. The records provide a vivid glimpse inside U.S. perceptions of Mexico at the time, and discuss in frank terms many of the most sensitive aspects of the Tlatelolco massacre which continue to be debated today: the political goals of the protesting students, the extent of Communist influence, Diaz Ordaz's response, and the role of the Mexican military in helping to crush the demonstrations.
But while the declassified U.S. documents reveal new details about Tlatelolco, perhaps most important is the challenge their release poses to Mexico today. Thirty years after the massacre, the Mexican government continues to deny its people basic facts about what happened -- refusing to open Army and police records to public scrutiny on the grounds of "national security," denying Congress the right to hear testimony by agents of the state who were present at Tlatelolco. The valiant investigative efforts by reporters, scholars, historians, and an official congressional committee have helped clarify the events of 1968 enormously. But Mexico's secret archives are also critical for a full understanding of Tlatelolco -- and until they are opened, doubts about the truth of the Tlatelolco massacre will linger on. |
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB10/intro.htm |
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