MEXICO: Mexico's Supreme Court has ruled that a special prosecutor could present genocide charges against former president Luis Echeverria for his alleged role in a 1971 massacre that left scores of student protesters dead or missing.
The court on Wednesday said a 30-year statute of limitations on the charges had not expired, as a judge ruled last July, because the clock had not started ticking until after the former president left office in 1976.
A lower court now must decide whether the charges brought by a special prosecutor against Mr Echeverria and former interior minister Mario Moya satisfy a legal definition of genocide. That could result in arrest warrants being issued and the case eventually coming to trial.
Mr Echeverria (83), a member of Mexico's once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, ruled Mexico from 1970 to 1976. He is the country's only president to be indicted for alleged human rights abuses. He has denied the charges.
His lawyer, Juan Velasquez, has dismissed the genocide charges as " an absurdity".
"There were events of repression, lamentable events, confrontations, what have you, but not a policy of exterminating the population," Mr Velasquez said in response to the ruling.
Relatives and representatives of the dead and missing welcomed the court decision. - (LA Times-Washington Post service)