Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> JURIST - The Paper Chase

Legal News

: JURIST - The Paper Chase

Mexico court clears ex-president of genocide charges

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] A Mexican appeals court on Thursday affirmed a lower court ruling that absolved former president Luis Echeverria of any criminal responsibility for the 1968 killings of student protesters in Mexico City's Tlatelolco Plaza. The Fifth Criminal Collegiate Court upheld the Third United Criminal Tribunal's July 2007 finding that the act constituted genocide but that the prosecution had presented no evidence linking Echeverria to the crime. Echeverria, who has been under house arrest since 2006, was released Thursday after the ruling. In December 2006, a court report accused Echeverria of directly ordering government authorities to repress the student protest, during which at least 25 but as many as 350 students were killed. Echeverria is also accused of involvement in the murders and disappearances of more than 500 leftist dissidents during a period of time in the 1960s and 1970s called Mexico's "dirty war", but no charges have been brought.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on March 27, 2009 (boomark / email).