Mexico City – The government’s final report on the “dirty war” will differ little from a recently leaked draft alleging the presidency ordered the torture and killings of hundreds of suspected subversives between 1960 and 1980, the prosecutor overseeing the findings said Wednesday.
Ignacio Carrillo, a special prosecutor assigned to investigate alleged atrocities by soldiers, told a news conference that his office will present the final report April 15.
“The final document is not going to totally contradict the working document,” said Carrillo, who was accompanied by Mexico’s Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca.
The draft was leaked to several prominent Mexican writers and was published Sunday in the Mexican magazine Emeequis and posted on the Web site of the National Security Archive, a private, Washington-based research group.
Based partly on declassified Mexican military documents, the leaked report – one of three drafts – was prepared by a team of 27 researchers working for Carrillo’s office, but the prosecutor himself had not signed off on it.
The unedited draft alleges hundreds of suspected subversives in the southern state of Guerrero were killed or disappeared during the administrations of presidents Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverria, Jose Lopez Portillo and Adolfo Lopez Mateos.
The most brutal period occurred under Echeverria’s rule from 1970-76, when the government “implemented a genocide plan that was closely followed during his reign,” according to the unedited draft. During that time, guerrillas were blamed for a series of kidnappings and attacks on soldiers.
The leaked report says its authors have evidence the army under Echeverria’s administration conducted “illegal searches, arbitrary detentions, torture, the raping of women in the presence of their husbands, and the possible (summary) executions of groups of people.” Carrillo said his office will make some clarifications in the final draft, including erasing the part that states Mexican military bases served as “concentration camps” in the 1970s.
Carrillo said “concentration camps” do not apply to the illegal detentions of people at the bases, although many of them disappeared after being taken there.
The special prosecutor has unsuccessfully sought to bring genocide charges against Echeverria for mass killings committed during two anti-government protests of mostly university students, in 1968 and 1971. The former president has denied wrongdoing in both cases.
The leaked report for the first time names soldiers and cites telegrams from the Defense Department describing exactly who would be targeted in Mexico’s war against guerrilla leaders Lucio Cabanas and Genaro Vazquez.
Carrillo said not everyone named in the report committed a crime. However, his office plans to file charges in upcoming weeks against some of the civilians and military people allegedly involved in the “dirty war.”
