Mexico Issues Warrants for 3 ‘Dirty War’ Suspects

MEXICO CITY —  In a move to restart its prosecution of suspects in Mexico’s “dirty war” against dissidents, the government confirmed Wednesday that arrest warrants had been issued for two former secret police chiefs and a police official in connection with the 1975 disappearance of a Monterrey medical student.

The two former police chiefs, Miguel Nazar Haro and Luis de la Barreda Moreno, are suspected of having directed the arrest, torture and disappearance of Jesus Piedra, one of about 520 activists who vanished while in police custody between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. A third warrant was issued for Juventino Romero Cisneros, a Nuevo Leon state police official who testified to having participated in the abduction of Piedra from a Monterrey street corner.

The warrants were issued late Tuesday; as of Wednesday night, none of the suspects was in custody.

President Vicente Fox pledged during his election campaign in 2000 to root out and punish those responsible for the government’s detention and apparent killings of hundreds of dissidents. He ordered tons of secret dossiers made public soon after taking office and formed a special prosecutor’s office in 2001 to bring cases to court.

But the special prosecutor’s efforts have been hamstrung by legal challenges and bureaucratic resistance. On Monday, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report that sharply criticized Mexico’s justice system and its failure to bring more “dirty war” suspects to justice.

Fox received the report at Los Pinos -- the Mexican White House -- Monday and pledged to track down those responsible for the disappearance and apparent slaying of the dissidents. Several mass graves found since Fox took office are believed to contain bodies of the missing.

“We are not motivated by vengeance,” Fox said Monday. “On the contrary, we believe that Mexican society needs to recover its historical memory and know the truth about these events so as to achieve justice and make sure that nothing of the sort happens again.”

Prosecutors sought arrest warrants for the three suspects last summer, but a Monterrey judge refused to authorize them, saying the statute of limitations clouded the warrants’ legality. In November, the nation’s Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision there was no statute of limitations on kidnappings, re-energizing the prosecutions.

The Monterrey judge, Guillermo Vazquez Martinez, declined to comment Wednesday, but Atty. Gen. Rafael Macedo de la Concha confirmed to reporters that the warrants had been issued.

Jose Luis Nazar Daw, Nazar’s son and attorney, said in a brief interview that the warrants were illegal and that he would seek a court order to stop them from being executed. He said he had advised his father against turning himself in.

Legal specialists and human rights organizations hailed the warrants as proof that the Fox administration was serious about pursuing prosecutions in the long-ago government campaign against leftist dissidents.

Jorge Chabat, a professor at Mexico City’s Center for Economic Research and Teaching, said the orders signal that “the designers of the dirty war can’t be on the street.”

“The arrest warrants issued [Tuesday] are a positive sign that the Mexican government is serious about prosecuting officials involved in the dirty war,” said Laurie Freeman, a Mexico associate with the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. “Nazar was one of the architects of the government campaign against opposition.”

At the time of Piedra’s arrest, De la Barreda was head of the Federal Security Directorate and Nazar was his deputy. Nazar became chief in 1979 of the secret police force, which has since been disbanded.

At the time of his April 1975 abduction, Piedra was a 21-year-old member of the September 23 Communist League, an urban guerrilla organization. After his capture, he allegedly confessed to having participated in several robberies and the kidnapping of Monterrey industrialist Eugenio Sada Garza. Piedra is thought to have been transferred to a Mexico City military camp shortly thereafter and to have survived at least until 1976 before disappearing.

The arrest warrants were requested by Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, head of the special prosecutor’s office. At a news conference in November after the Supreme Court decision, Carrillo promised a “cascade” of arrests.

But there has been only one other warrant issued since the ruling -- on Nov. 26 for Isidro Galeana, the former head of Guerrero state police. He has disappeared and is considered a fugitive.

The same day the warrant was issued, Zacarias Barrientos Peralta, 55, a peasant who government sources say gave testimony against alleged perpetrators of dirty-war crimes, was found dead of eight bullet wounds in Atoyac de Alvarez, a town in Guerrero state.

Officials in Carrillo’s office confirmed Wednesday that the government suspected that Barrientos might have been killed by those implicated in the ongoing prosecution.