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Mexico's ex-spy chief to be tried for '75 abduction <br>
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Activist vanished during `dirty war'<br><br>
By Hugh Dellios<br>
Tribune foreign correspondent<br><br>
February 26, 2004<br><br>
MEXICO CITY -- In a landmark case for Mexican justice, a federal judge
Wednesday ordered a former government spy chief and alleged torturer to
stand trial in the disappearance of a left-wing activist 29 years
ago.<br><br>
The ruling was applauded by human-rights advocates as an important test
of how the Mexican judiciary will deal with Miguel Nazar Haro, who last
week became the first official arrested for alleged crimes during the
government's ruthless crushing of dissent during Mexico's "dirty
war."<br><br>
After a two-year string of setbacks in President Vicente Fox's campaign
to investigate crimes of the past, the Nazar arrest has rekindled
prosecutors' hopes of punishing those responsible, even though victims'
families remained skeptical.<br><br>
"This was a step toward justice, but the case has a long way to
go," said Rosario Ibarra, the tireless leader of a group of families
searching for missing relatives from that era. "It would be terrible
now if they retreat."<br><br>
After nearly three months on the run, Nazar, 79, the former chief of the
now-disbanded Federal Security Protectorate and reportedly a former CIA
contact, was detained last week in connection with the abduction of
Ibarra's son, Jesus Piedra Ibarra, in 1975.<br><br>
Nazar was ordered to remain in a Monterrey jail Wednesday by Judge
Guillermo Vasquez. That is the same judge who threw out arrest warrants
against him and three others last year, saying the statute of limitations
had run out on a kidnapping charge from 1975.<br><br>
But that decision was overturned by Mexico's Supreme Court in November.
In a landmark ruling, the high court decided that abduction has no
statute of limitations if the victim is still missing.<br><br>
By the time a new arrest warrant was issued in December, however, Nazar
and the other suspects had fled.<br><br>
While on the run, Nazar reportedly grew a mustache and remained on the
move in cars with tinted windows. But last week he returned to one of his
homes in Mexico City, which agents had staked out, and they arrested him
later on a highway.<br><br>
Two other suspects are at large. They are Nazar's predecessor, Luis de la
Barreda, and a police commander, Juventino Romero. The fourth suspect
died of natural causes in January.<br><br>
Nazar's detention is a breakthrough for Fox's special dirty-war
prosecutor, Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, who was under growing pressure to
show some results after two years of investigations.<br><br>
Carrillo has complained of a lack of resources and support from security
forces. But he says he continues to build cases against former
authorities, all the way up to former President Luis Echeverria, who
governed from 1970 to 1976.<br><br>
Nazar denies the charges and says prosecutors are conducting a political
witch hunt. He says he only carried out his "patriotic" duty
and has described himself as "just a good
interrogator."<br><br>
"The thing you have to have firmly on the table is the historic
context, and then we would understand that there is no dirty war,"
Jose Nassar Daw, Nazar's son and lawyer, said last week.<br><br>
Yet victims say that Nazar was barbaric in extracting information through
torture when he was leader of an intelligence unit during the 1970s and
1980s. It also is believed that he may know as much as anyone about
dirty-war tactics and that he reported regularly to the government's
highest levels.<br><br>
Piedra was one of at least 275 left-wing activists who disappeared during
the conflict, according to the National Human Rights Commission. Others
say the number is more than 500.<br><br>
Nazar's lawyers have three days to appeal Wednesday's decision. They have
tried to prove that Nazar was not involved in Piedra's arrest and that
Piedra was not kidnapped because police had issued a warrant for
him.<br><br>
But prosecutors this week filed a second set of abduction charges against
Nazar in the disappearance of Ignacio Salas Obregon, a colleague of
Piedra in the September 23rd Communist League.<br><br>
Nazar also has run afoul of U.S. law. He was arrested in 1982 in San
Diego and charged with being part of a Mexican car-theft ring. He fled
the country after posting $200,000 bail.<br><br>
The case took on wider significance when a U.S. attorney publicly alleged
that the CIA was trying to block the prosecution because it said Nazar
was a valuable intelligence source for the Reagan
administration.<br><br>
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Copyright (c) 2004, Chicago Tribune<br><br>
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