Law: Fox will name special prosecutor and open files on 1970s-'80s disappearances.

By JAMES F. SMITH
Times Staff Writer

MEXICO CITY -- Fulfilling a key campaign pledge, Mexican President Vicente Fox said Tuesday that his government will prosecute and punish officials who are
found responsible for killing hundreds of leftists in the 1970s and '80s.

Speaking in the courtyard of a former jail once filled with political prisoners, Fox also said that security files from that era will be opened, allowing public scrutiny for
the first time of human rights abuses during the government's "dirty war" against leftist insurgents.

Earlier Tuesday, the National Human Rights Commission disclosed the results of a long-delayed report on the disappearances of activists and guerrillas in that period,
when the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, controlled almost every aspect of Mexican life.

The commission found evidence that in at least 275 out of 532 reported cases, police or security forces had snatched and later killed the leftists. In 97 other cases,
there were signs of forced disappearance but no proof; in the remaining 160 cases, no evidence was found to explain the disappearances.

In every confirmed case, the missing people were tortured--and no formal charges were ever brought against the insurgents, the study found.

The rights report doesn't mention names of suspected rights violators. But commission President Jose Luis Soberanes said the investigation identified 74 "public
servants" from 37 government agencies who are believed to have been involved in the disappearances.

The report's findings were by far the most explicit evidence of the former government's responsibility for the disappearances, after decades of denials that rights
violations occurred.

After he listened to the report's conclusions in a ceremony at the notorious Lecumberri Prison, Fox announced the creation of the post of special prosecutor to
investigate the disappearances and prosecute where appropriate. A five-member civilian commission will advise the special prosecutor.

Fox ordered his attorney general and defense minister to cooperate fully, an important element because the army was blamed in many of the fatal disappearances and
has until now declined to allow civilian jurisdiction over its members.

"We are changing the way power is exercised in Mexico," Fox said. "We are taking a great step toward the consolidation of the rule of law, and we are laying the
foundation to eradicate permanently impunity in our nation."

With his response, Fox fulfilled at least in part his pledge to create a mechanism to find out the truth about human rights violations under past governments. Rights
groups had denounced his inaction on the issue in the year since he took office, and the criticism grew louder with the still-unsolved slaying last month of prominent
human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa.

Most human rights groups welcomed Fox's initiative as a useful start.

Edgar Cortez, head of the Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center in Mexico City, said the naming of a special prosecutor should mean not only that the truth is
documented, "but that those responsible will be taken to court and judged and punished."

He said the commission's report demonstrated that the disappearances "were a state policy designed to violate human rights. We are not talking about individual
responsibilities."

Sergio Aguayo, a longtime rights activist, said Fox's initiative "has the potential to become a watershed in the defense of human rights and the battle against impunity in
Mexico. But we have to see who is named special prosecutor."

Among the disappeared were many hard-line Communist rebels who carried out attacks on army and police patrols as well as kidnappings for ransom. The groups
were routed by the mid-1980s, although small rebel groups persist today.

The government-funded National Human Rights Commission, created by then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1989, had long been dismissed as a toothless
body. The report on the disappeared got underway in 1990 but languished for years.

But in 1999, legal and constitutional changes gave the commission more autonomy, and newly named President Soberanes injected energy into the body. The probe
resumed in earnest in January 2000, well before Fox's victory six months later.

Although the 2,500-page report provides details on all the cases, no copies were available Tuesday except to Cabinet dignitaries. Commission officials said the
report will be ready for distribution in a day or two.

But Soberanes read a chilling excerpt from the testimony of one detainee, identified only as T-300: "They dragged [my husband] by his hair and put him in the trunk.
Then they did the same with me, taking me to another car and binding my eyes so we didn't see where we were going. . . . They made me strip completely."

She describes the gruesome torture and sexual abuse she endured. And she retells one agent's threat: "Do you know what we do with the likes of you? We kill you.
But slowly. You die when we get in the mood. You are going to beg us to kill you."

The passage concludes: "They tortured my daughter Tania, 14 months old, in my presence, mistreating her and applying electric shocks on her entire body."

Soberanes said the archival research uncovered the truth about an event Sept. 8, 1974, in which the government said 44 guerrillas were killed in a shootout during the
rescue of a kidnapped senator. In fact, investigators found that only one person was killed in the clash and that the rest were interrogated and killed by their captors.

National Security Advisor Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, a former leftist activist who joined Fox's campaign to help end the 71-year reign of the PRI, said the presidential
order ensures that there is "no more impunity, no more disappearances and no more illegal detentions."

Fox said he had considered suggestions on creating a truth commission such as those in Argentina, Chile and South Africa but that the Mexican Constitution doesn't
allow for such an ad hoc institution.

He added that whereas most truth commissions were designed to find out the truth but not produce legal judgments, a special prosecutor could go further by actually
bringing perpetrators to justice.

Fox said the security archives from the 1970-85 period will be transferred to the national archives. "This information can be consulted by any interested party, in
terms of the applicable legislation," he said.

The rights report said the security archives contain 80 million file cards and 40,000 pages of documents relating to "detentions, interrogations, searches, roadblocks,
tortures and forced disappearances."

The president added that a separate civic commission would be created to study the issue of whether reparations should be paid to the families of the disappeared.

Mariclaire Acosta, a lifelong activist who joined Fox's government as a roaming ambassador on human rights, called the report and Fox's response "a fundamental
step toward consolidating our democracy, building a state of law based on human rights and achieving reconciliation among all Mexicans."

She noted that rights violations continued after 1985 and that she has been informed of two forced disappearances this year. But she said Fox opened a process of
accountability.

"For the first time in our history, the chief of state has given a clear instruction in reply to an investigation by a body defending human rights and has begun a process
of openness and transparency and investigation," Acosta said. "This is unprecedented in our history, and it should be celebrated."

The investigation found the worst abuses by far in the coastal state of Guerrero, home to the resorts of Acapulco and Ixtapa but also of fierce inland poverty. Of the
532 cases investigated, 332 came from Guerrero, where some of the toughest guerrilla organizations emerged.

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Rafael Aguirre of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.