By GINGER THOMPSON
 
MEXICO CITY, Feb. 11 - In perhaps the most important test of Mexico's new transparency laws, a group of lawyers this week won the release of 691 pages of the government's indictment against former President Luis Echeverría. He was charged last summer with genocide in the killings of at least 25 student protesters by government-run paramilitary troops more than 30 years ago.

After a seven-month legal battle led by lawyers at Freedom of Information-Mexico (LIMAC), a government panel ordered the attorney general's office to release the indictment against Mr. Echeverría. It is the first time that such an indictment of a high-level official has been made public.

The Mexican attorney general's office fought hard against the release, saying that it could hurt the investigation against Mr. Echeverría. Until recently, Mexican law had allowed the government to keep all indictments sealed. But in 2002, an exception to the law was passed that allowed indictments to be released to the public in cases of crimes against humanity.

Even after they were ordered to release the indictment, however, prosecutors turned over only a small part of the entire 9,382 pages. And they marked out most of the text with black crayons to conceal not only identities and testimonies, but also mundane information gleaned from old newspaper stories.

Still, Kate Doyle, director of the Mexico Project at the National Security Archives, applauded the release as an important step forward in opening this country's convoluted and corrupt justice system to public scrutiny. The documents, which will be available starting Monday on the Web site of Freedom of Information-Mexico at www.limac.org.mx, provide a glimpse into what is widely considered Mexico's most important investigation.

On June 10, 1971, a secret government paramilitary unit called the Falcons, or Halcones in Spanish, assaulted university students marching peacefully through the streets of Mexico City. The indictment charges that the group was formed by officials at the highest levels of the government, but hidden within Mexico City's Department of General Services, which is responsible for managing the city's parks, cemeteries and public transportation systems.

The agency was run by former military officers, the indictment says. They recruited hundreds of young men and sent at least 40 for special training in the United States, Britain, France and Japan.

Mr. Echeverría, 82, is the first former Mexican president to be indicted for abuses committed during his time in office. He was charged last summer by the special prosecutor, Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, who was appointed by President Vicente Fox in 2002 to pursue cases against public officials accused of human rights violations.

But the indictment's validity is in dispute. A lower court found that the statute of limitations on the crimes had passed and threw out the indictment less than 24 hours after it was first filed last summer. The attorney general later sent the indictment to the Supreme Court for its consideration. The court has yet to make its ruling.

Human rights groups here and abroad have raised questions about the special prosecutor's decision to accuse the former president of genocide, saying the charge may be too big for the crime. Other lawyers have doubts that the special prosecutor can win convictions for crimes that happened nearly 34 years ago, especially since many of the leading witnesses and participants have died. They also wonder whether he can withstand the turbulent political forces against him. The special prosecutor has said that leaders of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the former governing party, warned him that they "simply would not allow" Mr. Echeverría to be taken into custody. Mr. Echeverría's lawyer has argued that there is nothing in the reams of documents handed over to the courts that directly links the former president to the 1971 killings.

Much of the unsealed section of the indictment addresses the legal questions. In exhaustive detail, it explores international precedents on genocide dating from the 1930's.

Mexico, it argues, ratified United Nations conventions against genocide in 1952, and in 1967 Mexico's federal penal code criminalized genocide, which it defined as an effort to "destroy totally or partially, one or more national groups, and other groups of ethnic, racial or religious character."

Students, the indictment argues, fall within the legal definition of "national group."

Jesús Martín del Campo, who has followed every step of this investigation because his brother Edmundo was among those killed in 1971, worried that the indictment did not make a convincing case.

"What these documents describe is a government operation that went out of control," he said. "They do not prove genocide."

Indeed, there was nothing in the unsealed portion of the indictment that directly linked Mr. Echeverría to the killings. The special prosecutor relies heavily on old newspaper interviews with students who had attended the march and high-level city authorities. But it argues that, as president of Mexico, Mr. Echeverría kept such tight control of state security forces that the attack by the Falcons could not have happened without his knowledge.

Newspaper reports indicate that Mr. Echeverría was informed every 10 minutes about developments that day.

Perhaps the most compelling parts of the indictment are the testimonies from former members of the Falcons and the men who trained them. The names of the men who offered the testimony are crossed out. Prosecutors recovered many of the statements from Mexico's national archives, first opened three years ago.

In the testimonies, the Falcons explained that they were first organized at the end of 1968, the year when government troops fired on student protesters in the plaza at Tlatelolco. Human rights investigators say hundreds were killed in that incident.

At the end of that year, a new subway system was opened in Mexico City. President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz wanted to suppress student protests and protect the subway and other important facilities. After the Tlatelolco incident, Mr. Díaz did not want to assign the work to uniformed soldiers.

So he and his interior secretary, Mr. Echeverría, created the Falcons. When Mr. Echeverría became president in 1970, he kept the group.

According to testimonies by former members, they carried false identifications and used code words and nicknames.

"No one could reveal the objective of their work, or they would be fired," one member said in testimony on page 9,178.

The Falcons earned $6 to $15 a day and were paid every 10 days by a commander called "Rock."

On page 9,159, one of the Falcons explained in his testimony that immediately after the attack, he and other members of the group rushed back to their camp and tore it apart so that by the time investigators arrived the next day, there was nothing there.

He testified that he and others hid in the basement of the city Treasury Department for a few days. Then they were transported to a trolley bus repair center on the south side of the city, given their final pay and dispersed.

Some of the Falcons, the former group member testified, followed instructions received by an operative known as "the teacher" and from their former commanders and "dedicated themselves to committing crimes, with the intention of distracting the attention of public opinion."

Gladys Boladeras and Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting for this article.