Military to Be Focus of Probe Of Killings, Disappearances

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 26 -- A newly appointed special prosecutor vowed today to stand up to Mexico's powerful military and pledged to prosecute any soldiers
and officers found to be involved in hundreds of disappearances and unsolved murders during the "dirty war" of the 1970s and 1980s.

Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, 54, a law professor and former civil servant in the Mexican attorney general's office, said in an interview that "it is not a question of them [the
military] wanting to cooperate; they have to."

Former members of the military, the police and security forces are widely believed to have been behind hundreds of cases of torture and disappearances during the
government's "dirty war" against leftist activists. Some of those who disappeared were members of armed groups responsible for killing soldiers and police; others
were simply poor farmers, students or teachers.

For decades the military was a closed institution that answered public questions about its actions with silence. Thus, many Mexicans doubt that a well-meaning
academic can bring justice to the unsolved horrors of the past.

But Carrillo Prieto -- speaking in his office, guarded by a police officer with a machine gun -- said the military would cooperate with him and wanted its reputation
cleared. He said he was aware of the "enormous expectations" placed on him since his appointment earlier this month, and of the skepticism that painful issues "frozen
in the years of authoritarianism" could now be resolved.

President Vicente Fox, who took office 13 months ago after unseating the party that ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century, has vowed to "shine a light on parts
of our past that are still covered with darkness."

Carrillo Prieto said that no one, not even former presidents, would be beyond prosecution. There has been much focus on what role, if any, Luis Echeverria, who
was president from 1970 to 1976, played in the government-ordered killings. While the prosecutor said he had no plans to question Echeverria, he said he would do
so if that was where his investigation leads.

"I don't think a former president would risk having two, or a hundred, agents take him by the arm and bring him in" for questioning, said Carrillo Prieto, who said he
would send the security forces after those who did not cooperate voluntarily.

He also said that now-disbanded special police units would be a target of his investigation but might prove a more difficult target than the military. In a sign of how
difficult his task will be, Carrillo Prieto several times invoked the name of Giovanni Falcone, the famed Italian magistrate whose prosecutions were credited with
breaking the Sicilian Mafia. Falcone was assassinated in a 1992 car bombing.

Carrillo Prieto, a compact, energetic man, said he understood that there were "dangerous tentacles and underground forces" who did not want the sins of Mexico's
past to come to light. Mexico's military and former members of its security forces have been suspected in ongoing political violence and murders, including the killing
in October of a leading human rights lawyer, Digna Ochoa y Placido.

"We have to do our work with calculated risks; we can't be dreamers or naive," Carrillo Prieto said. "We have to be protected. But it is certain that this cause cannot
be stopped. If something were to happen to me, another prosecutor would be named."

He said it might be difficult to find enough evidence to obtain criminal convictions in many of the cases. But he said his office intended to pursue "each and every case"
as far as it could go: "We'll do all we can possibly do -- but leave the impossible to God."

Carrillo Prieto has a personal stake in the issue. His cousin was a guerrilla who disappeared in 1974 and was presumed killed. Her body was never found.

Carrillo Prieto noted that some of those who disappeared were responsible for killing soldiers and police officers. "They knew they weren't going to Boy Scout
camp," he said.

He said those deaths should be properly investigated as well. "There will be justice for all," he said. "If it's otherwise, just one side, then it's only vengeance."

After decades of denials, the government in November acknowledged for the first time that soldiers, police and other government security agents were involved in at
least 275 of the 532 cases on record. A government report said that at least 74 officials from 37 government agencies were involved.

Fox's appointment of Carrillo Prieto, the author of a book on torture, was controversial. Critics said that because of his relatively low-profile career as a law
professor and government lawyer, he lacked the political stature and investigative experience necessary to take on powerful institutions such as the traditionally
untouchable military.

They said his service as a lawyer at the Mexican Interior Ministry, which controlled many of the police and security agencies implicated in the disappearances, made
him suspect. "He was an official in the institution that postponed this probe for decades," said Edgar Cortez, a Jesuit priest who heads the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez
Human Rights Center. "The history of special prosecutors in Mexico is not good. All of them have failed."

Carrillo Prieto rejected such criticism. He said he was qualified precisely because he has never been a political appointee. He said high-ranking former officials,
including ex-presidents, ex-attorneys general or former judges could all be tainted.

"Who? Who could do it?" he asked. "[U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan?"

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