Mexican ex-president ordered arrested in massacre

A judge on Friday ordered the arrest of Mexico's former President Luis Echeverria for a 1968 student massacre in a surprise move just two days before a presidential election. An appeals court found enough evidence to support the charge of genocide brought against Echeverria, 84, by special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo and hold the former president for trial, reversing a lower court decision last year. The arrest order, after two failed attempts in recent years to charge Echeverria with genocide, is a breakthrough in outgoing President Vicente Fox's halting drive to punish those responsible for past government brutality. Fox leaves office in December. "For the first time in Mexico's history a president will be tried in this way," Carrillo said after receiving Judge Jose Angel Mattar's 1,200-page resolution in the complex case. "This will work against a repetition of abuse of power, to impede it forever."
Echeverria is expected to be held under house arrest due to his age and health concerns, defense attorney Juan Velasquez said. Echeverria was president from 1970 to 1976, at the height of a so-called dirty war against leftists. He was interior minister in charge of national security when government troops stormed a student rally in the capital on October 2, 1968, days before the opening of the Mexico City Olympics in a tragedy that remains an open wound for many Mexicans.

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