Washington Post: Mexican 'Dirty War' Case Nears Court

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202225.html

International Body Set to Probe Fate of Activist Missing Since 1974

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 13, 2007; Page A10

MEXICO CITY -- Rosendo Radilla was the Renaissance man of Mexico's 1960s and '70s social justice movement.

He led rallies and built schools. He also composed and sang corridos, or ballads, crooning in a nasal, unpolished voice at community meetings and forums during troubled times in the state of Guerrero.

His followers heard him sing for the last time in 1974. One day in August of that year, witnesses say, soldiers arrested Radilla, then 60, and took him to a military prison without formally charging him. There, other witnesses say, he was tortured. After a month or so, he disappeared and has not been seen since.

More than 33 years later, Mexican human rights experts say Radilla's case is likely to be the first from Mexico's "dirty war" to go before an international human rights court. Attorneys involved in the case say it will be submitted next week to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which is composed of judges elected by member nations of the Organization of American States.

The Radilla case could be a watershed for a Mexican human rights movement plagued by setbacks. In July, a Mexican court decided not to charge former president Luis Echeverr¿a with genocide in a 1968 student massacre. Current President Felipe Calder¿n has closed a government office that was investigating the dirty war, which lasted from the 1960s to the 1980s.

"The Mexican government has never recognized what happened during the dirty war," said Fabi¿n S¿nchez, director of the Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, a private advocacy group that represents Radilla's family. "Calder¿n is not interested in the theme of human rights."

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