A-Infos (en) Five Ex-Soldiers Held as Mexico Massacre Suspects

[Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.apc.org>]

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     FIVE EX-SOLDIERS HELD AS MEXICO MASSACRE SUSPECTS
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     03:34 p.m Feb 07, 1998 Eastern
   
     SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico, Feb 7 (Reuters) -
Mexican prosecutors arrested five more people in connection with
the massacre on Dec. 22 of 45 Indians in the strife-torn southern
state of Chiapas, officials said on Saturday.
   
     Officials of the county of Chenalho said they had handed
over the suspects, all former soldiers, to representatives of the
federal Attorney General's Office for questioning.
   
     Survivors of the killings, which reignited long-simmering
tensions in Chiapas and drew international condemnation, said the
men were connected with the paramilitaries who gunned down
Indians praying in church in the highland village of Acteal.
   
     ``They burned our homes and stole clothes from those fleeing
from the violence,'' Pedro Vazquez Perez, a refugee from the
nearby community of Tazajalucum, said.
   
     The paramilitary killers have been linked with the ruling
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
   
     Friday's arrests brought to 56 the number of people detained
for the Acteal murders, which forced the resignations of the
state governor and the federal interior minister.
   
     The Mexican government has promised to restart peace talks,
stalled for nearly 18 months, with the Zapatista guerrillas who
took up arms in January 1994 to obtain better conditions for
Mexico's 9 million Indians.
   
     But Chiapas highland residents and human rights groups
reported intensified military activity near the pro-Zapatista
community of La Realidad, where rebel leader Subcommander Marcos
was last seen, at the end of 1997.
   
     Members of the National Commission of Intermediation
(Conai), led by Samuel Ruiz, archbishop of San Cristobal de las
Casas, said the military had prevented them from giving the
government's latest peace proposals to the rebels.
   
     Interior Minister Francisco Labastida has drawn up a
four-point proposal the mediators were supposed to hand over to
the rebel command at its jungle hideout.
   
     The Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center said 200
soldiers had penetrated the jungle surrounding La Realidad, while
an unmarked twin-motor aircraft had been flying over the area
continuously for two days.
 
     Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
 
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