US Supreme Court Asked to Hear Case Against Ex-Mexican President Over 1997 Massacre The Associated Press
go to original June 2, 2014

Mexican Ex-President and Yale Economics Professor Ernesto Zedillo (CNN)

HARTFORD, Connecticut — Ten people who say they survived a 1997 massacre in Mexico have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate their lawsuit accusing former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo of bearing some responsibility for the killings.

A federal judge in Connecticut and the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York dismissed the lawsuit, citing a legal doctrine that gives former heads of state immunity from such legal actions. Zedillo has said the allegations against him are groundless and slanderous.

The unnamed plaintiffs say they are survivors of the killings of 45 people in the village of Acteal in the southern state of Chiapas by paramilitaries with government ties. They say Zedillo knew about the paramilitary actions in Acteal, covered them up and broke international human rights laws.

The lawsuit originally was filed in Connecticut, where Zedillo is an international studies professor at Yale University. He was president of Mexico from 1994 to 2000.

The plaintiffs filed a writ of certiorari on May 16, asking the nation's highest court to hear their appeal. They say the lower courts were wrong to dismiss their lawsuit without giving them a chance to revise it. A message seeking comment left Monday for their lawyer wasn't immediately returned.

Read the rest at TribTown.com

A massacre foretold: Acteal - On 22 December 1997, forty-five indigenous residents of the small Southern Mexican village of Acteal were attending a prayer meeting in their village church when they were slaughtered by unknown paramilitary forces. They were members of the pacifist group Las Abejas (The Bees), who were supporters of the revolutionary Zapatistas but renounced their violent methods. The investigation into their deaths quickly went suspiciously cold. Scottish documentary maker Nick Higgins, an expert on Mexican culture and politics and the author of 'Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion', attains unprecedented access to the place, the people, and the story behind a barely-reported atrocity. (YouTube)

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