US Lawsuit Dismissed Against Former President Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico Elisabeth Malkin - The New York Times
go to original July 19, 2013

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. (lansdowneG20)

A United States District Court judge in Connecticut on Thursday dismissed a civil lawsuit against former President Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico that was filed by 10 anonymous plaintiffs who said they were survivors of a 1997 assault. Judge Michael P. Shea said he was deferring to a request for immunity for Mr. Zedillo submitted by the State Department last year. The two-year-old lawsuit had sought $50 million in damages against Mr. Zedillo, who now leads a research institute at Yale University.

Members of the indigenous group that was the target of the assault, known as Las Abejas, or the Bees, said they did not know the plaintiffs and disassociated themselves from the suit. Mr. Zedillo was president in 1997 when paramilitary gunmen fired on members of the group taking refuge from fighting in the southern state of Chiapas and killed 45 people, including 18 children.

See the original at The New York Times

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