Former Mexican president claims immunity in 1997 massacre

Ernesto Zedillo said inside a court filing Fri that his standing as Mexico's previous president gives him or her immunity from being prosecuted for any massacre in 1997 which left 45 people dead inside a Chiapas village.
Zedillo, who's now employed from Yale University within New Haven, Connecticut, delivered the filing to some U. S. area court in Hartford.
The actual former president, who had been Mexico's leader in between 1994 and 2000, denied allegations which his office was in some manner responsible for the actual killings.
"These anonymous allegations that President Zedillo had been somehow complicit within the events in Acteal tend to be baseless and crazy, " the declaration said. "The Dec 1997 attack within Acteal was a good appalling tragedy. But that misfortune was not caused by an elaborate conspiracy through the Mexican federal federal government, masterminded by Leader Zedillo. "
He added he had "inherited the actual conflict in Chiapas in the prior administration. inch
Ten anonymous plaintiffs sued Zedillo in September and therefore are seeking about $50 zillion in damages, based on court documents.
The actual killings occurred upon December 22, 1997, and therefore are considered among the greater brutal incidents throughout an armed turmoil that began 3 years earlier in the southern area of Mexico after Zapatista rebels pressed for more privileges for indigenous individuals.
In 1999, the Un Commission on Human being Reports issued a study that found how the killings "occurred towards a background associated with long-standing disputes, frequently over land possession, which have for many years divided the nearby indigenous communities. inch
It identified sections "further exacerbated through religious and politics tensions in Chiapas, stemming in the confrontation between the federal government and opposition organizations, particularly EZLN (Zapatista Military of National Freedom). "
The report additional that clashes in between government supporters and people backing Zapatista rebels "claimed a lot of victims" in the location over a five-year span throughout the 1990s.
Zedillo's management, analysts say, presided over what's often described like a period that transformed the country's political landscape, preceding the finish to 71 many years of one-party guideline in 2000 along with election of then-PAN celebration candidate Vicente Sibel.