By Peter Gellert
MEXICO CITY - Investigations into the case of disappeared left activist Jose Ramon Garcia are uncovering a trail of responsibility and police spying that could become a major scandal.
Garcia, a leader in the Cuautla, Morelos state, movement against alleged electoral fraud following the July 1988 presidential elections, was kidnapped in December 1988. He has not been seen or heard from since.
He is the first "disappeared" activist of President Carlos Salinas De Gortari's administration, and his case has received considerable attention throughout the country and abroad.
Numerous human rights organisations, including the prestigious official National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and opposition political parties, particularly the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), of which Garcia was a leader, have fought to uncover the circumstances of the crime.
Throughout Europe and North America demonstrations have been held at Mexican embassies calling on the Mexican government to respond to demands for information on Garcia's whereabouts. Amnesty International, the Basque parliament and numerous personalities have joined the campaign.
Mounting pressure forced the federal and Morelos governments to appoint commissions to investigate the kidnapping, eventually naming a PRT leader as a special prosecutor. This move is part of a broader government effort to include opposition forces in investigations concerning repression of their members.
From the beginning, strong circumstantial evidence pointed to the complicity of Antonio Nogueda Carbajal. At the time head of the state Judicial Police, Nogueda constantly tried to obstruct and divert the investigation, claiming it was a PRT publicity gimmick, that Garcia was in Nicaragua or that the disappeared activist was working with the Basque terrorist group ETA.
Since the appointment in February of PRT leader Daniel Estrella as special prosecutor, new evidence has come to light suggesting complicity by high-ranking state officials.
Former police agents Julio Gomez Aragon and Mario Mares Vazquez have testified that those responsible for kidnapping Garcia belong to a special political investigation unit of
the Morelos police.
While the activities of this secret police unit in watching over political activists would undoubtedly be condemned by all forces in Mexican political life, political spying as such is not a crime in the penal code.
Mares says that, as a national security agent, he presented reports on surveillance of left activists to the governor of , former agent Gomez says he personally delivered a report on Garcia to the governor's office.
Special prosecutor Estrella told Green Left that "state institutions are seriously implicated in the disappearance of Jose Ramon Garcia ... The CNDH issued a report stating that state functionaries were involved, specifically Nogueda Carbajal, which means the state police as such are implicated."
On March 20, a military helicopter in which Estrella, PRT leader Edgar Sanchez and several officials and representatives of the attorney general's office were travelling crashed in rural Guerrero, south of Mexico City. The aim of the mission was to capture Nogueda.
Three officials were killed, while Sanchez and Estrella were seriously injured. Sanchez is still hospitalised.
"While the attorney general's office says the helicopter crash was an accident, local residents says they heard gunshot fire. The PRT refuses to rule out the possibility that the helicopter was shot down.
"We have received numerous death threats", Estrella continued. "After the helicopter crash, a fight broke out in the Morelos prison in which police witnesses who have confessed to knowledge of the Jose Ramon case were injured."
Estrella, released from a Mexico City hospital, is recuperating in his home in the northern province of Sonora. He pledges the investigation will continue until all aspects of the case are sufficiently clarified and Garcia is reunited with his family.