Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

MEXICO: New Investigation Finds Rights Lawyer’s Death a Suicide

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jul 18 2003 (IPS) - Mexican social activist and attorney Digna Ochoa achieved near-sainthood among human rights defenders after her alleged murder in October 2001, but several investigations have determined that she committed suicide and suggest she was a compulsive "mythomaniac".

Ochoa took her own life with two shots fired from her own gun after setting up a scenario to make it look like she had been murdered, concluded the special prosecutor, according to an announcement Friday.

That thesis – which has outraged the admirers of the respected lawyer-activist, dead at 37 – is the same produced by the first series of investigations of the case.

Human rights defenders and relatives of Ochoa say they feel let down by the outcome of the investigations and insist that she was killed by persons who were threatened by the legal work she was pursuing.

Ochoa’s alleged murder caught the international spotlight, bringing criticisms from international agencies and institutions against Mexico’s shoddy record for protection of human rights.

The special prosecutor is going to feel the rejection of the public because "we are going to prove that she was murdered," assures José Ochoa, the activist’s brother.

Sources from the human rights group Agustín Pro Juárez – where Ochoa, a former nun, used to work – declined to comment to IPS on the results of the investigations saying they had yet to review the report.

Ochoa quickly became an icon of the human rights struggle after she died, and her life story has been the subject of a book and a movie.

The attorney defended individuals accused of subversion as well as people who denounced being tortured and abused by the Mexican armed forces.

She had reported receiving death threats and being followed. On one occasion she said she had been kidnapped by unknown men who had demanded she halt her investigations of human rights violations.

But the special prosecutor, designated by the Mexico City government led by leftist Manuel López, says evidence shows that most of the threats Ochoa denounced were made up, and cited several examples.

In 1987, the attorney received medical treatment for knife wounds on her neck and chest. She said someone opposed to her human rights work had attacked her.

But an inquiry at the time found that she had inflicted the wounds herself. Legal authorities recommended that Ochoa undergo psychiatric evaluation.

A year later, her relatives reported that she had been kidnapped, but she reappeared without any sign of physical harm and without payment of any sort of ransom. According to witness statements, it was found that she had voluntarily shut herself away in a Roman Catholic convent.

The special prosecutor, whose work was closely monitored by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, says the case should be closed because it has been proven that Ochoa’s death was a suicide and there is no crime to clear up.

Reacting to news of her death, the London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International stated in 2001 that the biggest challenge facing President Vicente Fox in his battle against impunity would be to bring those responsible for the murder to justice.

The Fox government promised to collaborate in the investigations, but maintained that the responsibility for handling the case lay with the Mexico City authorities.

The capital’s officials pledged to clear up the crime and allowed the victim’s family members and human rights activists to help with the investigations. Respected attorney and former federal judge Margarita Guerra, chosen by a committee of human rights officials, led the effort.

Mary Robinson, who at the time was United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, condemned the alleged murder, which she said dashed hopes for a change from the intimidation and harassment to which human rights defenders are so often subjected.

In a similar vein, Guatemala’s Rigoberta Menchú, a Nobel Peace laureate, said the "cowardly murder" of Ochoa was "a maximum alert for the transition that Mexican is experiencing."

But the two sets of investigations undermine the theory that Ochoa was murdered.

Her life story is included in "Speak Truth to Power", a book by U.S. author-activist Kerry Kennedy about the international struggle to protect human rights, and in the film "Digna, hasta el último aliento" (Digna: Until the Last Breath), directed by Felipe Cazals.

 
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Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

MEXICO: New Investigation Finds Rights Lawyer’s Death a Suicide

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jul 18 2003 (IPS) - Mexican social activist and attorney Digna Ochoa achieved near-sainthood among human rights defenders after her alleged murder in October 2001, but several investigations have determined that she committed suicide and suggest she was a compulsive “mythomaniac”.
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