Copyright 2001 Reuters
November 12, 2001
Story by Elizabeth Fullerton

MEXICO CITY - Two Mexican peasant ecologists freed from jail this week by a presidential pardon vowed on the weekend to continue their fight to protect the environment despite death threats from powerful interest groups.

Rodolfo Montiel, 46, and Teodoro Cabrera, 55, were freed by President Vicente Fox after more than two years in jail on weapons and drugs charges which human rights groups say were fabricated by military troops who arrested them.

Before Montiel and Cabrera were convicted for seven and 10 years respectively, they led protests against illegal logging by influential local bosses in the impoverished and lawless central state of Guerrero, in what became a cause celebre at home and abroad.

"We are afraid of local chieftains but we also have a commitment to all the new generations whom we've told we'll defend the environment," Montiel told Reuters in an interview at the offices of the Pro Juarez human rights center which led the campaign for their release and is protected around the clock by police.

They have said they were detained for five days by the army and given electric shocks to their legs and genitals. Cabrera said he was punched in the face, blinding his right eye.

The men, who have been promised police protection and are being sheltered with their families in the center in Mexico City, said they had received death threats from the Guerrero chieftains while in jail.

"It would be too dangerous for us to return to Guerrero now but we don't know where we should stay (meantime)," said Montiel looking strained but cheerful.

Fox has been under intense pressure to show his commitment to human rights since the Oct. 19 murder of a leading rights lawyer Digna Ochoa who defended the men and accused the army of forcing confessions out of them through torture.

In a speech to the United Nations in New York on the weekend, Fox said the release of the two prominent environmentalists showed Mexico's new commitment to defending human rights.

HOLLOW VICTORY

But while savoring their freedom, the men said their names had not been cleared and the legal battle was far from over.

"This is just a first step. We want to be declared innocent and damages for the time we spent in jail," said Montiel, a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a toothy grin.

"We want our fellow environmentalists in prison to be freed and we want those who tortured us and those who ordered our arrest to be punished," he added.

Mario Patron, a lawyer at the center, said four ecologists from Montiel's anti-logging group are in jail in Guerrero.

The spotlight has been turned on Mexico's military, which under the 71-year rule of the former Institutional Revolutionary Party had virtually free reign until Fox's election in 2000.

Last week officials probing Ochoa's murder said their investigation pointed to Guerrero and the logging row.

Montiel said he was hopeful that justice could be achieved under Fox, who swept to power vowing to root out corruption, end impunity and promote human rights and democracy.

But the government must give impoverished peasants financial aid in areas like Guerrero, to prevent them joining the loggers in deforesting vast swathes of land, he said.

"Many do that work out of ignorance or out of necessity because they don't have any other way to buy schoolbooks or shoes for their children," said Montiel. Error: Unable to read footer file.