Ex-Mexico spy chief arrested

MEXICO CITY -- Miguel Nazar Haro, a onetime domestic spy chief implicated in the killings of government critics in the 1970s and 1980s, was arrested Wednesday evening as he drove to his doctor's office, the first former official arrested for crimes committed during Mexico's so-called dirty war.

The dramatic arrest, hailed by human rights activists, comes three years after President Vicente Fox took office promising to punish officials responsible for the torture and disappearance of hundreds of student activists and antigovernment guerrillas. Nazar Haro was seized as Fox's chief prosecutor was under increased pressure to show results in his investigations of dirty-war cases.

Nazar Haro, 80, who has denied the charges against him, is accused of not only ordering numerous murders but also directly participating in torture. As former director of the now disbanded Federal Security Directorate, he was once named in an FBI cable as an "essential contact" for the CIA in Mexico City. He is also wanted in the United States on 1982 car theft charges.

The arrest was one of the few bright spots in stalled efforts to carry out democratic reforms in Mexico. Under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which Fox swept from office in 2000 elections after seven decades in power, corruption and arbitrary abuses of power went unchecked.

"He was like a psychopath," said Fernando Pineda Ochoa, who said he was tortured by Nazar Haro in 1971. Pineda, then a Marxist opposed to the authoritarian government, said Nazar beat him, applied electric shocks to his mouth, and told him he was going to torture his mother in his presence.

Now a teacher, Pineda said his torture continued for more than a month as Nazar and others sought names and addresses of other Marxists. He said that for hours at a time he was hung from the ceiling by his arms. "I am not seeking revenge," Pineda said about Nazar. "But he is guilty. Everybody who suffered at his hands knows that."

Nazar Haro is also a fugitive from justice in the United States, arrested in San Diego in 1982 on charges of participating in a multimillion-dollar car-theft ring. A federal indictment said that hundreds of cars were stolen in California and brought into Mexico; some later turned up being driven by senior government officials.

Nazar Haro fled after posting $200,000 bail.