Mexico orders trial of ex-president for massacre

MEXICO CITY, Nov 30 (Reuters) A Mexican court ordered former president Luis Echeverria to face trial for his part in a 1968 massacre of leftist students just days before the Olympic Games opened in Mexico, his lawyer said.

Echeverria was interior minister when security forces stormed a student rally -- timed as Mexico was in the world spotlight as the Olympics' host -- held in a square in the capital's Tlatelolco district.

Two years later, Echeverria became president.

''The judge ordered him put on trial,'' Juan Velasquez, the former ruler's lawyer, told Reuters yesterday.

Earlier, a source at a special prosecutor's office said a judge had issued an arrest warrant for Echeverria. But Echeverria's lawyer said the ex-ruler, in his mid-80s, would only be put under house arrest.

Officials said about 30 people died in the October 2, 1968, killing, known as the Tlatelolco massacre, although witnesses and rights activists put the death toll as high as 300. The Olympics opened 10 days later.

In July, a judge threw out a genocide charge against Echeverria, who was president from 1970 to 1976, because of the statute of limitations had expired. But prosecutors then appealed.

The new court ruling came just two days before President Vicente Fox leaves office.

Fox had promised to investigate human rights violations by security forces and senior government officials from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which repressed dissent in the 1960s and '70s.

He steps down on Friday to be replaced by fellow conservative Felipe Calderon.

REUTERS SBA BST0615