Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, former prosecutor who managed to prosecute Luis Echeverría for the 1968 massacre, has died

Ignacio Carrillo Prieto (Photo: Twitter@sandyluzleon)

On the morning of August 25, the death of Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, former prosecutor of the now defunct Special Prosecutor’s Office for Social and Political Movements of the Past (FEMOSPP), was reported at the age of 77. Carrillo Prieto achieved what no one else had done: bringing a former federal president to the dock.

It was the General Director of Social Communication of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), Jorge Ramos Pérez, who announced the death of the former prosecutor, who managed to prosecute Luis Echeverría Álvarez for two massacres: the one in the Plaza de Tlatelolco in 1968 and Corpus Christi Thursday, in 1971.

According to the Governing Board of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Ignacio Carrillo Prieto was born on June 12, 1947. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Law from the same university and a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the Ibero-American University. He also obtained a Special License in Social Law from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.

Jorge Ramos Pérez, Director General of Social Communication of the SCJN, confirmed the death of Ignacio Carrillo Prieto (Screenshot)

In 2001, he was appointed Special Prosecutor for political and social reasons of the recent past in Mexico and a member of the Mexican Academy of Science. As part of his duties, he managed to have Luis Echeverría accused of the massacres of 1968 and 1971, although due to his age he did not go to jail and was under house arrest until he was finally exonerated by the courts.

According to an interview with AP, Carrillo Prieto confessed that his cousin, Dení Prieto Stoch, a member of the guerrilla group Fuerzas de Liberación Nacional, died after a military assault on the safe house where she was staying. The former prosecutor said that those who were there surrendered but the Army killed them.

In the same 2018 interview, Ignacio Carrillo said that he did not feel the support of former President Vicente Fox, who created FEMOSPP, because two years after he appointed him as prosecutor, the former president asked him when he would close the Prosecutor’s Office, to which he replied: “‘Mr. President … as that famous diamond sporting figure said: this ends when it ends, not before.'”