Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 8

STREET EDITION STATE EDITION A8 The Arizona Republic Sunday, December 2, 1990 League of Cities pells convention from state LEAGUE, from page Al group would not hold its annual convention in Phoenix until there was a paid state holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "That stipulation was defeated on the basis that the National League of Cities should not use economic leverage to force Arizona voters to Rapper to push for King Day in state shows mmmmit 1 V' "'V i 1 I I Rap star M.C. Hammer will be urging concertgo-ers to tell Arizona legislators to enact a paid holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

during his shows in Arizona today and Monday. "By performing here, bringing more attention to this issue, I can hopefully inspire audiences to take action," Hammer said in a statement released Friday. "The sad fact that the Martin Luther King Jr. initiative lost by a meager 1 percent margin of the vote, goes to prove how every vote counts." Hammer, who will perform today at the Community Center Arena in Tucson and at the Arizona State University Activity Center in Tempe on Monday, is the first major black star to perform in Arizona since Election Day. His latest album, Please, Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em, has sold more than 6 million copies, and he held the No.

1 position in Billboard magazine's hot-albums chart for 21 weeks. His previous Arizona appearance was at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in August. Lpass an MLK holiday," Johnson said. In the Nov. 6 general election, voters rejected Proposition 302 by about 17,000 votes, or less than 1 percentage point.

Proposition 302 would have created a paid King Day and retained Columbus Day as a paid holiday. Proposition 301, which would have dropped Columbus Day, was defeated by a ratio of 3-1. Fallout from the vote was immediate. The next day, National Football League Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said he would urge team owners to withdraw the 1993 Super Bowl from Arizona as a result of the rejection of King Day. Loss of the professional-football championship game would cost the Valley economy about $200 million.

The team owners are expected to make a decision in March, but it is considered unlikely that they will reject Tagliabue's recommendation. Tourism officials fear that other groups will cancel conventions, and that entertainers will boycott the state, costing millions in lost revenues. Opponents of the holiday have denied being motivated by racism, saying they object to giving state workers another holiday or do not believe King was worthy of such an honor. They also have accused King Day backers of being motivated more by economics than respect for the slain civil-rights leader. Volgy said Saturday that such cities as Phoenix and Tucson should not be penalized over the King Day issue.

"This organization (the League of Cities) is an organization that has been built on diversity and mutual respect, and wherever this organiza- a speaker at the National League of Cities Tim JohnsonThe Associated Press meeting. didn't apologize for the state," he said. they shouldn't punish Phoenix for the actions of the state." Goddard thinks it is "regrettable" that the convention has been pushed to 1995 but added, "Under the circumstances, it's probably the best option we can get." The convention is a plum, he added, and the host city is portrayed in a favorable light. Competition for the gathering is fierce. League members agreed that, regardless of costs and the difficulty of finding a new location for the November 1991 convention, it should be moved.

"I want to send a negative message to the voters of Arizona who put us in this position," said George Goodman, executive, director of the Michigan aPRI still pulls strings lin Mexico, insider says a 1 sifcAy i hjn 1 nt ill a WM a 1 I lwli Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson listens to tion goos, it deserves to go only to the cities that do display that same mutual respect," he said. "We need this organization to say the right thing to Phoenix, because Phoenix did the right thing." He was referring to the fact that Phoenix has a paid King Day for municipal workers. Former Gov. Evan Mecham, who has been a leader in opposing the holiday, said, "I'm always surprised that people want to involve themselves in decisions made by another state. "But it's a bush-league decision.

Our tourism is increasing every. year. This isn't going to bother the people of Arizona, and it certainly isn't going to bother me." Mecham added that Arizona is date Adalbcrto Rosas Lopez "easily won, maybe 2 to 1." Sotclo said he should know: He helped organize and stuff ballot boxes in that election. Then, in 1988, Hcrmosillo, the most important of Sonora's 69 muni-cipios, or townships, threatened to fall to PAN and its. popular mayoral candidate, Rene Pavlovich.

Sotclo said the PRI candidate for mayor, Carlos Robles Loustaunau, approached him to provide police cadets to help stuff ballot boxes, steal others and vote repeatedly with false credentials. Sotclo agreed to do it. "You don't I emphasize, don't say, because if you do, you're fired, and you're lucky if that's all that happens to you," he said. Robles could not be reached for comment. A key to the operation was the fabrication of thousands of false voter-identification cards for police cadets to use, Sotclo said, adding that Robles directed the ballot stuffing by radio.

Sotclo said he passed out most of the credentials, but held onto a box of them as a "kind of an insurance policy" against Robles. Robles beat his opponent by 31,000 votes to 24,000, according to official tallies. Within days of the election, however, a tape recording began circulating in the city. In it, men identified only by code names directed state police and cadets to stuff and loot ballot boxes. "There was no doubt from the beginning that the tape was genuine," said Ramon Corral, state PAN chairman.

"It was also very entertaining, and became the thing to listen to." Opposition parties asked state and federal election boards to investigate the scandal, which became known as Operacion Las Manitas, or "Operation Little Hands." But those boards, dominated by government and PRI members, refused. Robles began his term as mayor in early December of 1988. Robles and Sonora's new attorney general, Sostcncs Valcnzuela Miller, then demanded the return of the missing credentials, Sotclo said. "Instead, I just gave them my resignation," he said. Valcnzuela did not respond to phone calls at his office.

On March 10, 1989, federal police arrested Sotclo and Adolfo Cruz Frisby, a 22-year-old cousin of Sotclo, on charges of cocaine trafficking. Cruz was arrested while allegedly in the act of hiding 8 grams of cocaine at his home. Sotclo was picked up at Cruz's home a few hours later. A day after arresting Sotclo, police arrested Hector Lagarda, 32, a hairdresser and close friend of Sotclo, accusing him of selling cocaine. The three men were held incommu is the one and only city in the nation to have a MLK holiday confirmed by "all nine members of the City Council and by the voters.

If not for that, we wouldn't have kept it for 1995." Jack Henry, chairman of the Phoenix Economic Growth said he was pleased with Johnson's efforts. "I am not surprised with the decision, although I thought we might lose this one, as we have other conventions," he said. Gov. Rose Mofford said, "It's a very tragic situation. We were looking forward to having them', and 1995 is a long way off." Contributing to this article was The Associated Press.

CALIF Phoenix ARIZONA MEXICO Hermoslllo Padfic Ocean The Arizona Republic In an interview, Gomez said there was "no doubt that a theft (of votes) and falsification of credentials took place, but there was no evidence to implicate these men as the perpetrators." Corral said the Mexican government decided "enough was enough." "We tried to pursue the (vote-fraud) case, but we couldn't get any farther," he said. The three men's stories of being framed and tortured vary little from those told by prisoners nationwide. "Using trumped-up charges to get someone out of the way is a practice in keeping with the ways political power is won and lost in Mexico," said Ellen Lutz, who edited a July report on Mexico's police and judicial system for Americas Watch, a human-rights organization based in New York. The report said that the federal anti-narcotics police operate with "near impunity," and that the agents "routinely commit criminal acts far worse than those they are trying to stop." Salinas has empaneled a commission on curbing torture and other police abuses. Lutz said observers are heartened that the presidential commission has turned into a "genuine investigative bureau that has proposed some very hard-hitting measures." After the Hcrmosillo vote fraud came to light, Salinas pledged that future elections would be fair.

Last month, a PRI spokesman called Operacidn Las Manitas a "shameful and embarrassing episode for the PRI nationally." Elias Freig, the party's international-affairs spokesman in Mexico City, said, "But in the end, Las Manitas served notice to party members everywhere that the administration was not going to condone this win-at-any-cost conduct." The pledge was not a new one for Mexicans accustomed to decades of fraud. However, some apparent proof of new resolve came during the gubernatorial election in July 1989 in Baja California Norte, where a PAN candidate, Ernesto Ruffo, became the first opposition-party member to win a governorship since the 1910-17 Mexican Revolution. In that case, however, it was the PRI that claimed fraud. And charges of vote fraud against the PRI in recent elections in the state of Mexico demonstrated again how Mexico's electoral system, which is still the domain of the PRI, continues to lack credibility. ahead of all other states, at least in terms of letting voters decide what they want! "Maybe those other cities ought to let their people vote on it," he said.

"They should recognize that the people are the final judge, and that's our democratic process." Former Phoenix Mayor Terry God-dard, a former head of the League of Cities, said the question of whether the convention would come to Arizona had been up in- the air since the summer of 1988. "They picked 1991 forthe meeting because they thought (King Day) issue would be laid to rest by then," he said. "I used the argument then that their allegiance should be to cities and nicado until March 23 at the Federal Judicial Police station on Calle Norwalk. Police, referring to Sotclo as "the doctor" because he holds the equivalent of a doctorate in Mexico, made no secret of their real motive. Cruz and Lagarda said agents told them, "El plcito no esta contigo.

Esta con el doctor" "The fight's not with you, it's with the doctor." The three were kept apart, but each was tortured to elicit confessions' and "to establish, in some sadistic way, who was boss," Lagarda said. The trio said the agents blindfolded them and tied them up, shot soda water into their nostrils and slapped their faces, sometimes with their palms, sometimes with rubber straps. Agents placed a plastic bag in and out of Sotclo's throat, he said. Lagarda said they jammed one of his testicles up into his body and threatened to cut it out. Lagarda and Sotelo said they were told that their wives and children would be assaulted.

Both men were taken into shallow ponds outside the police compound, where agents spoke of killing them, then sprayed rounds from a machine gun around them. Each of the men confessed. Each also signed a statement saying he had waived his right to an attorney. Each now repudiates both documents. "They call these 'voluntary confessions' and 'voluntary said Roberto Rojas Astorga, an attorney who has represented Sotclo.

"But the truth is that these are coerced confessions that came after days of torture or with a gun at the head." Meanwhile, unbeknownst to his son, Sotclo's father, Guillcrmo Sotelo Sanora, had discovered the missing voters' credentials in the trunk of his own car. The elder Sotelo, 59, said he met with several Hcrmosillo leaders, including PRI state Chairman Bul-maro Pacheco. "I was worried that I wouldn't see Guillcrmo again that he would just disappear," he said. "They (the politicians) kept telling me, 'Yes, you're right, but there's nothing we can do about So, together with a cadet loyal to his son, the elder Sotelo turned over the credentials to state PAN Chairman Corral. At a news conference with Corral on March 17, 1989, detailed the entire fraud and provided names to go with the codes heard on the widely circulating tape.

The revelation had an immediate impact. Robles asked for a leave of absence as mayor and dropped from sight. The Federal Attorney General's Office in Mexico City announced that it would investigate the case. Then, Sotelo said, Felix and Lt. Gov.

Francisco Aldana visited him in prison at 11 p.m. on April 13, 1989. They asked that, as a good party man, Municipal League. During the later interview, Johnson was hoarse and sounded strained and tired. "We've been battling this for two days," he said.

"We had to listen to a lot of derogatory remarks about Phoenix. That in itself was tiring." The league has not announced where the 1991 meeting will be held, but Johnson said New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas let it be known three weeks ago that they wanted the convention. He said that he and his aides presented a to the league outlining both sides of the King Day dispute. "We didn't apologize for the state," he said, "but emphasized that Phoenix prison doctor showed that he had numerous bruises and scrapes, the judge wrote. In Lagarda's case, an initial examination by police doctors also reported that he had no injuries.

But a follow-up exam by a physician who worked for the state prison reported numerous bruises and scrapes that "occurred within the last 1 1 days." Huerta wrote that the actions of the federal police "manifest a deceitful attitude that detracted from the integrity" of Lagarda's confession. In addition, the two Federal Judicial Police agents who arrested contradicted one another in testimony, Huerta said. The judge's decision suggested he did not believe either one. Still, prosecutor Acosta said he is appealing the judge's dismissal of the three men's drug-trafficking charges. The commander in charge of federal police in Sonora at the time, Jose Luis Larrozolo, did not respond to several phone calls to his current post, at Morelia in Michoacan state, asking about agents' conduct.

Meanwhile, additional charges of vote fraud were brought against Sotclo; Robles, who forfeited his office; and several others over their participation in the election-fraud scandal. In July, in separate decisions, Judge Otanicl Gomez Ayala of the First Federal District absolved Sotelo of vote-fraud charges and ruled that an arrest warrant issued against Robles in Mexico City was invalid because the government's case did not clearly implicate him. 1 1 Keith RosenblumThe Arizona Republic Guillermo Sotelo Cruz says, "For years, Mexico has put on one face before human-rights organizations and then laughed behind their backs." PRI, from page A 1 jpharged with cocaine trafficking. Police produced no buyer and presented only a small amount of cocaine claimed came from a friend of otelo. Nor were they moved by evidence that Sotclo was 1,700 miles away, in jMcxico City, when the alleged sale Jccurrcd.

Police said they simply were 'responding to an anonymous call. jAnd, after a week in police custody and what Sotclo claims was torture, he confessed. There never was a conviction. In October, after 19 months in the Sonora State Penitentiary, Sotclo and two others accused of narcotics trafficking were released after being absolved by a judge. Fearing reprisals, Sotclo and the two others initially refused to speak publicly.

But in a scries of interviews in Hcrmosillo, the three, believing a commitment to human rights by Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari offered them newfound protection, spoke unconditionally to The Arizona Republic. Their accounts of arrest and imprisonment provide a rare inside look at Mexico's longstanding use of criminal-justice powers to achieve political ends. "For years, Mexico has put on one face before human-rights organizations and then laughed behind their backs," Sotclo said. "They should be focusing right here." Alberto Loyola, a national spokesman for the National Action Party, or PAN, the country's distant-second political party, said, "Guillcrmo Sotclo was framed, and it would be hard to find a clear thinker who believes otherwise." Norbcrto Corclla, a past member of the PAN's national executive committee, added, "Sotclo double-crossed the Sonora PRI political mafia, and he paid the price." Sotclo himself believes that even that price imprisonment may have been cheap: He feared he might be killed. Rather than being intimidated, Sotclo is talking.

He is talking about official corruption and vote fraud that at first he participated in, then fell victim to; about torture he says he suffered at the hands of the police; and about a late-night visit to his prison cell that he claims was made by the governor of Sonora. Sotclo dated the beginning of his woes to the Sonoran gubernatorial election of 1985. As director of the state's police academy, he helped bring victory to the PRI candidate, Sonora's Gov. Rodolfo Felix Valdes in one of Mexico's most disputed recent elections. I The victory was a fraud, according Sotclo, who said opposition candi- Sotclo not confirm his or PRI's role in the vote fraud.

The governor, through an aide, denied making the visit. Cruz and Lagarda said they also found out about the visit. "We were sure we were all going to get out the next morning," Cruz said. But the prisoners weren't freed, and Sotelo told federal investigators about the vote fraud and his imprisonment. In a recent interview, federal Prosecutor Roberto Acosta Michel branded as "lies" the charges by Sotclo, Cruz and Lagarda that they were beaten by police and forced to Prisoners routinely cut and bruise themselves as soon as they are released from police custody, but before they are inspected by a prison doctor, to be able to claim they were beaten in custody, he said.

"There are prisoners who are experts in taking any objects they can and inflicting wounds," Acosta said. "They make it appear there has been torture. It's a common way of trying to nullify a confession." However, in a written opinion absolving Sotelo, Cruz and Lagarda on Sept. 13, Judge Herminio Huerta Diaz of the Second Federal District focused on discrepancies between examinations conducted by doctors before and after two of the men were held in federal custody. The judge noted that an examination of Cruz by a doctor under contract to the federal police revealed no signs of a beating.

But three to six days after Cruz was examined by the first doctor, an examination by a i IT TT.