MEXICO FINDS ACTIVIST GUILTY IN DRUG CASE

Peasant Won Goldman Environmental Prize

Mexico City -- A peasant activist who won the prestigious Goldman
environmental prize for fighting rampant deforestation in western Mexico
was convicted yesterday on drug and weapons charges and given a hefty jail
sentence.

Rodolfo Montiel, who has been held without bail for 15 months, was found
guilty of arms possession and growing marijuana in the state of Guerrero
and received a sentence of six years and eight months.

A colleague, Teodoro Cabrera, was also found guilty of arms possession and
given a 10-year term. There was no immediate explanation for the sentencing
discrepancy.

Numerous human rights groups have said that the two men were tortured while
in custody and that the charges against them were trumped up with the aim
of ending their attempts to protect some of Mexico's last old-growth forests.

"They are both innocent farmers who have a commitment to protecting their
area," said Richard N. Goldman, president of the San Francisco-based
Goldman Environmental Foundation. "The evidence we have shows that the
charges were all fabricated and confessions done under stress."

The arrest of Montiel, who won the $125,000 Goldman Prize in April, has
drawn extensive international interest. London-based Amnesty International
has declared both Montiel and Cabrera to be prisoners of conscience, and
the Sierra Club has started a campaign for their release.

Yesterday's ruling by Fifth District Court Judge Maclovio Murillo of the
small town of Iguala did not come as a surprise, but human rights groups
that worked hard for the jailed farmers' release were visibly disappointed.

"It's an unjust decision," said Edgar Cortes, director of the Mexico
City-based Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center, which represented
the two peasant leaders. "The only evidence against them is a confession
coerced under torture."

Cortes, who said the center had not studied the judge's 150-page brief,
said his group would appeal both the verdict and sentences.

He also questioned whether a report by the government's own human rights
commission had been taken into account. That panel, which rarely criticizes
any government body, issued a report in July stating that the two men had
been tortured and that evidence incriminating them had been planted.

Homero Aridjis, director of the most influential Mexican environmental
group, the Group of 100, had harsh words for U.S. environmental groups'
handling of the activists' plight. He said that they acted arrogantly by
not working closely with local Mexican groups in a complex case where
political and environmental concerns overlapped.

"This is a defeat for the Mexican and the American environmental
movements," he said. "We need a coalition to work to liberate these two
men, not paternalism directed from California."

"Western environmental groups say that peasants should defend their land.
But when they do, there is immediate repression (by the state). So (those
same) environmental groups must be involved in human rights work, too."

Trouble began for the two campesinos shortly after the U.S. forest products
company Boise Cascade signed a contract in 1995 to buy wood from commercial
loggers in Guerrero's Sierra de Petatlan. The development was spurred by
the North American Free Trade Agreement, which allowed the sale of timber
rights by local ejidos, or communal farms.

As the logging gathered momentum, Montiel, 44, gradually observed a decline
of water and crop quality and erosion in his community. By 1997, he had
begun organizing farmers along the mountains' rugged slopes to fight the
logging.

When legal authorities ignored the complaints of Montiel's grassroots
group, known as the Ecologist Farmers of the Sierra de Petatlan, the
peasants organized protests to shut down the logging mills and erected a
tollbooth along the main route to collect compensation from passing logging
trucks.

By mid-1998, Boise Cascade halted its purchases in Guerrero, citing
"difficult business conditions."

The protest campaign brought Montiel, who has a first-grade education, into
conflict with local political bosses who supported the longing. They razed
the tollbooth, and the state government sent troops to occupy villages
where the protesters were strong. Many were arrested, and several were shot
and killed.

On May 2, 1999, Montiel and Cabrera were arrested amid accusations by the
state attorney general's office that they were members of an "ecological
guerrilla organization."

In following months, the pair told human rights groups that they confessed
after being beaten and tortured by electric shock, and denied medical
attention.

Prosecutors, however, said Montiel, Cabrera and three other men fled from a
house after an army patrol entered the village of Pizotla. The five
allegedly opened fire on the soldiers. Local authorities have said they
were protecting marijuana plants.

Aridjis said "there are hundreds of cases like this one in Mexico,'' where
those fighting for environmental protection face state repression. "This
one became complicated because they were charged with drug trafficking,
which is a very serious charge," he added.

Environmentalists, however, are hopeful that President-elect Vicente Fox
will release Montiel and Cabrera after he assumes the presidency on Dec. 1.

Amnesty International already has petitioned Fox to intervene, and
according to Goldman, Fox showed "great interest'' after meeting with
several environmental groups in Washington last week.

"He told an aide, 'We have to pursue this,' " said Goldman. "I hope he does
what is proper."

Mike Brune, director of the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network's
old-growth campaign, called yesterday's ruling ``tragic'' and faulted Boise
Cascade for tacitly encouraging destructive logging through its purchase of
timber in areas not subject to U.S. environmental protection laws.