Associated Press
July 18, 2001

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- A Mexican appeals court has upheld the drug and weapons convictions of two anti-logging activists, prompting rights groups Wednesday to pledge to take the case to an international court.

Rodolfo Montiel, an award-winning environmentalist, and Teodoro Cabrera Garcia were sentenced in August 2000 to six years and 10 years, respectively.

But defense lawyers said the drug and weapons charges were fabricated, and that their clients were really arrested for blocking logging roads to protest clear-cutting in old-growth forests near the Pacific coast.

The court in the southern state of Guerrero, however, upheld the convictions, ruling that the evidence was valid and rejecting testimony that the men were tortured into confessing.

Mexican and international groups, who consider the imprisoned farmers-turned-activists, to be prisoners of conscience, condemned the ruling.

"This is going to have an extremely chilling effect on other environmentalists in Mexico," said Alejandro Queral of the San Francisco-based Sierra Club.

Jorge Fernandez of Mexico's Pro Human Rights Center said the defense team will take the case to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States.

"This ruling shows that there is no justice here," said Fernandez Wednesday.

Montiel, 46, and Teodoro Cabrera, 51, were arrested in May 1999 allegedly while standing near an opium poppy field, carrying rifles and possessing marijuana plants.

The anti-logging protesters had stopped logging trucks with human chains and threatened to burn trucks and their shipments of flawless old pine and fir destined to be turned into moldings and kitchen cabinets for U.S. houses.

Montiel has won the Sierra Club's "Chico Mendes" award, and the $125,000 Goldman prize, given by the San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Foundation in recognition for efforts to preserve the environment.

Amnesty International has declared him a prisoner of conscience.