By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service

MEXICO CITY, Feb. 8 -- Newly released from prison on orders from President Vicente Fox, Gen. Jose Francisco Gallardo pledged today to keep fighting to clear
his name and to seek punishment for the Mexican military officials who ordered what human rights groups call his unjust eight-year imprisonment.

"A democratic state should be a state that repairs damages done to any person's human rights," said Gallardo, 55, wearing a crisp gray business suit at a midday
news conference.

Fox gave in to years of domestic and international pressure from rights groups and ordered Gallardo's release Thursday evening, reducing his 28-year sentence to
time served. But Fox did not pardon Gallardo or clear his record as Gallardo had wanted. Fox also did not announce any plans to investigate Gallardo's case further,
to determine whether his rights were violated or if he is entitled to reparations. As a result, human rights groups called Gallardo's release a half-measure.

"This is not enough," said Christian Rojas, head of Amnesty International's Mexico office, who joined Gallardo at the news conference. While praising Fox for freeing
Gallardo, he added that Fox needs to "eliminate the roots" of judicial abuse.

"It's a half-victory," said Roderic Camp, a specialist on the Mexican military at Claremont McKenna College in California. "It represents some progress in the sense
that the civilian authorities were able to persuade the military authorities to do this. But it doesn't mean anything at all for internal military policies."

As Gallardo spoke with reporters, his daughter, Jessica, 8, sat on his lap. She was born three weeks before he was imprisoned in November 1993 on charges that
he defamed the military by suggesting in a published article that it needed an independent ombudsman to investigate wrongdoing by soldiers.

Gallardo, a former Olympic athlete and once Mexico's youngest brigadier general, was later convicted in a military court on theft and corruption charges that rights
groups say were fabricated. They said his real crime was publicly challenging the leaders of Mexico's secretive and closed military.

In a round of media appearances that began with a pre-dawn radio show, Gallardo repeatedly expressed gratitude to Fox for his freedom. But he said Fox has not
gone far enough to address the causes of human rights abuses, especially by the military.

Gallardo noted that, under Fox, Mexico is beginning to investigate some of the darkest chapters of its recent past, including a 1968 massacre of student protesters
and the disappearances and presumed murders of hundreds of anti-government activists in the 1970s and 1980s. Soldiers were involved in those cases and in many
other cases of torture, illegal imprisonment and other human rights abuses.

"Now more than ever," Mexico needs a military ombudsman to force the "opening and democratization of the military," Gallardo said.

Gallardo's arguments have been endorsed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), which said
Gallardo was being unjustly punished and issued a report in 1997 urging Mexico to release him. The commission also recommended that those responsible be
identified and punished and that Gallardo receive reparations.

Gallardo said he would press that position on Feb. 19 in Costa Rica, at a hearing on his case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the OAS body that
hears recommendations from the human rights commission.

Gallardo's release was timed partly to prevent the government from being criticized by Gallardo's family and human rights groups at the hearing. At a news
conference announcing Gallardo's release, Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda said he hoped the hearing would no longer be necessary.

But Gallardo said the hearing is needed to keep up international pressure on Fox to fulfill the commission's recommendations. An OAS official in Washington said
court officials have not yet considered whether to cancel it.

                                               © 2002