FORMER Mexican president Luis Echeverria is likely to face genocide charges with the reopening of a case against him for the murder of hundreds of students and rights activists in the 1960s and ’70s.

The Supreme Court has said that the case, brought by Committee 68, which is dedicated to fighting for justice for the 1968 student massacre,  cannot now be closed, even by the General Prosecutor’s Office.

The campaigners for justice are pressing for 54 lines of inquiry to be reopened into the extrajudicial killings as part of the “dirty war” against social movements that took place while Mr Echeverria, now 96, was in power.

He is accused of masterminding both the 1968 Tlateolco massacre, in which paramilitaries opened fire on a student political meeting in Mexico City, and the Corpus Christi massacre of 1971.

Mr Echeverria was interior minister under the presidency of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz in 1968 and president in 1971.

Spokesman for Committee 68 Felix Gonzalez welcomed the ruling and said: “When we first denounced the crimes in 1998, the judge rejected them because they had expired.”