Lawyer's killer leaves death threat

A note found beside the body of a leading human rights lawyer, who was shot dead in her Mexico City office on Friday, warned that others "faced the same fate".

Digna Ochoa, 37, had escaped a 1999 assassination attempt but, although she regularly received menacing letters, continued to work nights at her independent practice. Two bullets were found in her body on Friday night. There was no evidence of robbery.

Ms Ochoa's clients included political offenders such as peasant eco-guerrillas and masked Zapatista rebels, but she also defended street children and rural women. She was legal director of the Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Centre until last year, and was assigned bodyguards, but official protection stopped when she set up her own office in April.

The killing puts pressure on the President, Vicente Fox, who assumed office in December, promising to end criminal impunity by enforcing the law.

The centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, which governs the Mexican capital, is also determined to solve the politically motivated murder.

Ms Ochoa was aware that her line of work was risky. She told Amnesty International, which gave her a human rights award last year: "There is no doubt that the reason for this hostility is precisely the defence and promotion of human rights we carry out each day, for we upset interests, institutions and authorities."

Two years ago, intruders ransacked Ms Ochoa's office and then overpowered the activist at home.

After interrogating her for nine hours about her human rights cases, they left her bound and blindfolded, opened the valve of a gas cylinder and sealed the room. She struggled free of her ropes and fled.

Ms Ochoa, the daughter of a prominent union leader, had most recently been defending guerrillas from the tiny Popular Revolutionary Army, based in Guerrero state.

Bernardo Batiz, the capital's Prosecutor General, has assigned guards to Ms Ochoa's former colleagues, and pointed out that the note left beside the body specifically threatened his department.