Mexico City - Twenty suspects in a massacre that claimed the lives of 45 members of the Tzotzil indigenous community in December 1997 in the southeastern Mexican state were freed in the early hours of Thursday.

The move provoked outrage in the community that was targetted in the massacre.

The Mexican Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that there were legal mistakes in the trial. The men were ruled to be innocent and were freed Thursday.

Along with others who are to be retried for the same case, the 20 people had already spent close to 12 years in jail.

More than 50 paramilitaries are believed to have attacked 45 indigenous people - mostly women and children - belonging to the religious community Las Abejas while they were praying.

The attackers waited till the community left the site of prayer and shot at them in cold blood, with no warning. The dead were allegedly blamed for supporting the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).

The massacre shook Mexico at the time and also caught the attention of international public opinion since it happened in the area affected by the conflict between the authorities and the EZLN.

Some 50 Tzotzils belonging to Las Abejas protested against the court ruling.

"The Supreme Court re-opened people's wounds. People started to cry because they lived through and they felt the pain of seeing their relatives and neighbours dead in the attack of the paramilitaries, who are from adjoining hamlets and even from right here, from Acteal," said Las Abejas chairman Sebastian Perez Vazquez.

"Survivors and Acteal dwellers are very upset and furious about the liberation of paramilitaries who have been perfectly identified as having taken part in the massacre," he said.(dpa)