A plot and a second shooter: the Prosecutor's Office demolishes the theory that Mario Aburto acted alone to murder Luis Donaldo Colosio

The murder of Luis Donaldo Colosio is one of those great crimes that create their own myth, layers and layers of meaning (and nonsense) that surround the heart of history, which disrupt and pervert it.

Colosio's is the

Mexican

Kennedy case .

For the crime there was one detainee, on whose shoulders all responsibility was placed: Mario Aburto.

Almost three decades after the assassination, there are enough cracks in the Prosecutor's investigation that show that Aburto was tortured for him to incriminate himself and declare that he acted alone.

The inconsistencies in the file have given rise to questions as persistent now as before: who and why killed Colosio, the charismatic presidential candidate of the PRI?

Did his promises to reform the Mexican political system make the PRI regime tremble?

Did then-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, considered by many Mexico's public enemy number one, have anything to do with it?

The Attorney General's Office (FGR) has taken a step in a direction that dismantles the theory that Aburto was a solitary murderer.

The special prosecutor's office for the

Colosio case

has resumed a line of investigation that leads to a plot and a second shooter in the murder of the PRI politician, which occurred on March 23, 1994 in the border city of Tijuana, Baja California, during a rally. political.

Colosio was walking through the crowd when he was shot twice: one in the head and another in the abdomen.

The PRI security team captured Aburto, a 23-year-old young man, a maquiladora worker, who was near the site — like dozens of other people.

Aburto declared on the first occasion that he had fired the two shots, but later, in a new statement, he said that he was pressured and tortured to incriminate himself and falsify information (for example, that he had paid him for a match).

The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) demanded in 2021 that the investigation into the torture of Aburto be reopened.

The FGR created a special prosecutor's office in 2022, headed by prosecutor Abel Galván Gallardo, to reopen the investigation of the case, correct the inconsistencies and reach the truth of the crime.

The prosecutor's office in the

Colosio case

has fully identified a second shooter who allegedly participated in the assassination along with Aburto, and has asked the judge for an order for his arrest.

The accused is Jorge Antonio Sánchez Ortega, a former member of Cisen, the Government's intelligence body, who was assigned to the security team of the PRI presidential candidate.

The Prosecutor's Office has also implicated Genaro García Luna in the case, who was then Deputy Director of Operations at Cisen, and would eventually become the Secretary of Public Security and the czar of the strategy against the drug cartels (today he is accused of drug trafficking in the United States).

The first page of the Prosecutor's investigation folder on the murder of Colosio, in a declassified version.FGR

Judge Alberto Chávez Hernández, however, rejected the new allegations of the Prosecutor's Office and did not link the accused to trial.

The FGR, which has announced that it will appeal the ruling, maintains that Sánchez Ortega was at the scene of the homicide, “at the same moment of the crime, when there was a difference of seconds between both shots.”

According to investigators, there are “a large number” of witnesses who claim that the former Cisen agent fled the scene.

The Prosecutor's Office has also presented a blood test that shows that Colosio's blood was on his clothes, and a rhozonate test that indicates that Sánchez Ortega fired a gun.

That the former agent was in the crosshairs of the Prosecutor's Office was announced in 2019 by Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity.

The FGR had already found inconsistencies in the new suspect's version.

One: that he was stained with blood without having participated in the transfer of Colosio after the attack.

Another: that gunpowder was found on his hands even though Sánchez Ortega had declared that, as part of his intelligence work, he was not allowed to carry weapons.

The most novel thing in the new investigation by the Prosecutor's Office is the unexpected presence of García Luna in the homicide theory.

According to the FGR, García Luna, who was 27 years old at the time, covered up for the attacker and then maneuvered to “rescue” him, “urgently and surreptitiously,” after his arrest in Tijuana.

According to the resume of García Luna, who is awaiting sentencing in the United States on drug trafficking charges, his work at Cisen, between 1990 and 1999, was the first in his career as a public servant.

Reforma

has published that the Prosecutor's Office is also investigating Jorge Tello Peón, who was director of Cisen and made representations to the FGR delegate in Baja California to process the release of Sánchez Ortega.

To do this, according to the newspaper, Tello sent a delegation of agents, with García Luna at the head.

The conspiracy theory and the second shooter had already been in the hands of the Prosecutor's Office.

On the first occasion, investigators targeted Othón Cortés Vázquez, who served as the driver and was captured a year after the murder, accused of having fired the shot in the abdomen.

“The hypothesis of the solitary murderer is unsustainable,” said the then Attorney General, Antonio Lozano Gracia.

There were other detainees, members of Colosio's security team, who were later released by the judges, considering that the evidence provided by the FGR was weak.

A public version of the Colosio case

investigation file

is available on the internet.

The Prosecutor's Office questioned several important politicians, starting with Salinas de Gortari, who was the outgoing president and around whom the version spread that he had been involved in the crime.

“The leaks and accusations that have been circulated against me are absolutely false and irresponsible,” declared the PRI politician.

Another key player in the Prosecutor's Office investigations is Manlio Fabio Beltrones, who was governor of Sonora and an important member of the party leadership.

The investigators asked Beltrones about the relationship between Salinas and Colosio, how often they met or if they had suffered a political break in their relationship, which shows that the versions about the former president had value for the Prosecutor's Office.

Colosio's son, also called Luis Donaldo, mayor of Monterrey, 38, has asked to close the chapter on his father's murder with a pardon for Aburto, who is about to leave prison this year, thanks to a ruling of a court that has annulled the 45-year sentence that had been imposed on him.

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has offered Aburto protection and guarantees if he decides to declare the truth.

The new investigations by the Prosecutor's Office were aimed at providing a more credible version of the story, or, if possible, more true.

Efforts have stalled, for now.

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