The statement of Jorge Antonio Sánchez, identified by the Prosecutor's Office as the second murderer of Colosio, and the Cisen operation to free him

Intelligence agent Jorge Antonio Sánchez Ortega saw the PRI presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, get off a plane at the Tijuana International Airport, in the border state of Baja California.

Outside the facilities, 1,500 people were waiting for him with signs supporting his candidacy.

It was around three in the afternoon on March 23, 1994. Agent Sánchez Ortega, 32, saw the PRI politician advancing with difficulty among the people.

Colosio got into a black van to head to the Lomas Taurinas neighborhood, about 13 minutes away.

The candidate's vehicle was followed by a caravan of cars, companions and security agents.

Born in Sinaloa and living in Tijuana, the agent did not see at that time “any abnormal event” that put Colosio's physical integrity at risk, “nor was any suspect observed.”

Problems would come shortly later, in Lomas Taurinas, when Sánchez Ortega, splattered with Colosio's blood, was arrested and taken into custody.

Agent Sánchez Ortega, who had been working for the National Security Investigation Center (Cisen) for seven months, the intelligence and espionage body of the PRI Government, gave his first statement as a suspect to the Prosecutor's Office the day after the assassination.

In the document, which is part of the investigation file initiated three decades ago, the agent details that he received on March 23, three hours before Colosio's arrival in the border city, the instruction to “be present and report in a timely manner.” on the candidate's political activities.

The agent affirms that Alejandro Ibarra Borbón, subdelegate of Cisen in Tijuana, was the one who commissioned him to carry out these intelligence tasks along with his partner Moisés Aldana Pérez, who would also appear before the Prosecutor's Office as a witness.

The statements of the two Cisen agents, and that of a member of Colosio's personal security force, Rafael López Merino, help reconstruct the chronicle of the moment in which the candidate was murdered.

The testimonies also show that Cisen – now renamed the National Intelligence Center (CNI) – undertook an operation to free agent Sánchez Ortega moments after his capture, as indicated by the Attorney General's Office (FGR) in the new accusation. which he has presented before the judge and in which he demolishes the theory that Mario Aburto, the only one arrested for the assassination, acted alone.

First page of Jorge Antonio Sánchez Ortega's statement before the Prosecutor's Office.PJF

Chronicle of a moment

Sánchez Ortega and Aldana Pérez divided the tasks.

The first would cover Colosio at the airport, while the second would head towards Lomas Taurinas to be at the rally point before the arrival of the PRI candidate.

Sánchez Ortega says that he did not follow Colosio when he left the airport, but rather took a different route in his patrol car.

Upon arriving at Lomas Taurinas, he parked 700 meters from the rally, and positioned himself 20 meters from the candidate.

He looked for his companion and did not find him.

Lomas Taurinas was an irregular settlement of about 15,000 people, where families of maquiladora workers lived mainly.

A river of black water ran parallel to the street where Colosio arrived, around four in the afternoon.

Thirty men made up the presidential candidate's personal guard: 15 were in the neighborhood;

the other half had been deployed to the Country Club, the second campaign event on the agenda.

Colosio advanced, greeting the attendees, until he arrived at a black

pick-up

truck .

He climbed onto the back of the vehicle, which he used as a platform to give his speech, which lasted five minutes.

Before him there were four other speakers, local leaders, who spoke for about 20 minutes.

There were about 3,500 supporters gathered.

Agent Sánchez Ortega says that he left the candidate to look for his partner Aldana Pérez.

With his height of 1.65 meters, he had to find a hill to see better among the people.

He then got hungry and went into a school to buy food, “since the political event did not end.”

When Colosio finished his speech and started walking, in the midst of the hubbub of people and loud music, the agent began to approach.

At 200 meters, he “observed that there were abnormal movements.”

He met his partner, who told him that, apparently, there had been a shooting.

Sánchez Ortega declared that he had not heard any gunshots due to the distance at which he was and the volume of the music.

The other agent, Aldana Pérez, was 10 meters away, and he did hear a detonation.

Aldana stated that he met his partner until leaving the event.

One of Colosio's personal guards, López Merino, stated that he was three meters away, from the candidate's left rear side, when he heard a detonation, and almost immediately "one more detonation."

He saw Colosio lying on the ground and covered him with his own body.

People were fleeing.

Two of his companions had “knocked down an individual in a black jacket, and at that moment a revolver-type weapon fell next to them.”

People began to gather around the detainee, Mario Aburto, with such ferocity that it gave the impression that they wanted to lynch him, according to Aldana.

Colosio activities program for March 23, 1994.FGR

Agent Sánchez Ortega wanted to report what happened to the Cisen Information Center in Tijuana, dependent on the Ministry of the Interior (Segob), but his radio transmitter was not working.

There was a bad signal.

Aldana Pérez also had communication problems and had to look for a high point to find reception.

Sánchez Ortega went to his patrol car to use the vehicle's radio.

On the way, according to what he stated, he saw Colosio's truck and an ambulance arrive.

The injured candidate was carried by several people.

The agent approached to within five feet and saw that Colosio had his head covered with his own shirt and that his blood was running down to his chest.

They loaded him into the ambulance, which several vehicles followed.

Then something happened that would change the agent's luck.

“[Sánchez Ortega] wishes to clarify that, when trying to approach Mr. Colosio, one of the people who were there carrying out the transfer of the injured man stained the left sleeve of the white jacket that the singer was wearing with blood. ", not having realized it," according to the statement taken from him at the Prosecutor's Office.

He went to his patrol car to report the event to Central.

He managed to contact his boss, the Cisen subdelegate, Ibarra Borbón, when some municipal police officers who were passing near him saw that he had blood on his clothes.

They asked him to interrupt his transmission, get out of the vehicle and identify himself.

They then handcuffed him to the door of their patrol car, waiting for the arrival of police officers from the State Prosecutor's Office.

They took him to the Judicial Police facilities.

There they gave him a sodium rhozonate test to determine if he had fired a gun.

The result of that examination does not appear on the declaration sheet.

Agent Sánchez Ortega assured that he did not carry weapons and that, in fact, he was not allowed to carry out his intelligence work.

He said it had been two years since he had fired a gun.

However, the gunpowder test would be positive, one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Prosecutor's Office three decades later to accuse him of the crime.

While in the custody of the judicial police, Sánchez Ortega was confronted with Mario Aburto, who had been captured moments after Colosio's murder.

The Cisen agent said that he did not know him and that it was the first time he had seen him.

He was also introduced to Vicente Mayoral Valenzuela, a municipal police officer who was also identified as a participant in the crime.

The Prosecutor's Office now points out that several testimonies show that the agent was exactly at the site and at the time of the assassination, and not at a distant distance, as Sánchez Ortega stated.

In addition, the FGR alleges the study that tested positive for the presence of gunpowder on his hands.

“A large number of testimonies point to the accused at the scene, at the time of the shooting, from which he fled, and deny that he helped transport the victim,” the Prosecutor's Office has indicated.

Luis Donaldo Colosio, after being shot twice in Lomas Taurinas, in 1994. Víctor Florez (AFP)

Saving Agent Sánchez

Investigative agent Moisés Aldana Pérez learned that his partner had been detained by municipal police through his radio transmitter.

Aldana immediately received instructions from Ibarra Borbón, the Cisen subdelegate, to “devote himself to resolving the problem of Sánchez Ortega's detention,” according to what he said in his statement the day after Colosio's murder.

Aldana went to the headquarters of the Baja California Judicial Police, where he was told to go to the Second Sector Command.

The agent consulted with his boss, Ibarra, what he should do.

He gave him the green light, “ordering him to move [to that place] and verify some other information that was related to the events.”

Agent Aldana received from a commander, first, the indication that Sánchez Ortega's case would be seen personally by the State Attorney (prosecutor).

Later, the same commander told him that the State Prosecutor's Office had decided to transfer the matter to the FGR, so that that instance could resolve “the legal situation” of the detained agent.

Aldana notified Ibarra of the situation.

The hierarchical superior “told the deponent that the Cisen delegate was on his way with a group of people from the Ministry of the Interior to deal with the events that had arisen,” so he asked Aldana to step aside and leave the work in the hands of the sent officials.

The Attorney General's Office now maintains that this delegation of officials was headed by Genaro García Luna, who was then Deputy Director of Operations at Cisen and had the mission of “rescuing” Sánchez Ortega, “covering him up and removing him from Tijuana in an urgent and surreptitious manner.”

García Luna would become the head of the Ministry of Public Security years later and the czar of the strategy to combat the drug cartels.

Last year he was tried in the United States and found guilty of drug trafficking.

A new charge in Mexico is added to the list of crimes attributed to him.

Almost 30 years after the assassination that shook Mexico;

of the death of a charismatic politician who promised a profound reform of the rancid political system;

of the murder that enveloped the leadership of the ruling party in a dense fog of suspicion, the country continues to search for answers.

Old versions are taken up and recycled;

new folds are revealed.

The opposition parties accuse Andrés Manuel López Obrador of dusting off the

Colosio case

to gain electoral credit, a few months before the presidential elections.

A ghost has been haunting politics for three decades.

It is not the specter of a dead person, but of a living person who walks and refuses to be silent.

The one with the truth.

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