Ex-Chief of Mexico Police Group Accused as Mastermind of ’84 Killing of Journalist

Five years after Mexico’s most influential newspaper columnist, Manuel Buendia, was shot in the back and killed in a downtown parking lot here, the government has accused a former police chief in the administration of President Miguel de la Madrid of masterminding the killing.

The Mexico City attorney general’s office announced late Sunday that Jose Antonio Zorrilla, who headed the now-defunct Federal Security Directorate, was “presumed responsible” for the May 30, 1984, murder.

Police officers went to Zorrilla’s house in the Pedregal neighborhood of southern Mexico City on Sunday afternoon to arrest him, but the former chief was not there.

Zorrilla had escaped arrest once before, in 1985, after U.S. officials accused him of providing police credentials to drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, jailed in connection with the torture-killing of U.S. drug agent Enrique S. Camarena. A police source said Caro Quintero admitted to paying Zorrilla $4 milion a year for protection and credentials for his men.

Search Continues

Officials said they have asked Interpol, the international police network, to help locate Zorrilla. Octavio Campos, spokesman for the Mexico City attorney general’s office, said police were still searching for Zorrilla late Monday.

Journalists and political observers criticized the police failure to capture Zorrilla, noting that when the government decided to arrest oil union chief Joaquin Hernandez Galicia earlier this year, it did so swiftly in a secret operation with the army. They said they doubted the government’s sincerity in prosecuting the Buendia case.

“The government wanted to have its cake and eat it too,” said Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, a columnist in the newspaper Excelsior. “They wanted Zorrilla responsible and wanted him free.”

Teresa Gil, a spokeswoman for the Union of Democratic Journalists, which launched its own investigation of the case, said: “They say that Zorrilla has been their prime suspect for the last 12 months, and yet they didn’t have any surveillance on him. That’s absurd. We have to presume he was tipped off that he was going to be arrested.”

Buendia was known for his exposes of government corruption that appeared in Excelsior, Mexico City’s largest daily newspaper, and he had many powerful enemies. He routinely wrote about the activities of the CIA in Mexico, corruption in the vast Oil Workers Union and violence committed by extreme right-wing groups. He reportedly was about to publicize government ties to drug traffickers when he was gunned down near his office in the Zona Rosa section of the capital.

Journalists Angered

His murder outraged journalists and intellectuals, who viewed it as an attack on freedom of expression.

According to local press reports, Zorrilla arrived on the scene within minutes of the slaying and proceeded immediately to Buendia’s office, where he allegedly removed documents.

Zorrilla quit his police post the following year, shortly after the killing of drug agent Camarena, and was named as a ruling party candidate for Congress in the state of Hidalgo. After reports of his ties to Caro Quintero surfaced in this press, his candidacy was withdrawn and he was escorted out of the country by federal police.

While journalists have long accused Zorrilla of involvement in the killing and a subsequent cover-up, they were skeptical that the police chief would decide on his own to kill Buendia.

“The question that many Mexicans will necessarily ask now is if Zorrilla, as head of the Federal Security Directorate under Interior Secretary Manuel Bartlett in the administration of Miguel de la Madrid, acted on his own or on orders of some of his superiors,” columnist Francisco Cardenas Cruz wrote in Monday’s issue of the newspaper El Universal.

Education Secretary

Bartlett is secretary of education in the Cabinet of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. As interior secretary he oversaw the Federal Security Directorate, or DFS, an investigative agency similar to the FBI.

Last month the Union of Democratic Journalists filed a complaint with the federal attorney general’s office accusing Bartlett and other officials of negligence in pursuing the case. Union spokeswoman Gil said they have received no response from the government.

Always Cautious

Aguilar Zinser said in an interview that Zorrilla had been one of Buendia’s sources and that the columnist was always careful not to attack the police chief in print.

“Zorrilla had no personal reason for killing Buendia,” Aguilar Zinser said. “I talked to Buendia about Zorrilla several times before he was killed, and he would tell anecdotes about the friendly hostility between the two. They had a macho relationship of joking and challenging each other to duels. He mentioned Zorrilla had given him weapons as a present.”