Ex-Suspects in Colosio Killing Seek Asylum

In a cross-border subplot in the assassination of Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, two former suspects and Colosio security guards told a U.S. immigration judge Wednesday that they want political asylum in the United States, immigration officials said.

Vicente and Rodolfo Mayoral, who were held as alleged accomplices for a year in Mexico’s toughest prison before their acquittal in the murder, are now behind bars in the U.S. immigration detention center in El Centro.

The father and son fled Tijuana last week and surrendered to San Diego border inspectors because of reports that new witnesses had implicated them and police were about to arrest them again.

The former suspects fear politically motivated persecution by authorities, who are under pressure to show results before the upcoming second anniversary of the assassination. But in a twist characteristic of the labyrinthine case, the Mexican attorney general’s office has not confirmed that the Mayorals are again suspects.

“The investigation continues,” said spokesman Hugo Morales in Mexico City. “Their names have been mentioned in court testimony. . . . But we cannot confirm or deny that they are suspects. We still maintain the thesis of a conspiracy.”

At a closed hearing Wednesday in El Centro before Administrative Law Judge Richard Knuck, a lawyer for the Mayorals asked for more time to prepare the asylum application, according to an official of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The judge set a Feb. 28 hearing for the men, whom the INS has placed in exclusion proceedings--a process similar to deportation, the official said.

Press reports in Mexico and talk among law enforcement officials and others familiar with the case have indicated that new arrests are imminent. Federal police have pursued leads in Baja and elsewhere. The revelation that investigators questioned a retired military officer recently has focused continuing attention on Gen. Domiro Garcia Reyes, the former chief of Colosio’s security detail, who came under suspicion because he allegedly knew Othon Cortez, the accused second gunman. Cortez is now on trial.

As the March 23 anniversary approaches, however, the evidence against Cortez looks weak and the investigation remains secretive and murky. The third special prosecutor on the case, Pablo Chapa, has yet to explain how the alleged plot worked and who organized it. If the hunt has indeed returned to the Mayorals, lowly volunteer guards who were charged with helping gunman Mario Aburto push through the crowd, it could further complicate an ill-fated probe that has lurched from one theory to another, critics say.

Morales said the new eyewitnesses against the Mayorals testified in recent court proceedings. They reportedly allege that the Mayorals accompanied Aburto--the only suspect convicted so far--when he tried to buy a pistol the day before the assassination.

Despite the apparent good intentions of investigators, new evidence or explanations may come too late for a skeptical public, according to a U.S. human rights lawyer.

“Almost anyone who had any connection, whether innocent or otherwise, to the assassination has legitimate basis for concern for their safety and well-being,” said Peter Schey of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, a lawyer representing six relatives of Aburto who have requested political asylum in Los Angeles. “Whether through lack of political will, corruption or incompetence, the tendency has been to cater to political whims to boost credibility of the government. . . . You only have one opportunity to conduct a fair investigation and it has been lost.”

Like the United States, Mexico has a “double jeopardy” law that shields the Mayorals from being tried again for murder. The judge acquitted them and another alleged accomplice because of problems with the evidence, which consisted largely of videotapes and photos of the shooting. The authorities could theoretically charge them with another crime, Mexican officials said.

Vicente Mayoral, 61, a retired Baja homicide detective, and his son Rodolfo, 25, spent 13 months in Almoloya de Juarez, a feared and fortress-like top security prison. After their release last year, they insisted that they were scapegoats and said the ordeal was physically and psychologically traumatic.

The latest developments suggest that the investigation has foundered, said Victor Clark Alfaro, a veteran Tijuana human rights activist.

“It appears that the investigators want to go back to the beginning,” he said. “They aren’t talking about the masterminds.”

But Clark, who has testified as an expert witness for the Aburtos and other asylum-seekers from Mexico, said the Mayorals’ chances of winning their case appear remote.

“I don’t see the political reason,” he said. “At first glance, it appears to be a police matter.”

Political asylum is granted to refugees who prove well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or social affiliation.

The longtime unwillingness of U.S. immigration judges to grant political asylum to Mexicans has been criticized by human rights activists in both nations. They say there is more governmental repression in Mexico than the U.S. government has been willing to admit or understand.

“The U.S. government has given short shrift to asylum claims made by Mexican nationals,” Schey said. “It has generally not taken them as seriously as political conditions in Mexico appear to warrant.”

Nonetheless, the number of Mexicans granted asylum jumped from four in 1994 to about 55 in the next fiscal year. Although the figure is small when compared to applications from other nations, the increase reflects growing recognition of human rights abuses in Mexico--problems dramatized by the Colosio assassination, the Chiapas guerrilla uprising and other political violence and corruption scandals in 1994, Clark said.