Slaying of Tijuana Prosecutor Spurs Renewed Uproar Over Conspiracies

Mexico faced a fresh uproar over the unsolved 1994 assassination of a presidential candidate as politicians insisted Tuesday that killers intent on blocking the investigation had silenced another investigator of the most sensational political murder here in decades.

The weekend slaying of a Tijuana prosecutor led to a wave of dour predictions that the murder of presidential heir apparent Luis Donaldo Colosio will never be solved.

That investigation is now at a standstill, with the government expected to name a fourth attorney to handle the probe, possibly as soon as today.

“We are in the most dangerous moment of the investigation,” said Ramon Sosamontes, an opposition party member who sits on a congressional committee probing the assassination.

He insisted in an interview that members of the government--whom he declined to identify--were exerting pressure to close the case, and he asserted that the assassination late Saturday of Tijuana prosecutor Jesus Romero Magana was intended to silence him.

Despite widespread protests over the lack of progress in the Colosio case, officials urged Mexicans not to link that stalled investigation to the prosecutor’s death.

Instead, authorities and independent experts said slayings of officials with ties to the Colosio case could be part of a larger trend of assassinations in Tijuana.

The border city has been racked by violence attributed to drug wars and competing rings of illegal immigrant smugglers, kidnappers and bank robbers.

Romero, the slain prosecutor, was one of the first investigators to question Mario Aburto Martinez, the only person convicted so far in Colosio’s assassination.

The prosecutor was killed gangland-style at his home in Tijuana.

Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano Gracia, in a television interview broadcast Monday, threw cold water on the idea that Romero’s death was linked to the Colosio case.

“There was no reason to silence him. More than 2 1/2 years had passed” since the prosecutor had questioned Aburto, Lozano said. “Any information that he had . . . would have already come out.

“No, I think the causes are probably others,” Lozano added. “They could be linked to the decision we took on Friday.”

He referred to his mass firing Friday of 737 members of Mexico’s national judicial police who were suspected of corruption.

He and other officials declined to give further details.

Victor Clark Alfaro, a respected human rights leader in Tijuana, said analysts could not rule out such a link, saying Romero’s killing “might be a message for those who are leaving--or for those who are coming” into the national police force, he said.

The stunning shake-up of the judicial police, the nation’s biggest drug-fighting force, led to the dismissal of 29 agents in Tijuana, including several commanders and deputy commanders, said Jesus Velasco, spokesman for the local attorney general’s office.

Horacio Brunt, a well-known regional commander, was also replaced. The departure of Brunt, officially termed a resignation, surprised those who knew him for his celebrated capture of narcotics kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego in January.

But in recent months, the attorney general’s office has been criticized for failing to tackle leaders of the powerful Tijuana narcotics cartel led by the Arellano Felix brothers.

Indeed, drug-related violence has rocketed in Tijuana in the last two years, suggesting yet another possible motive for Romero’s killing.

Bloody turf battles have erupted as smaller groups of narcotics traffickers try to establish themselves, authorities say.

At least once a week, the body of a young man shot in the head--a trademark of drug executions--turns up on Tijuana’s streets, said Clark, whose Binational Human Rights Center also monitors drug violence.

U.S. Atty. Alan Bersin, the lead federal prosecutor for the Southern District of California, observed: “What we are seeing in Tijuana is essentially what existed in Chicago in the ‘30s.”

Still, many politicians and analysts said Tuesday that the Colosio link could not be ignored in Romero’s death.

Five top officials with ties to the investigation have been killed--from the prosecutor who jailed Aburto to a municipal police chief who investigated the Colosio assassination. At least two of their acquaintances were also slain.

These deaths should also be scrutinized by the new special investigator of the Colosio case, members of the congressional commission investigating the candidate’s murder said at a news conference.

Eduardo Cardenas, another commission member and legislator, called on Lozano to summon former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to testify in the case.

Critics have claimed that Salinas may have wanted Colosio dead because the candidate intended to reform Mexico’s authoritarian political system.

The clamor reflected Mexicans’ discouragement over the disarray in the Colosio case.

In a major setback to Lozano’s office, a judge this month dismissed the charges against a Tijuana man whom the government asserted had been a second gunman in the Colosio murder; the government charged him as part of its theory that Colosio’s killing, as many Mexicans believe, was part of a conspiracy within the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

That ruling prompted calls for the resignation of Lozano, the only member of the opposition National Action Party in the Cabinet.

Instead, special investigator Pablo Chapa Benzanilla was ousted.

In an unusual development, a major Roman Catholic newspaper added its voice to the chorus of demands for action in the case, insinuating that Salinas was involved.

Mexican newspapers gave front-page treatment Tuesday to the editorial by the paper of the Mexico City archdiocese, noting that it was a rare foray by the influential church into politics.

But Catholic officials said the editorial did not express a church position.

Sheridan reported from Mexico City and O’Connor from Tijuana.

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String of Killings

Jesus Romero Magan was the fifth highly placed official connected with the attorney general’s office in the Mexican state of Baja California to be killed this year.

Jesus Romero Magana (Prosecutor). Killed outside his home Sunday

Isaac Sanchez Perez (Former police commander). Shot to death in July

Sergio Moreno Perez (Prosecutor). Kidnapped and killed in May

Arturo Ochoa Palacios (Prosecutor). Gunned down jogging in April

Sergio Armando Silva (Judicial police official). Shot to death in February