Official Disputes Colosio Link to Tijuana Slaying

A top official said Tuesday that the recent assassination of a Tijuana prosecutor appeared to be linked to disgruntled police who were fired in an anti-corruption purge--not to a possible conspiracy that claimed the life of a presidential candidate.

Prosecutor Jesus Romero Magana was fatally shot outside his home in Tijuana on Aug. 17. No one has been charged. But the slaying rekindled a national furor over whether someone is killing off people who investigated the 1994 murder of presidential heir-apparent Luis Donaldo Colosio.

Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano Gracia has strongly disputed that theory. On Tuesday, he told foreign correspondents that Romero’s death, instead, appears to be tied to the recent firing of more than 700 federal police officers--more than 15% of the force--who were suspected of corruption.

“We have some information . . . that this person had received some threats” before his death, Lozano said of Romero. Asked who was reportedly making the threats, he said, “People of the police there.

“There were a series of threats [against officials], because people determine that Person X or Z was responsible for their firing,” he said.

“We had to change the way the police function,” he added, referring to the dismissals. “But clearly it produces this kind of reactions.”

Twenty-nine members of the federal judicial police in Tijuana lost jobs in this month’s purge, intended to clean up the nation’s biggest anti-drug-trafficking force, officials have said.

Romero’s death brought to a boiling point public frustration over the lack of progress in the Colosio case--a mystery perhaps as painful here as the slaying of President John F. Kennedy was for Americans. So far, one gunman, Mario Aburto Martinez, has been convicted in the killing.

This month, a judge threw out the government’s case against a second alleged gunman, Othon Cortes Vazquez, who was accused of being part of a conspiracy involving members of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Romero was one of the first investigators to interrogate Aburto. A handful of other people linked to the investigation have been killed since Colosio was shot dead in Tijuana.

While government officials note that Tijuana’s stew of violent drug traffickers and other criminals could account for those deaths, many Mexicans remain suspicious.