Mexico Turns Tables, Issues Warrant for Prosecutor

The hunter became the hunted Tuesday as a warrant was issued for the onetime special prosecutor who rocked this nation two years ago by jailing Raul Salinas de Gortari, the elder brother of a former Mexican president.

The summons for career prosecutor Pablo Chapa Bezanilla--wanted for questioning about a skeleton unearthed in October on a ranch owned by Raul Salinas--is the latest twist in a murder case that has become a cynic’s public opera, a seemingly endless scandal that is sorely testing Mexico’s criminal justice, the country’s tolerance of impunity and the patience and faith of Mexicans in their legal system.

Prosecutors emphasized Tuesday that their warrant demands not Chapa’s arrest but his appearance for questioning in the Salinas case--something he has refused thus far, a spokesman said, adding, “This would not mean bringing Chapa to appear as an arrested person.”

Still, it represents an incredible fall from grace for the lifetime lawman whom President Ernesto Zedillo personally tapped in December 1994 to try to resolve a series of astonishing assassinations that have utterly altered this nation’s political scene.

While investigating the separate killings of a leading presidential candidate and a Roman Catholic cardinal and the gangland-style slaying of the ruling party’s No. 2 official, Chapa seemed unable to make any cases stick.

Instead, he suffered a series of reverses and prosecutorial failures, ending up enmeshed in a legal sideshow involving the former president’s brother, whom he charged with murder in February 1995.

As part of the investigation that challenged a Mexican tradition of immunity for former presidents and their families, Chapa, who has not been seen publicly in a week, ordered excavations at a ranch owned by Raul Salinas.

On Oct. 9, Chapa claimed to have “discovered” a skull and bones and suggested that they were those of Manuel Munoz Rocha, a lawmaker who disappeared soon after he was charged in the September 1994 assassination of Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the No. 2 official of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

But investigators say they now want to question Chapa as to whether he ordered and paid Salinas’ former psychic to dig up the body of her son-in-law’s father and plant it at the ranch.

Mexico City Atty. Gen. Jose Antonio Gonzalez told reporters late Tuesday that Chapa paid the psychic $130,000 of government funds two days before the body was dug up. Another man now accused along with the psychic got $330,000, Gonzalez added. He declined to speculate whether the payments were linked to the discovery.

Within days of the skeleton’s excavation, Chapa’s investigators had also leaked an anonymous letter that the psychic had given to authorities, describing how Salinas allegedly fatally battered Munoz Rocha with a baseball bat, then buried him at the ranch, known as “The Enchanted Place.” That evidence would have strengthened the government case against Salinas, who has been jailed for 23 months for allegedly masterminding Ruiz Massieu’s killing.

Salinas--older brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari--has maintained his innocence. Last October, he accused Chapa and his aides of trying to frame him. Salinas’ accusation prompted Chapa’s boss, then-Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano Gracia, to reply: “The era in which [federal agents] plant corpses and fabricate guilt has already passed.”

But Mexico City prosecutors disagree. They say the human remains found on the ranch are those of Joaquin Rodriguez Ruiz; he was the elderly father of the psychic’s son-in-law and had died earlier of head injuries. Prosecutors on Friday jailed and have charged with grave-robbing and other crimes: Francisca Zetina, the psychic; her son-in-law; several other relatives; and Raul Salinas’ former girlfriend.

And now, Chapa himself has been labeled a “fugitive from justice.”

Mexico City’s La Jornada newspaper on Tuesday captured the circus-like atmosphere surrounding this grim case by plastering half of its front page with a fake “wanted” poster for Chapa. “Chapa Bezanilla: The Snooper. This individual could have adopted the following personalities,” declared the newspaper’s headline above a row of doctored photos that pictured the prosecutor in a Groucho Marx mask, a pirate’s kerchief and earring, an eye patch and goatee, a punk hairdo and as missing legislator Munoz Rocha himself.

Concluding that Chapa’s investigation into the Ruiz Massieu murder has “demonstrated many irregularities,” author Carlos Fuentes observed: “It’s necessary to restore the dignity and credibility of Mexican justice.” Further, he added with a laugh: “They are leaving us novelists without any subjects. What could a writer invent that outdoes all this melodrama we’re seeing?”

And there is more political intrigue still.

That is because the driving force behind the investigation of Chapa is Gonzalez, who is a PRI member and among the party’s rumored candidates in the capital’s first-ever mayoral election, scheduled for July.

Among the possible opposition candidates for that mayoral job is Lozano, the onetime federal attorney general and Chapa’s former boss.

Lozano, who issued a communique Tuesday night saying he is ready to testify in the Salinas case, is a member of the National Action Party, or PAN. That party asserts that Gonzalez is using the Chapa case to try to discredit PAN, which is leading by a wide margin over the PRI in recent opinion polls in Mexico City.

Zedillo in December dismissed Lozano, the first opposition member ever to serve in a PRI Cabinet; senior officials then blamed the firing partly on incompetence in high-profile cases like the Ruiz Massieu murder and the skeleton affair.

As for Chapa, he is not a PAN member and seemed an ideal pick for his investigatory post because of his nonpolitical background. He is a career detective and prosecutor who was confirmed by the National Congress as chief special prosecutor for the Ruiz Massieu case and the assassinations of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo.

Ironically, during his confirmation hearings, some opposition lawmakers had declined to support him, saying he had planted evidence in previous investigations.

John Womack Jr., a Harvard University history professor who questioned Chapa’s appointment in a June 1995 article, called Tuesday’s summons unsurprising. But Chapa’s role in the case of the skeleton puzzled not only Womack but most Mexicans, who were left asking Tuesday: “What next?”

“Chapa is not a fool. He’s a shrewd policeman,” Womack said. “Nobody could have gotten as far as he did being a dummy. So why he would have done something like that without orders [from higher up], I cannot imagine. . . . I doubt he did what he did on his own.”

* POLICE-CARTEL LINK? Mexican police officers have aided a Tijuana drug cartel, new documents allege. A3