Salinas Warns Against Drug Allegations

Former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari threatened Monday to sue or seek criminal charges against anyone who accuses him or his family of being linked to drug lords.

Such accusations, described by Salinas’ lawyer, Mariano Albor, as “an ambush,” appeared in the Mexican press over the weekend. The reports were sketchy and did not identify the source of most of the claims.

Members of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, rallied to the former president’s defense.

On Sunday, the weekly magazine Proceso and the daily newspaper La Jornada published what they said were excerpts from U.S. court documents implicating the Salinas family and other officials in drug trafficking.

U.S. officials could not be reached over the holiday weekend to confirm the authenticity of the documents.

The reports, if true, would mean drug traffickers had access to the highest levels of Mexican politics.

“The blow is aimed at the heart” of Mexico’s government, wrote Pablo Hiriart, publisher of the daily newspaper Cronica.

Proceso said the documents were related to a planned March 10 federal grand jury session in Houston centered on former Mexican Deputy Atty. Gen. Mario Ruiz Massieu.

The only direct allegation against the former president was an anonymous witness’ claim that he had seen the then-president attend social events with drug trafficker Juan Garcia Abrego at a ranch belonging to Salinas’ brother, Raul.

But Carlos Salinas’ attorney said his client “categorically rejects the aspersions” cast on his father, brother and other relatives, calling them “simplistic judgments expounded by foreign agents.”

One allegation contained in the news reports cited a prisoner named Magdalena Ruiz Pelayo, who said Salinas’ father, Raul Salinas Lozano, had been involved with drug traffickers.

“We have considered the necessity of bringing criminal and civil actions both in Mexico and abroad against those who have originated these infamous affirmations,” Albor said.

Raul Salinas, the former president’s brother, was arrested in February 1995 on charges of masterminding the murder of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu--the PRI’s No. 2 person and Mario’s brother.

Since then, officials have found more than $100 million in Raul Salinas’ foreign bank accounts.

“For the health of the nation, [authorities] should ask the United States for proof and open an investigation,” said Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a leader of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party, who lost the fraud-tainted 1988 presidential election to Salinas.

PRI legislator Jorge Meade Ocaranza criticized the news stories for linking drug trafficking to two assassinated politicians.

“That is like saying the death of [Robert] Kennedy was linked to drugs,” he said.

In a separate statement issued by his lawyers, Raul Salinas said: “I categorically deny any relation to drug traffickers . . . or having received money from them.”