Federal prosecutors in Mexico arrested one other alleged confederate within the 1994 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, a criminal offense that shocked the nation and stays unsolved, though the confessed killer has been imprisoned for greater than 30 years.
A federal official who requested anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to talk publicly, confirmed Monday to The Related Press that Jorge Antonio Sánchez Ortega was arrested in Tijuana in reference to Colosio’s assassination. The official didn’t specify the costs in opposition to Sánchez Ortega, who’s being held in a maximum-security jail in central Mexico, awaiting trial.
In response to the Nationwide Registry of Detentions, the arrest happened on Saturday.
Colosio, the 1994 presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Get together (PRI), was shot twice throughout a rally within the northern Mexican metropolis of Tijuana. Since 2024, federal prosecutors have been looking for to prosecute an intelligence agent assigned as his bodyguard, recognized solely as Jorge Antonio “S,” because the alleged perpetrator of the second capturing.
This file picture dated Nov. 28, 1993 exhibits Mexico’s ruling occasion presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio in Mexico Metropolis. Colosio was shot within the head and abdomen on March 23, 1994, at a political rally in Tijuana.
FILES/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
As of Monday, the prosecutor’s workplace had not formally commented on the arrest of Sánchez Ortega, and authorities haven’t confirmed whether or not new proof has emerged.
In response to studies, Sánchez Ortega was employed then as an agent for the Heart of Investigation and Nationwide Safety – again then Mexico’s equal of the U.S. Central Intelligence Company.
Mario Aburto has been serving a 45-year jail sentence since 1994 after declaring himself the only perpetrator of the assassination, a confession he later retracted, claiming he was tortured.
Because of Aburto’s complaints, throughout the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2019-2024) the Nationwide Human Rights Fee really helpful that the federal prosecutor’s workplace reopen the investigation.
Colosio’s homicide triggered a serious political disaster in Mexico and was all the time surrounded by controversy fueled by the chance that it was inspired by sure spheres of energy, amid inner struggles throughout the ruling PRI to decide on a successor of then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
Mexican politician Ernesto Zedillo raises his fist in honor of Institutional Revolutionary Get together presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, who was killed throughout his election marketing campaign.
Sergio Dorantes/Sygma by way of Getty Photographs
In a January 2024 assertion, the Lawyer Common’s Workplace mentioned there was proof that the agent assigned to Colosio’s safety was on the scene and had clothes stained with the sufferer’s blood. It additionally acknowledged that ballistic proof indicated that he fired a weapon – with solely a distinction of seconds between the 2 photographs – and witnesses noticed him flee instantly after the capturing.
In the identical assertion, the company thought of it confirmed that the Nationwide Safety and Investigation Heart, which in 1994 was underneath the Ministry of the Inside, despatched the agent to the scene of the assassination solely to later “cover for him and take him out of Tijuana urgently and surreptitiously.” The assertion concluded that the agent’s speedy launch was “an evident criminal cover-up.”
Since Colosio’s assassination, different politicians have been focused by violence in Mexico. In 2010, a front-running gubernatorial candidate, Rodolfo Torre, was assassinated in northern Mexico. Tormented by drug-related violence for many years, the nation has additionally seen quite a few native politicians murdered not too long ago, together with a mayor who was beheaded in 2024.
Agence France-Presse
contributed to this report.
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