Mexico Officials Charge Group Of Guards in Colosio Murder
AT least seven people have been accused of helping kill the man who was most likely to become Mexico's next president, including the candidate's local security organizer and three guards.
Others may also have conspired to kill Luis Donaldo Colosio at a March 23 campaign rally in Tijuana, said special prosecutor Miguel Montes Garcia.
The April 4 announcement reinforces suspicions of a conspiracy in the country's most serious political assassination in decades, but Mr. Montes did not discuss a possible motive or possible conspiracy.
The four security men are in custody, and two others are being sought, Montes said. The confessed gunman, Mario Aburto Martinez, was arrested shortly after Colosio was shot. Montes named the security men as Tranquilino Sanchez Venegas, a former Baja California policeman hired the day of the killing; Vincente Mayoral Valenzuela, also a former Baja California policeman, detained with Mr. Aburto at the time of the killing but later freed; and Mr. Mayoral's son Rodolfo Mayoral Esquer. Rodolfo Rivapalacio Tinajero, head of the local security detail, allegedly hired the other three men. Mr. Rivapalacio was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party's Tijuana branch.
Montes said videotapes and photographs of the assassination showed Mr. Sanchez and the two Mayorals, along with two unidentified individuals, either helping Aburto approach Colosio, blocking the candidate's path, or preventing Colosio's secret service security officers from protecting him. Guatemala government considers emergency
GUATEMALA'S government said April 4 that it discussed imposing a state of emergency to quell instability here, but reached no decision.
President Ramiro de Leon Carpio met with his Cabinet for six hours, but emerged saying only that the government would continue to analyze the possibility of a ``state of exception,'' the Guatemalan term for a state of emergency for political reasons.
The murder of the well-respected president of the Constitutional Court has caused widespread unrest in a country already teetering on the brink of crisis after a wave of violence against foreigners, strikes, kidnappings, and riots.
Three Americans have been attacked in the past month following rumors that foreigners are stealing Guatemalan children and selling their organs for transplants.
A state of exception would limit key liberties such as the right to strike and would allow the country's powerful security forces to detain anyone without charge.