Suspect arrested in 1994 assassination of Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio

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, although the confessed killer has been imprisoned for greater than 30 years.

A federal official who requested anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved 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 line with the Nationwide Registry of Detentions, the arrest passed off 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 searching for to prosecute an intelligence agent assigned as his bodyguard, recognized solely as Jorge Antonio “S,” because the alleged perpetrator of the second taking pictures.

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 line with reviews, 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.

On account of Aburto’s complaints, through the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2019-2024) the Nationwide Human Rights Fee advisable that the federal prosecutor’s workplace reopen the investigation.

Colosio’s homicide triggered a serious political disaster in Mexico and was at all times surrounded by controversy fueled by the likelihood that it was inspired by sure spheres of energy, amid inner struggles inside the ruling PRI to decide on a successor of then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

In a January 2024 assertion, the Lawyer Normal’s Workplace stated 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 said 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 taking pictures.

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 “cowl for him and take him out of Tijuana urgently and surreptitiously.” The assertion concluded that the agent’s speedy launch was “an evident prison 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. Suffering from drug-related violence for many years, the nation has additionally seen quite a few native politicians murdered lately, together with a mayor who was beheaded in 2024.