28 years after the murder of Colosio, they seek to prove that Aburto was a victim of torture

Gustavo Castillo Garcia and Cesar Arellano

Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, March 23, 2022, p. eleven

Twenty-eight years after the murder of Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, presidential candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1994, the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) reopened the investigation. The 74 volumes and their annexes are under review under the command of Sara Irene Herrerías, head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Human Rights.

Ministerial officials pointed out that the result of these proceedings could be used by Mario Aburto Martínez, a self-confessed murderer and sentenced to 45 years in prison, to obtain an acknowledgment of innocence, if it is proven that he was subjected to acts of torture and other violations of his rights. human rights after his arrest.

The investigation, based on which the sentence for the crime of aggravated homicide against Aburto Martínez was issued, is reviewed based on recommendation 48VG/2021 issued by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), in which , according to the body headed by Rosario Piedra Ibarra, since 1994, when the events occurred in Lomas Taurinas – a neighborhood in Tijuana, Baja California – neither an investigation nor a fair and legal process.

In its recommendation issued last October, the commission states: “after investigating the case, the CNDH determined that elements of the then Federal Judicial Police assigned to the Attorney General’s Office –today the Attorney General’s Office–, as well as agents from the Public Ministry Police who intervened both in the arrest and in the first ministerial proceedings and in the transfer of the victim to the facilities of the Federal Center for Social Readaptation (Cefereso) number 1, committed acts of torture against him and the doctors who intervened in the facts acted irregularly by attempting to hide or tolerate said acts.”

The FGR reopened preliminary investigation 739/94, initiated based on what happened at the end of the rally led by Luis Donaldo Colosio in Lomas Taurinas, and who, at 5:20 p.m. (local time), while walking through the crowd of attendees, He was shot twice, one in the head and one in the abdomen.

The PRI candidate was transferred by his security group to the General Hospital. His death was confirmed two hours and 20 minutes later as a result of his injuries.

Mario Aburto Martínez voluntarily declared that he had fired twice at Colosio Murrieta. The confessed murderer was transferred to the Cefereso de Almoloya de Juárez on March 25, 2003, and since then he has remained in federal prisons. Recently he has requested, through the CNDH, that he be transferred to a jail in the city of Tijuana.

the new research its purpose will be to correct deficiencies and arrive at the full clarification of the facts, which allow the victim and Mexican society to access the right to the truth individually and collectively of the repeated violations of human rights committed. in this case, it indicates the recommendation of the CNDH.

Although the file has already been reopened, the FGR has not said if it has already established new lines of investigation or if it will request the appearance of participants in the initial inquiries.

Aburto’s defense requested the protection of the federal justice and requested that the FGR be forced to investigate whether he was subjected to acts of torture, for which the second district court in matters of amparo admitted the appeal yesterday.