AMLO: PJF delays arrest of “second shooter” in Colosio case

Emir Olivares and Arturo Sanchez

The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, July 18, 2024, p. 11

The Judiciary has refused to issue an arrest warrant against Jorge Antonio Sánchez Ortega, a former Cisen agent identified as the probable second shooter in the murder of former presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador denounced.

In light of this, he explained, the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) filed an appeal before a collegiate court, which has not responded in seven months; and if it confirms the denial, no (other) recourse would be appropriateso the process would have to be started again with the risk that, in turn, it would fall to the judge who did not issue the arrest warrant.

It should be remembered that a few months ago the FGR resumed the hypothesis of the second shooter in the crime against the former PRI candidate for the Presidency perpetrated on March 23, 1994 in Lomas Taurinas, Tijuana, Baja California.

According to the new investigation, Sánchez Ortega had been arrested, but was rescued by Genaro García Luna, who was then part of Cisen and years later, during Felipe Calderón’s administration, became Secretary of Public Security.

At yesterday’s morning press conference, the federal president released a report that the attorney general, Alejandro Gertz Manero, recently sent him, with details of the case: the request for the arrest warrant on October 30 of last year before the fifth district court for federal criminal proceedings in the state of Mexico; the refusal to accept the jurisdiction of that court a day later, declining to refer it to the first district court, and then on November 7, this judge returned it to the fifth district court. They were there playing ball to not grant the arrest warrant.

In the report, the FGR points out that on January 5 of this year the fifth district court denied the arrest warrant against Sánchez Ortega, so three days later an appeal was filed in the first collegiate court, however, seven months later that body has not even scheduled the case for discussion and the resolution remains delayed.

The information read by the head of the Executive states that on June 11, 2024, the federal public ministry requested an audience with magistrate Josué Osvaldo Garduño Sánchez, of the first collegiate court, who commented that the time to resolve the appeal would be on average four months.but seven months later it has not happened.

Thus, on July 15, the FGR reviewed again – as it has done every Monday since it filed the appeal in January – the list of matters to be analyzed in said court, but it was not contemplated for the session of July 18 (today).

After all this legal ordeal, López Obrador considered that in the Judicial Branch They don’t want to solve the case.

According to the FGR document, the judges and magistrates have not taken into consideration the evidence that has been presented.

He added that if the court confirms the refusal to issue the arrest warrant, No appeal would be possible because neither the procedural code nor the amparo law provides for it..

If so, the FGR would have to restart the exercise of criminal action, perfecting the necessary means of proof, taking into account the arguments of the collegiate court.

Although with the risk that, per turnfalls into the hands of the same district judge with whom the lawsuit was filed and denied the arrest, and that is already predisposed in his judgment, so he will try to invoke some cause of impediment, that is, that it is another instance, another court, that deals with it..