The dismissal of murder charges against a reputed Mexican drug lord in the 1993 slaying of a Roman Catholic Cardinal renews church suspicions that state authorities committed the killing, the cardinal for Mexico's second-largest city was quoted as saying Friday.
Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo was killed in a hail of gunfire on May 24, 1993, at Guadalajara's airport. Federal investigators concluded that a gang of drug traffickers confused his luxury car for that of a gang rival.
But a judge Thursday threw out murder charges against one of the main suspects in the slaying, Benjamin Arellano Felix. Judge Humberto Venancio Pineda said federal prosecutors had even failed to prove that Arellano Felix and his accomplice had shot Posadas Ocampo by mistake.
Arellano Felix, the reputed head of a ruthless drug gang bearing his family's name, was in the border city of Tijuana at the time of Posadas Ocampo's killing and "had nothing to do with" the crime, the judge ruled.
"The official explanation is now totally discarded," Guadalajara Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez told Reforma newspaper in an interview published Friday.
Sandoval Iniguez and other church figures have long disagreed with the official version of events, arguing that Posadas Ocampo had been targeted for his knowledge about alleged relationships between drug dealers and government officials.
Fernando Guzman Perez, a legislator from Guadalajara, told Reforma the judge's decision strengthens his suspicions that authorities blamed the reputed drug leaders for Ocampo's killing in order to cover up their own role.
"This confirms what we have been saying all along," Perez said. "We are seeing a criminal plot ... a crime the state committed."
The federal attorney general's office denied that it had brought charges stemming from the cardinal's killing against Arellano Felix, who remains in jail on drug smuggling charges.
Arellano Felix's brother, Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix, has already been convicted in connection with the slaying, but church officials insist that others responsible remain free.