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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2005 
Salinas Murder Conviction Overturned
 Reuters
| | Raul Salinas de Gortari relaxes on a yacht off the coast of Acapulco in 1995 with his then-mistress, Maria Bernal of Spain. |
Mexico City - Mexican judges overturned a murder conviction against Raul Salinas, the brother of a former Mexican president, on Thursday and ordered him released from prison, Salinas' lawyer told local media.
In 1995, Raul Salinas was sent to prison for planning the assassination of a prominent politician. Salinas is the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas. It was the first time in modern Mexican history that a family member so close to the center of power was imprisoned. Raul Salinas' lawyers filed appeals seeking to overturn the conviction.
On Thursday, a Mexican court said there was insufficient evidence to find Salinas guilty of the murder, Salinas' lawyer Alonso Aguilar told local television. The court overturned the case and ordered his release, he said, but Salinas still faces charges associated with bank accounts with millions of dollars he cannot adequately explain.
"He is not criminally responsible for the murder," Aguilar told local television. "We calculate that he could be free between tomorrow and Tuesday."
Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, a prominent politician in the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was shot dead by a peasant in 1994, but an investigation pointed to a conspiracy within Ruiz's own party and eventually centered on Raul Salinas. The PRI ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century.
After Raul Salinas' arrest in 1995, Swiss authorities discovered bank accounts opened by him under a false name and hundreds of millions of dollars of inexplicable origin.
Carlos Salinas, who ruled Mexico between 1988 and 1994, is widely blamed for causing a 1994 peso devaluation that devastated the country's economy, wiped out peoples' life savings and crippled the banking industry. |
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