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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | December 2005 
Ex-Police Commander Gets 40 Years in Shooting Death of Roman Catholic Cardinal
 Luis Carlos Sainz - Associated Press
| | Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo was riddled with bullets while he was sitting in his car at the airport in Guadalajara. |
Guadalajara, Mexico – A court has sentenced a former police commander to 40 years in prison in the 1993 shooting death of a Roman Catholic cardinal at the Guadalajara airport, officials said Friday.
The court said Humberto Rodriguez Banuelos was part of a gang of gunmen that riddled Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo with bullets while he was sitting in his car at the airport in Guadalajara, 280 miles northwest of Mexico City.
Federal investigators concluded the gang was working for jailed drug lord Benjamin Arellano Felix and had confused the cardinal's luxury car for that of a rival drug trafficker they had been targeting for assassination. Six others also were killed in the attack.
Church figures have long disputed the official version of events, arguing that Posadas Ocampo was killed because he knew about alleged relationships between drug dealers and government officials.
The court in the western state of Jalisco gave Rodriguez the maximum sentence allowable under Mexican law for homicide.
In passing sentence, the judge said Rodriguez deserved 200 years in prison for the slaying, which shook this deeply Catholic nation.
The sentencing also was for the slayings of a police commander in Jalisco and a plastic surgeon, who had angered Rodriguez after operating on him and leaving him with a scar, according to the court.
Rodriguez was arrested March 30, 2001, during a shootout with police in the border city of Tijuana, where the Arellano Felix gang was based. But police could not confirm his identity until June of that year because he had undergone plastic surgery.
In all, 12 gunmen, including Rodriguez, have been convicted and sentenced in the attack on the cardinal. |
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