The murder of Cardinal Posadas.

Mexico City--On May 23, 1993, Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo of Guadalajara, arriving at the local airport to welcome the papal nuncio, was shot and killed by two gunmen. The cardinal's driver and five other people also in the shooting melee at the airport carpark.

The attorney general for the then government maintained that they were accidental. The cardinal, with the other people, was supposedly caught in a crossfire between rival drug-trafficking gangs. This theory came under question almost at once when a post-mortem showed that the Cardinal had been shot at point-blank range.

Church authorities have persisted in questioning the official version. In the summer of 2000, a report was issued by an inter-institutional commission composed of members of the Mexican bishops' conference, of the attorney-general's office and of the state government of Jalisco. The commission collected almost 50 personal testimonies and many psychiatric and judicial reports. As a result 73 criminal charges have already been laid, although the actual murderers have not been named.

In June 1999, important evidence was given by an ex-army assassin, Marco Yorres Garcia. He stated that the cardinal was shot to prevent him exposing a link between drug gangs and members of the previous Mexican government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The cardinal had refused to hand over papers entrusted to him, which showed clear evidence of this high-level corruption.

In a separate investigation, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has come to a similar conclusion. (The Tablet, July 22, 2000)