Word: massieu
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Last Thursday, when a federal judge in Mexico City sentenced Raul Salinas de Gortari to 50 years in prison for orchestrating the 1994 murder of his former brother-in-law Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, all Mexico seemed to exhale. Salinas, the older brother of former President Carlos Salinas, has been a symbol of the nation's rot. The coldness of some of his acts--ordering the killing of his own brother-in-law!--was so great that the case somehow transcended its specifics and became a referendum on Mexico's hopes and fears...
...City, 50 miles away, in a prison called Southside, a tightly wound, closely shorn 34-year-old ex-cowboy named Daniel Aguilar Trevino described a Mexican political system that is still dark, unforgiving and sinister. Aguilar is serving a 50-year term for pumping the fatal bullet into Ruiz Massieu's neck from point-blank range. In recent weeks, for the first time, Aguilar described to TIME how, working through intermediaries, Raul Salinas arranged for the killing of Ruiz Massieu, a political leader his associates called a "data bank" on Raul's corruption. The story is colorful but, with many...
When he was first arrested after killing Ruiz Massieu, Aguilar seemed an unlikely hit man. Authorities described him as a bumpkin desperate for the $15,000 fee he reportedly earned for the murder. But Aguilar insists--and underworld colleagues confirm--that he is in fact a member of a sophisticated kidnapping ring that abducts not for ransom but for hire--usually by politicians, businessmen or criminals who want to scare rivals into submission. Aguilar was highly trained for the ring's SWAT-style ops--to fly single-engine planes, for instance, and belay from a helicopter. "We weren't like...
Which is why, says Aguilar, Raul Salinas approached the group's leaders to abduct Ruiz Massieu. Originally the plan was just for a kidnapping, to silence him--and perhaps to punish him for an acrimonious divorce from Salinas' sister. But in the late summer of 1994, Salinas' men changed the plan: "They said [Ruiz Massieu] was too much of a threat to the Salinases, and that we'd have to kill him. I've never been so shook up as when I heard that...
...former President Salinas and his brother Raul. After Zedillo's election, both men fell into disgrace: Raul is now in jail near Mexico City and Carlos is living in self-imposed exile in Cuba. Raul was originally arrested for his alleged role in the murder of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, secretary-general of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. But evidence has recently surfaced suggesting--although not yet proving--that he may have been linked with Garcia Abrego's gulf cartel. Perhaps most damning is the suspicion that when Salinas was President, Raul allegedly used his influence to grant favors...