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Mexican assassin says he fears for life

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 20 -- The convicted assassin of Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio said in a telephone conversation aired Tuesday that he was innocent and feared for his life in prison. Mario Aburto Martinez, who is serving a 45-year prison term at the Almoloya maximum-security prison west of Mexico City for the 1994 shooting of ruling party candidate Colosio, made his comments to his father in a phone call last week. Mexico City's Radio Red obtained a copy of the recorded conversation and aired it Tuesday. 'Obscure interests in the high spheres of government intend to keep people believing that I am the guilty one,' Aburto told his father Ruben, who is now living in Los Angeles, where his family was granted political asylum. 'They are using me as a scapegoat,' Aburto added. Mario Aburto was arrested moments after Colosio was shot on March 23, 1994, at a campaign rally in the northwestern border city of Tijuana. Colosio was hit twice, and Aburto confessed to firing the first shot into the candidate's head. But in the conversation, Aburto said, 'I maintain my compete innocence, it is in the government's interest for the case not to be cleared up because the party (the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party) would be the worst affected. 'First they want to say I am a lone killer, second say I am crazy, and third kill me and then say, 'He killed himself, he was crazy,'' he added. The father, Ruben Aburto, responded that he would 'make the Mexican government and President (Ernesto) Zedillo responsible if anything happens to you.'

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The Colosio investigation was again the center of controversy in the past days after a judge freed Othon Cortes, the suspected 'second gunman,' for lack of evidence. Following Cortes' release, Zedillo removed special prosecutor Pablo Chapa from the case amid a flood of criticism against Chapa and Attorney General Antonio Lozano. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico ran an editorial in the current edition of its bi-weekly publication Nuevo Criterio, saying the assassination 'was not the work of a lone killer, but a complex network carefully directed by someone who had many reasons to get rid of an uncomfortable and independent candidate.' The publication said the mastermind of the assassination was 'in the highest circles of government,' and added, 'There are many testimonies to the violent and vengeful way in which former president (Carlos) Salinas de Gortari settled his differences with others.' At the same time the archdiocese, headed by Archbishop Norberto Rivera, defended current Attorney General Lozano who took over the post a year into the investigation and who, the editorial said, 'has made great effort to get back on track.'

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