Mystery Bones Not Official’s, Mexico Reports

MEXICO CITY — Federal prosecutors announced Friday that three months of intensive DNA tests have proved that the skeleton found buried on the property of a former president’s brother is not that of a missing lawmaker.

The findings appeared to be yet another setback to the federal case against Raul Salinas de Gortari, the elder brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Raul Salinas is on trial in the September 1994 murder of Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the second-ranking official in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

When investigators for former Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano Gracia dug up the skeleton Oct. 9 at one of Raul Salinas’ ranches near Mexico City, they speculated it was that of federal legislator Manuel Munoz Rocha, who disappeared soon after the Ruiz Massieu killing and was later accused of helping to plot it.

Raul Salinas was arrested in February 1995 and charged with masterminding the Ruiz Massieu slaying. Lozano hinted in October that Salinas also would be charged with the slaying of Munoz Rocha if the skeleton was that of the missing lawmaker. Lozano contracted with DNA specialists in the United States to test bone marrow samples from the skeleton against blood samples from Munoz Rocha’s children.

In unveiling the results of 23 forensic tests showing that the decomposed remains are not those of Munoz Rocha, prosecutors left unanswered two key questions: Who was buried in Raul Salinas’ backyard, and who put him there?

A 27-page document on the test results released Friday stated that prosecutors are opening a new investigation into “the crimes of clandestine burial that could find . . . the possible commission of a homicide.” It also concluded that the corpse had been through an autopsy before it was dismembered and buried, that it was the remains of a male aged 45 to 50 and that he had been dead for one to two years.

Raul Salinas issued a statement from jail last fall denying any knowledge of the skeleton and asserting that Lozano’s prosecutors planted it on his ranch--a charge Lozano denied.

Lozano was dismissed by President Ernesto Zedillo last month.

On Thursday, Atty. Gen. Jorge Madrazo Cuellar appointed a new special prosecutor to the Ruiz Massieu case. The prosecutor asserted Friday that the DNA findings will not affect the government’s criminal case against Raul Salinas.

But Madrazo’s new team in the attorney general’s office suffered a setback of its own Friday. A spokeswoman confirmed that several details were wrong in a communique it issued Monday reporting the arrest of 25 people--among them police officers--and the seizure of three jets during a federal operation against accused Mexican drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

Sources in the attorney general’s office said Friday that only five people were still under arrest, none of them key figures in Carrillo’s Juarez cartel. Mexico City’s Reforma newspaper published results of its own probe, concluding that none of the jets had been seized.