The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) arrested Jorge Antonio Sánchez Ortega, a former employee of the defunct National Center for Research and Security (CISEN), in Tijuana on Saturday afternoon. For decades, Sánchez Ortega was believed to be the second gunman at the scene of the 1994 murder of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta. Mexican authorities have not released details about this weekend’s arrest, but local newspaper reports said the arrest warrant was based on a federal arrest warrant.
Sanchez-Ortega’s arrest occurred around 5 p.m. The Los Reyes area, 13 kilometers south of Lomas Taurinas, is where the famous Colosio murder took place during the March 1994 presidential campaign. That afternoon, Sanchez-Ortega was arrested for the first time. His presence at the crime scene and the politician’s blood splattered on his clothes made him one of the main suspects. Hours later, a test for sodium rozonate, which traces residue left by firearm operations, came back positive.
The then PGR (now the public prosecutor’s office) concluded that the shot that ended Colosio’s life came from the pistol of Mario Aburto, to whom the former candidate had confessed to the murder, and released him on March 24, the day after the attack. Aburto remains in prison, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that won him the Amparo that would have given him back his freedom after 30 years in prison.
For decades forgotten, the Colosio case was considered res judicata, but thanks to the prosecutor’s office and then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sánchez Ortega’s name was brought back into the spotlight in 2024. In July of the same year, the president clarified that the judiciary had refused to issue an arrest warrant for the former intelligence officer. Morena argued that Sánchez-Ortega had been identified as the second gunman in the assassination for decades and had received state protection from taking part in the investigation.
The prosecutor’s office reported in January 2024 that there were sufficient elements to support the theory that a second shooter was the shooter at the Colosio rally on March 23. Investigators later declared they had “a large amount of evidence” that could implicate Sánchez-Ortega in the murder. This announcement marks a 180-degree turn in terms of the PGR’s own position, which had released the suspect precisely on the basis of lack of elements and had released the suspect after accepting his statement. Despite this apparent accumulation of incriminating factors, the district judge declined to issue an arrest warrant for the Sisen official.
The FGR and López Obrador have implicated Genaro García Luna, Felipe Calderón’s former security chief, in the plot to kill Colosio. In a new blow to the assassination, officials claim García Luna, then the deputy chief of operations for Sisen, was responsible for “concealing and urgently removing[Sánchez-Ortega]from Tijuana.” In October 2024, Garcia Luna was sentenced by the U.S. Department of Justice to 38 years in prison for drug trafficking and organized crime.
According to files kept by the prosecutor’s office, Sisen’s representatives were ordered to follow Colosio’s rally just three hours before the candidate arrived in Tijuana. Sanchez Ortega, who was born in Sinaloa and settled in Tijuana, had only been working at the intelligence center for seven months. The next day, the murder suspect would declare that the blood stains on his clothes were from transporting the candidate’s body. He also claimed he had not fired a gun in over two years. Today he will have to face that accusation again.
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