Salinas Gets 50 Years For Murder

Ending a blockbuster trial, a judge convicted the elder brother of Mexico's former president of ordering the murder of a top politician and sentenced him to 50 years in prison Thursday.

Raul Salinas de Gortari, brother of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was convicted and sentenced for the 1994 murder of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, a leader of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party who also happened to be his former brother-in-law.

Prosecutors have suggested that Raul Salinas saw Ruiz Massieu as a threat to the Salinas family's political power. They also said there was bad blood stemming from Ruiz Massieu's divorce from the Salinas' sister.

The case has dragged on since Raul Salinas' arrest four years ago and the evidence presented filled 42 bound books. During that time, Raul Salinas has been held in a maximum security prison near this city, 35 miles west of Mexico City.

Friday was the deadline for the judge to issue his decision.

The Salinas trial was the highest-profile murder case in modern Mexican history, and broke a long taboo against prosecuting the relatives of powerful politicians. Shortly after his brother's arrest and in the wake of Mexico's economic collapse, Carlos Salinas left the country and now lives in self-imposed exile in Ireland.

Raul Salinas, who as a mid-level bureaucrat managed to accumulate a multimillion-dollar fortune, came to symbolize the corruption and excesses that preceded the collapse of the peso in December 1994 -- an economic debacle from which the Mexican economy still hasn't recovered.

Raul Salinas maintained his innocence throughout the trial, saying the charges were the result of a vendetta against him and his brother.

The investigation of Ruiz Massieu's killing had been mired in problems. The first prosecutor in the case -- the victim's own brother -- fled the country shortly before he was accused of covering up Raul Salinas' involvement in the slaying.

Raul Salinas' attorneys have accused the attorney general's office of paying witnesses -- one as much as $500,000 -- to implicate Salinas.

At one point, a former prosecutor announced that remains had been found on Raul Salinas' property of a missing politician whom Raul Salinas had allegedly paid to kill Ruiz Massieu. The body turned out to be that of a relative of a clairvoyant who had been paid by prosecutors to help locate the politician.

Reported By Adolfo Garza