Assassins seeking a drug lord mistook a Mexican cardinal for their target and killed him in a barrage of 14 bullets during an airport ambush, the government said.
Mexican deputy attorney general Antonio Garcia Torres, in a Wednesday night news conference, blamed the shooting on gunmen hired by rivals of well-known drug trafficker Joaquin Guzman Loera.Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, one of only two Roman Catholic cardinals in Mexico, and his driver were killed as they sat in their car in the parking lot awaiting the arrival of a church official. The cardinal was shot 14 times, his driver 11 times.
Five other people also were killed. Authorities said three apparently were innocent bystanders and two were suspected drug members.
The gunmen evidently thought the cardinal was Guzman because he was in a white 1993 Gran Marquis, a car similar to those favored by drug traffickers, and was dressed in black, also common among the traffickers, state Attorney General Leobardo Larios told reporters.
The attorney general's office said it would pay $5 million to anyone giving information leading to the arrest of Guzman, a drug lord with the so-called Tijuana drug cartel; Hector Luis Palma Salazar, a Guzman ally; and the brothers Francisco and Javier Arellano Felix, the men police said contracted the killers.
The Arellano Felix brothers are cousins of notorious drug lord Miguel Angel Felix, a bitter rival of Palma, who was captured by Mexican authorities in 1989. The brothers contracted some 15 gunmen for $10 million to kill Guzman, the Mexican deputy attorney general said.
Earlier Wednesday, coroner Mario Rivas Souza told ECO television a gunman stood as close as three feet from the cardinal when he shot the prelate, who was dressed in full clerical garb.
The coroner told The Associated Press he wasn't questioning the government's theory that the cardinal's death was accidental and meant only that the gunman had aimed to kill.
Whether the gunman knew the cardinal is "up to the attorney general of the republic" to determine, he said.
Authorities said most of their information about the shooting came from Jesus Alberto Ballardo Robles, arrested shortly after the killings.
Ballardo Robles confessed that he was among those hired in the border city of Tijuana to kill Guzman, Garcia Torres said.