Forensic doctor reveals former Mexican president ordered autopsy not to be performed on Cardinal Posadas

Mexico City, Mexico, Jan 23, 2007 / 07:05 am

A forensic doctor in Mexico has raised eyebrows across the country by stating this week that former President Carlos Salinas issued a “written order” that an autopsy not be performed on Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas, who was gunned down in 1993.

In an interview on Radio 880, Dr. Mario Rivas Souza, Dean of Forensic Medicine in the Mexican state of Jalisco, said that upon learning of the death of Cardinal Posadas on October 24, 1993, he went “to the Red Cross facilities, to the operating room, where the body was.  I was tasked with removing the clothing, and I was not told where he was shot.  I removed the clothing from his body to notate the lesions it displayed.”

In addition, Dr. Rivas said that when the then-Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Girolamo Prigionne, asked him about the stain that the cardinal had on his beard, he told him it was “gun powder, and that in order for a wound to leave gunpowder, the shots had to be fired at very close range.”

Rivas said that then-Attorney General, Jorge Carpizo, lied when he said the shots entered the cardinal from behind, because “he didn’t even see the body.”

“I continue to hold that the cardinal was assassinated, and it was a complete assassination, nothing confusing about it.  He had fourteen gunshot wounds, his chauffer had nine, which means two people fired the shots, one who shot him and the other who shot the chauffer,” Dr. Rivas stated.

Lastly, he said that after speaking openly about the assassination of the cardinal, “authorities everywhere piled on top of me,” since “Jorge Carpizo gave clear instructions to cover up the affair and to say it was an accident.  I continue to say it was not an accident,” Rivas said.