THE former Mexican president, Mr Carlos Salinas de Gortari, answered more than 300 questions during a 12 hour interrogation session at the Mexican embassy in Dublin on Wednesday, a special prosecutor has said.
Mr Salinas was not accompanied by his lawyer, the Mexican ambassador, Mr Daniel Dultzin, said yesterday.
Mr Luis Raul Gonzalez Perez, the special prosecutor, told Mexican radio: "It was, in fact, 12 long hours of questioning."
Mr Gonzalez said Mr Salinas was calm and collected throughout the session, attended also by two assistants to the prosecutor, the ambassador, and a secretary.
Mr Salinas also read out a prepared nine to 10 page statement which described the political situation and his good relations with Mr Luis Donaldo Colosio, his hand picked choice to run for president for the long ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Mr Colosio was assassinated in March 1994 at the end of a rally in Tijuana - a murder that rocked Mexico. Mr Salinas has denied any involvement in the Colosio assassination. Nor is Mr Salinas, charged with anything. On charges by his political enemies the jury is still out. Mr Salinas has told me: "Time will tell."
One man is serving a 45 year jail sentence in the Colosio case Mr Salinas left Mexico in March 1995 after his elder brother, Raul, was arrested for masterminding the November murder of the PRI's general secretary, Mr Jose "Pepe" Francisco Ruiz Massieu.
Reports in Mexican newspapers yesterday stating that Mr Salinas is to attend a second interrogation next Wednesday in relation to this murder could not be confirmed. They quoted an official in the Attorney General's office. Later, another source in that office denied this. The Attorney General is a member of the right wing opposition PAN party, appointed by Mr Zedillo as a show of transparency.
However, if the original report is true, that session could be a more acrimonious affair, since the special prosecutor in that case, Mr Pablo Chapa, is known as a Salinas enemy. Earlier this year, he was replaced by Mr Gonzalez as the prosecutor in the Colosio case.
He was originally appointed prosecutor after the flight of his predecessor, the brother of the murdered man. Mr Ruiz Massieu's brother, Mario, had been put in charge of the investigation as a show of earnest intent by President Zedillo to find the killer or killers. But later, Mr Mario Ruiz Massieu fled his job and the country after it became apparent that he had been protecting Mr Raul Salinas in the investigation and blaming "a political group" in the PRI.
This political murder case also has a close familial link. Pepe Ruiz Massieu had been married to the Salinas brothers' sister, Adriana.