MEXICO CITY – A Mexican federal judge has absolved a man of charges he tried to assassinate a crusading investigative journalist in 1997.
Marco Quinones Sanchez was found not guilty of carrying out a shooting attack that badly wounded Jesus Blancornelas, founder of Tijuana's Zeta magazine. Blancornelas' bodyguard was killed in the attack, but the judge also absolved Quinones of that murder.
The Committee to Protect Journalists sent the court's ruling to The Associated Press Friday after editors of the weekly were notified. The ruling was on Aug. 26.
Quinones was arrested in 2003, and authorities said he was a hit man for the Tijuana Cartel's Arellano Felix brothers. The court didn't explain why it absolved Quinones, but it clarified that he will remain in prison on a 12-year sentence for organized crime.
