THE former Mexican president, was interviewed yesterday by a special prosecutor at the Mexican embassy in Dublin.
The Mexican ambassador, Mr Daniel Dultzin, told The Irish Times last night that Mr Carlos Salinas de Gortari, responding to a subpoena, was given "an extensive questionnaire" on the March 1994 murder of his intended successor as president, Mr Luis Donaldo Colosio.
Mexico's recently appointed fiscal especial (special prosecutor), Mr Luis Raul Gonzalez Perez, travelled to Ireland for the all day session at which Mr Salinas tendered a document of his own. Mr Dultzin said Mr Salinas intended to make its contents public.
The ambassador also said that Mr Salinas would present himself for interview at the Alien Registration Office this week. He stressed the process was routine.
Arrangeents for the visit were apparently made last week in New York between a representative of the Mexican Attorney General's office and Mr Salinas.
Mr Gonzalez Perez was the first of three prosecutors in the investigation to seek testimony from the former president, who chose Mr Colosio to succeed him.
It was unclear yesterday whether lawyers for Mr Salinas were in Dublin. One of them, Mr Eduardo Luengo Creel, also acts for Mr Salinas's brother, Raul, who is on trial for masterminding the November 1994 murder of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party's general secretary, Mr Jose "Pepe" Ruiz Massieu. The other, Mr Juan Velaquez, was believed to have refrained from travelling to Ireland as he also acts for Mr Colosio's widow.
The Salinas/Colosio relationship was represented as turning sour after the charismatic Colosio struck an independent note on radical reform of the ruling party, in power for 67 years.
Like the 1963 assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, the saga has a lone gunman, then a plot, a second gunman and a cover up. Mexico has been rife with rumours that Mr Salinas was the "intellectual killer" of Colosio. A source close to Mr Salinas has said that his political enemies orchestrated a campaign to make the expresident Mexico's "favourite bad guy".
Mr Salinas, whose political legacy includes negotiation of Mexico into a free trade agreement with the US and Canada.