LAWYER'S SUICIDE NOTE NAMES MEXICAN LEADER

NEWARK, N.J. - A suicide note left by Mexico's former top drug prosecutor
implicated President Ernesto Zedillo and members of the country's ruling
party in his brother's 1994 slaying.

"Members of the PRI assassinated my brother Jose Francisco, and President
Zedillo is well aware of this, since he had a lot to do with it," said the
note from Mario Ruiz Massieu, referring to the ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party.

"To find my brother's murderers an investigation should be initiated
beginning with Zedillo" said the one-page note distributed yesterday by
Ruiz Massieu's U.S. lawyer.

"He and I knew that he was not detached from both political crimes of
1994," Ruiz Massieu wrote, an apparent reference to the killings of his
brother, a top PRI official, and Luis Donaldo Colosio, the party's
presidential candidate that year.

Zedillo, who had been Colosio's campaign manager, became the PRI's
presidential candidate a after his assassination.

Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuellar dismissed the claims in Ruiz
Massieu's letter.

"Mario Ruiz Massieu lived lying, and he died lying."

Ruiz Massieu, 48, was found dead of an apparent overdose of antidepressants
yesterday at his home in Palisades Park, N.J., the New York suburb where he
lived with his wife, Maria Eugenia, and 10-year-old daughter, Regina.

He had been under house arrest in New Jersey for much of the last 41/2
years, battling efforts by the U.S. and Mexican governments to return him
to his homeland, where he was accused of covering up his brother's murder.

"I am absolutely innocent of all charges against me," Ruiz Massieu said in
his note.

Although he successfully rebuffed four extradition attempts and one
deportation attempt, Ruiz Massieu was upset by the indictment returned last
month in Houston accusing him of laundering $9.9 million in drug payoffs
while an assistant attorney general in Mexico.

Ruiz Massieu's widow said his fate was sealed in November 1994, when Ruiz
Massieu denounced the Mexican government.

"All those who knew my husband will be left with a heavy conscience,
knowing that solely to serve President Zedillo and thereby preserve their
positions in the Mexican government, at all costs, they lent themselves to
the ruin of my beloved and always admired husband," Maria Eugenia Ruiz
Massieu said.