After the most celebrated and controversial trial in recent Mexican history, the brother of the former president, Carlos Salinas, has been sentenced to fifty years in prison for murder.

Raul Salinas was found guilty of plotting the assassination in 1994 of Jose Franscisco Ruiz Massieu, a top official in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Prosecutors suggested that Mr Salinas saw Mr Ruiz Massieu as a threat to his family's political power; relations had also been strained after Mr Ruiz Massieu divorced the Salinas'sister.

Mr Salinas, who has been held in a maximum security prison since his arrest four years ago, has maintained his innocence and said the case against him was politically motivated.