A slain lawyer's videotaped and posthumously broadcast accusation that the president ordered his murder along with the killing of a Lebanese businessman and his daughter has thrown Guatemala into an uproar.

President Alvaro Colom vehemently denied the allegations made in a videotape left by lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg, who was shot to death by unidentified assailants while riding his bicycle Sunday. But opposition lawmakers called for the president to step aside while the killing is investigated.

"If you are watching this message, it is because I was assassinated by President Alvaro Colom with help from Gustavo Alejos," the president's secretary, and Colom's wife, Rosenberg said in the video distributed at his funeral Monday.

The Guatemala City newspaper Prensa Libre said the recording "has created the greatest political crisis for this democracy, because never before has a democratically elected president been accused of murder."

Television stations repeatedly aired the video and so many people watched it on Guatemalan Internet sites that some temporarily collapsed. More than 5,300 people joined a Facebook group called "Guatemalans for the dismissal of Alvaro Colom."

On the video, Rosenberg says officials might want to kill him because he represented Lebanese businessman Khalil Musa, who was slain in a hail of bullets in April 15 along with his daughter. The lawyer says 74-year-old Musa, who had been named to the board of the Guatemala's Rural Development Bank, was killed for refusing to get involved in purported illicit transactions at the bank.

The Guatemalan government is the majority shareholder in the bank.

The lawyer also said that after the killing of Musa and his daughter, he announced that the president was responsible for the murder. "After uncovering the operation I knew that I will be the next victim."

Rosenberg said the alleged illicit transactions "range from money laundering to the embezzlement of public funds and nonexistent programs operated by first lady Sandra de Colom, as well as the financing of front companies used by drug traffickers."

The video was shot in the office of journalist Mario David Garcia, who told The Associated Press that Rosenberg approached him to ask his help in making the video and broadcasting it on his program "Hablando Claro" or "Straight Talk" in case something happened to him.

"I tried to persuade him to first denounce what he knew, rather than thinking about being killed. We left it at that we would interview him on my program on Monday and he was going to bring me the evidence," said Garcia, adding that Rosenberg also said he would go this week to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Colom, a center-left politician who took office in January, went on national television to dismiss the accusations and demand an outside investigation.

"First of all, I am not a murderer. Second, I am not a drug trafficker, and everything he says there is totally senseless," Colom said of Rosenberg's video.

He said his government asked the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala to investigate "to clear up this matter." The U.N. panel was created in 2007 to clean up corruption in Guatemala.

Colom said he also talked to U.S. Ambassador Stephen McFarland to ask the FBI to probe Rosenberg's slaying.

In a statement released by the embassy, McFarland said the "the embassy is trying to work with the FBI to see what they can do."

Otto Perez, secretary-general of the leading opposition faction, the Patriot Party, called on Colom to step aside during the investigation.

Angry crowds marched in downtown Guatemala City Wednesday, some demanding the resignation of President Alvaro Colom and others defending him against accusations of murdering the lawyer.

Some 1,500 people marched to the Constitution Plaza demanding Colom's resignation

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