Posted on 02/20/2007 2:22:11 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
MEXICO CITY — An assistant state prosecutor in Mexico was detained for questioning in an investigation into the killing of an opposition politician and four others, and the passing of information to drug traffickers.
In the border city of Nuevo Laredo, gunmen wielding assault rifles attacked a vehicle carrying a federal Congressman, wounding him and killing his driver just a day after the government announced a crackdown on drug crime in the area.
The detention of prosecutor Hugo Resendiz Martinez, who was immediately fired from his post in the northern state of Durango and taken to Mexico City, was a rare public acknowledgment of the degree to which drug corruption has penetrated law enforcement.
"Investigations have revealed that during his term in office, the former assistant prosecutor passed on information about criminal investigations to (Sergio) Villarreal," a drug trafficker known as "El Grande," or "The Big One," the federal Attorney General's Office said in a statement Monday.
Resendiz Martinez's detention marks one of the highest-profile corruption cases since the 1997 arrest of Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, once Mexico's top anti-drug official, who was found to have been paid by the now-deceased cocaine kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes. Gutierrez Rebollo is serving a 71-year sentence for drug trafficking and racketeering.
Resendiz Martinez was detained on suspicion of participating in organized crime and drug trafficking. He is accused of tipping off drug traffickers about raids in return for money, and engaging in extreme acts of brutality.
Prosecutors said an investigation into Resendiz Martinez revealed a gun that may have been used in the Jan. 14 killing of opposition politician Jaime Meraz Martinez. Meraz Martinez's wife, daughter-in-law and an employee of the opposition were also killed in the attack.
Tests were being done on the weapon to determine if it was used in any of the killings. Meraz Martinez, 63, was a former lawmaker and adviser to the left-leaning opposition Democratic Revolution Party and ran a business.
The investigations also turned up a clandestine burial site in Ciudad Lerdo in Durango, 490 miles north of Mexico City, where the bodies of a missing federal investigative agent, two pilots, and a businessman from the nearby state of Nuevo Leon were discovered.
Congressman Horacio Garza was in stable condition after suffering gunshot wounds to his neck, leg and shoulder on Monday. His driver, Hector Morales Juarez, died at the scene on a road to the city's airport.
"He is all right, he is stable, he is out of danger," Garza's wife, Carmen Galvan, told reporters outside a hospital in Nuevo Laredo, across the U.S. border from Laredo, Texas.
The city has been wracked by bloody turf battles between drug gangs, but police offered no immediate information on a possible motive in Monday's attack.
Witnesses said the assailants fired from a passing vehicle, hitting the victims' sport utility vehicle with numerous rounds of gunfire, mostly on the driver's side.
"It was two men in a small car. It all happened very quickly," truck driver Hernan Ramirez said.
Morales Juarez suffered about six bullet wounds, and at least one to the head. The gunmen were apparently using Kalashnikov assault rifles, the weapon favored by hit men in northern Mexico.
Garza, of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, is in the lower house of Congress and previously served two terms as mayor of Nuevo Laredo.
President Felipe Calderon's administration said Sunday it was sending about 3,300 soldiers, sailors and federal police to the states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, where Nuevo Laredo is located, to patrol the main trafficking routes.
What!? Are they suggesting Mexico may have corrupt officials? How dare they.
What!? Are they suggesting Mexico may have corrupt officials? How dare they.
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Yes, I bet they have their share of Ronnie Earl look-alikes....
Our Feds tell Mexico where the minutemen are.
Have you kept a body count in Nuevo Laredo?
/sarcasm
All prosecutors are mad dogs who don't flinch at lying, suppressing evidence, putting innocent people in jail, taking blood money, assisting muderers for a price, and spreading corruption.
And that goes for the new golden boy Giuliani, too. I'd rather vote for the RINO McCain than that former PIG, oh, excuse me, prosecutor.
Prosecutors are soul-less pigs without honor, hell bent on nothing more than their own political ambition, regardless of anyone they crush under their wheels of their politcally motivated "justice".
At least John McCain knows first-hand what about injustice and cruelty, courtesy of the Hanoi Hilton. Perhaps that might temper his treatment of the American people, instead of the callous disregard of human rights that a potential President Prosecutor Giuliani would show.
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