Federal forces detained 10 mayors and 18 other officials Tuesday for allegedly protecting one of Mexico's most violent drug cartels in an unprecedented anti-corruption sweep in the Pacific coast state of Michoacan.
Soldiers
and federal agents fanned out across President Felipe Calderon's native
state to carry out the operation, which an expert called a blow to
politicians tied to traffickers in Michoacan.
The
officials, who had been under investigation for six months, allegedly
leaked sensitive information and provided protection to La Familia
cartel, said Ricardo Najera, a spokesman for the federal Attorney
General's Office. He declined to give more details to avoid
compromising the case.
More than 200 federal agents burst into the state attorney general's office in Morelia to detain three of the officials.
Most
of the mayors were from towns in a mountainous region where there have
been numerous beheadings and federal agents recently found 22
methamphetamine laboratories. Among those detained was the mayor of
Uruapan, where La Familia gunmen dumped five human heads on a bar dance
floor in 2006, the Attorney General's Office said in a statement.
The mayors came from different parties, including Calderon's own conservative National Action Party.
The detentions of elected officials show how Mexican cartels have infiltrated the country's political structure
and how far-reaching their control is in rural Mexico, said Victor
Clark, an expert on trafficking based in the drug-plagued northern
border city of Tijuana.
It also marks a first for the federal government, which has arrested scores of corrupt police officers in the past but has never gone after such a large group of mayors.
"This
is a huge blow to the cartel. These ties are indispensable for the
operation of these organizations," said Clark, director of the
Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana. "But until now the
government has never dared to touch the political classes tied to drug trafficking. For me this is an important step."
High-ranking state police officials and two municipal police chiefs were among those detained Tuesday, including state police academy director Mario Bautista and the state governor's adviser, Citlalli Fernandez, who also is the former public safety secretary, the Attorney General's Office said.
Michoacan Gov. Leonel Godoy said the federal forces had also sought the state attorney general
for questioning but could not locate him during Tuesday's operation.
Officials at the federal Attorney General's Office said they had no
information about that claim.
Godoy criticized
the federal government for not informing him about the arrests, but
promised to cooperate with the investigation. He said any state
government official under investigation would be asked to resign.
Meanwhile, the federal Public Safety Department
paraded before the news media 11 suspected La Familia members who were
detained late Monday and early Tuesday in the states of Michoacan and
Mexico, among them a former Michoacan state police officer.
Najera declined to say whether those arrests were related to the Michoacan operation.
The sweep drives home Mexico's struggle to weed out corruption in its drug fight. Many local and federal police have been arrested on charges of protecting drug cartels since Calderon launched his nationwide crackdown on organized crime in 2006. More than 10,750 people have died in drug violence since the crackdown started.
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