Mexico news roundup 9/25/97 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit * Official notes human rights crisis in Mexico (Miami Herald) * Senior Mexican officer quits, claiming police involved in car thefts (AP) * Outgoing mayor calls crime Mexico City's biggest problem * FBI seeks reputed drug trafficker (Dallas Morning News) * The Miami Herald, September 25, 1997 Official notes human rights crisis in Mexico By Andres Oppenheimer MEXICO CITY -- A top international human rights official ended a three-day visit to Mexico City on Wednesday concluding that there has been ``a serious deterioration'' of the human rights situation under the administration of President Ernesto Zedillo. Pierre Sane, the head of the London-based Amnesty International, also complained in interviews with news media that Zedillo had broken a previous commitment to meet him during his fact-finding trip to Mexico. The visiting official was received instead by a vice-minister of interior and other mid-level officials. Presidential spokesman Antonio Ocaranza said a Sept. 19 letter to Sane from Mexico's ambassador to Great Britain clearly stated that Sane would meet with Mexico's attorney general and the vice-minister of interior. ``It is absolutely false that a meeting with the president had been scheduled,'' Ocaranza told The Herald. ``It is irresponsible for an organization as well respected as Amnesty International to make that claim.'' Human rights officials say Zedillo had made the commitment to receive the group's secretary-general two years ago, when the Mexican president declined to meet with Amnesty's No. 2 official during a visit to Mexico. In his departing statement read at a news conference in Mexico on Wednesday, Sane started out by saying that ``there is a human rights crisis in Mexico today.'' ``Amnesty International has been monitoring the human rights situation in Mexico for more than two decades, and is deeply concerned about the serious deterioration that has taken place over the last three years.'' While in the early '90s the group documented no more than five prisoners of conscience, now there are more than 150, Sane said. He also said more than 30 disappearances have been reported to date -- a sharp contrast to the early '90s, when there were few. ``Dramatically, the threats, attacks and other human rights violations against human rights defenders, as well as journalists, have rocketed to unprecedented proportions,'' Sane said. Zedillo, who took office in late 1994, has put the military in charge of key law enforcement agencies in an effort to curb crime. But Amnesty said the effort has backfired, resulting in rampant human rights abuses. ``To help prevent an irreversible situation of massive gross human rights violations in Mexico ... the armed forces should be relieved from their public security and criminal investigations duties, a role which is fueling the human rights crisis.'' He added that scores of people are being held in Mexican prisons under false charges brought against them, ``often based solely on confessions extracted under torture.'' (c) 1997, The Miami Herald. Visit The Miami Herald Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.herald.com/ * Senior Mexican officer quits, claiming police involved in car thefts Sep 24, 1997 21:31 EDT GUADALAJARA, Mexico (AP) - The man in charge of fighting car thefts in Mexico's second-largest city has resigned, complaining that top lawmen were refusing to crack down on police involvement in the robberies. ``I cannot win the battle,'' Jose Manuel Enriquez del Toro said Tuesday in a communique announcing his resignation from the Jalisco state attorney general's office. Enriquez claimed that some state judicial policemen were involved in car-theft rings, and he demanded an investigation. He said some senior police officers receive as much as $3,800 per theft in the state, which averages about 50 car thefts a day. A spokesman for the attorney general's office, Sergio Villa Perez, confirmed the resignation and said Enriquez had squabbled with the federal judicial police chief, who is also under the attorney general's office. (c) 1997, Associated Press * Outgoing mayor calls crime Mexico City's biggest problem By ANITA SNOW Associated Press Writer 09/23/97 05:14:44 PM MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Outgoing Mayor Oscar Espinosa Villarreal said Tuesday that criminals operating in the capital are so entrenched that when he first took office someone suggested the only way to fight crime is to make a pact with them. Espinosa declined to say who had made the suggestion or whether it was seriously considered, but said he rejected the advice and focused instead on trying to clean up the city's corrupt police force -- a task he admits is far from complete. Espinosa's successor, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who takes office Dec. 5 for a three-year term, will inherit the same task of trying to clean up crime and rid the police force of corruption. Cardenas, of the center-left opposition Democratic Revolution Party, will be the first elected mayor in decades for the city of 8.5 million people. Espinosa, and his predecessors since at least 1929, were presidential appointees and members of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. ``The challenge for all citizens of Mexico City remains the security problem,'' said Espinosa, who has served for three years. For years, policemen in the capital have been involved in all forms of wrongdoing -- from involvement in kidnap rackets to shaking down motorists for bribes. Historically, part of the problem has been low pay, and in the past, the system has often demanded corruption. A couple of years ago, a former police chief admitted that officers had to pay ``rent'' for their cars and for assignment to certain key intersections, an amount that often exceeded their pay. The officers were able to earn in enough in fees to make the ``rent'' payments worthwhile. Police claim they have banned the practice. Espinosa on Tuesday alluded to Arturo ``The Black One'' Durazo, a former city police chief believed to have made millions from extortion, smuggling and drug dealing in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Durazo was a childhood pal of Jose Lopez Portillo and become one of Mexico's most powerful men when his friend became president. He built mansions, one with a race track, and had 1,200 personal employees. All were on the police payroll. Durazo was later arrested and served several years behind bars. Mexico City police have once again come under scrutiny following a string of scandals indicating wrongdoing by officers. Residents of one capital neighborhood marched Monday and called on authorities to punish an officer they say drove over four people in his patrol car Saturday, killing two women in their 40s. One officer was arrested, but was released on bail later in the day. He maintains he was not driving the patrol car. In a second incident, the bodies of three young men were found in a vacant lot Sept. 9, the day after they were arrested in Mexico City's Buenos Aires neighborhood by a SWAT team. Also, the Azteca Television network earlier this month broadcast the image of a Mexico City police officer having a friendly chat with several suspected robbers -- soon after they had assaulted some motorists. The journalists who shot the footage, as well as a Mexican newspaper reporter who has covered the Buenos Aires scandal, have since been attacked and beaten by men they believe were police officers. No arrests have been made in the attacks on reporters. President Ernesto Zedillo and other authorities last week called for an investigation. ``We are worried by the existence of a possible climate of fear against journalistic work,'' the Mexico City Assembly said Sept. 17. ``Even more so when people presumably tied to the police could be involved in those acts.'' * The Dallas Morning News, September 25, 1997 FBI seeks reputed drug trafficker By David LaGesse WASHINGTON -- Federal investigators on Wednesday offered a $2 million reward for the capture of a reputed Mexican drug trafficker and added him to the FBI's most-wanted list. Ramon Eduardo Arellano Felix, 33, was targeted after prosecutors recently won a sealed indictment against him on charges of importing cocaine and marijuana into the United States, FBI Director Louis Freeh said. Arellano Felix and four brothers run one of Mexico's largest drug gangs out of Tijuana, Freeh said. It is ``an organization notorious for using extreme violence in furtherance of its massive illegal drug operations,'' he said. ``We are signaling a new international effort to target this very powerful drug cartel.'' The Arellano Felix gang is headed by Benjamin, 43, and is said to dominate the importing of cocaine, marijuana and amphetamines into Southern California. As the head of the cartel's security, Ramon Arellano Felix has ordered numerous killings in Mexico and the United States, U.S. officials said. ``There are any number of chiefs of police, the heads of federal law enforcement agencies in Mexico, or prosecutors, all of whom have been assassinated,'' said U.S. Drug Enforcement Administrator Thomas Constantine. Mexican gangs also reportedly targeted U.S. law enforcement officials this past summer, including drug czar Barry McCaffrey. It's unclear whether increased threats against U..S. police are coming from the Tijuana cartel in particular, said Treasury Undersecretary Raymond Kelly. ``But judging from the geography -- that many of them have been in Southern California -- it seems likely,'' he said in an interview. The unusual reward is designed to tempt some of Arellano Felix's lieutenants or other fringe people who might have information, Kelly said. ``We're not necessarily talking about people at the top of the cartel. But there are associates or fringe players. ``This is not chump change -- this is a significant amount of money,'' he said. Like a number of the large Mexican cartels, the Arellano Felix gang appears to have operated for years with near impunity by bribing Mexican police and judicial officials. The gang reportedly offered an $18 billion bribe last year to a top Mexican general involved in the counter-narcotics effort. ``That gives you a sense of the wealth and the power of the violence of these organizations, and the need for us to have tools to be able to go after them,'' Constantine said. The Mexican government recently has established newly cleaned-up police units that U.S. officials trust, he said. ``There are very trusted elements of the authorities in Mexico that would be able to carry out a strategy for arrest.'' Freeh noted that the last Mexican drug gang leader was arrested after being put on the FBI's Top Ten Wanted List. Mexican authorities arrested Juan Garcia Abrego and expelled him to the United States, where he now is serving a life prison term on drug charges. The FBI director also used the news conference to push for new laws to restrict data encryption technology -- changes opposed by many in computer-related businesses. Officials have found evidence the Tijuana cartel, in particular, increasingly uses high-tech devices to elude monitoring by U.S. and Mexican police, the U.S. officials said. Over the past 18 months, ``When they talk amongst each other in the United States, they use encryption systems to try to defeat law enforcement,'' Constantine said. (c) 1997, The Dallas Morning News. Visit The Dallas Morning News on the World Wide Web at http://www.dallasnews.com/ ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-09.27.97-09:13:49-10487