Mexico mayors held over drug links

Mexico mayors held over drug links

english.aljazeera.net

Mexican security forces have detained 10 mayors and 18 other government officials for allegedly protecting one of Mexico's most violent drug cartels.
Soldiers and federal agents were deployed across the state of Michoacan to carry out the operation. The detained officials, under investigation for six months, allegedly leaked information to La Familia cartel.
The officials also allegedly provided protection to members of the cartel.

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The officials included a judge and a former police chief who is an aide to the state governor. The attorney general's office said all were suspected of links to drug smugglers.

Calderon has staked his presidency on crushing drug gangs whose turf wars have killed some 2,300 people so far this year, apace with 6,300 drug murders in 2008. Some 45,000 troops and federal police have been deployed across the country.

In the northwestern state of Durango, where a burst of cartel killings have shaken up formerly quiet towns, the body was found on Tuesday of a Mexican crime reporter believed murdered by drug hitmen.

Durango is part of the home territory of top drug fugitive Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, who is fighting a Michoacan cartel known as "La Familia" (The Family) for control of the area.

Small towns in marijuana-growing Michoacan are under siege from rival cartels who want control of rural outposts along smuggling corridors, stretching the army in sparsely inhabited mountains that hide drug plantations and laboratories.

Local officials and police are often bribed or terrorized into helping the well-armed gangs that move billions of dollars of narcotics into the United States every year.


english.aljazeera.net
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