MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Nadia Zepeda says Mexico City police arrested and raped her in 2003, planted cocaine on her and sent her to prison in the name of a "zero tolerance" crime policy that rights groups say has run amok.

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Amnesty International and Mexican rights groups launched a campaign on Wednesday to free Zepeda, 20, who has been in prison for two and a half years for possession and sale of drugs in a case they condemned as arbitrary and flawed.

"I still don't understand why they did it or why they are doing it," a soft-spoken Zepeda said on a video tape from her prison presented to reporters on Wednesday.

Her case is emblematic of a wave of violations being documented by rights watchdogs under new, tough crime policies inspired by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

A group of businessmen hired Giuliani in late 2002 for $4.3 million to tackle Mexico City's rampant crime.

Giuliani and members of his security consulting firm made a series of visits to Mexico City, including high-crime neighborhoods, and made recommendations to bring order, working closely with the police chief here.

Officials say his zero tolerance measures are working, but rights groups warn they give police, prosecutors and the courts license to commit rights abuse while high crime persists.

"You can do it in New York, where police are trained, sometimes have a university education, and there are rights guarantees," said Mexican rights activist Juan Salgado. "Here police have a long history of abuse and limited training."

Under pressure to solve crime, Mexican police often fabricate evidence, a practice condoned or promoted by corrupt prosecutors and a closed, inefficient court system, experts say. Youth and the poor are often the targets, they say.

Hundreds of criminal complaints against police are pending, including Zepeda's two-year-old charges against three of the officers who arrested her.

She was an 18-year-old student when she, her boyfriend and two friends were picked up as they walked on the street one evening by police conducting a drug raid in the neighborhood.

When she surfaced in a jail cell more than 24 hours later, she had been raped and abused and the cocaine planted as evidence, said rights lawyers.

"She was just like any girl her age, she had just turned 18," said her mother, Carmen Molina. breaking down before reporters. "This changed life completely."

Amnesty International's Carlos Gomez said Zepeda's case, like the rapes of indigenous women by soldiers patrolling Mexico's countryside, or the arbitrary arrests of activists targeted for their work, shows "the flaws and inefficiencies" of a justice system in need of reform.

President Vicente Fox has proposed legislation to overhaul the system, including measures to professionalize police, depoliticize prosecutors and open court proceedings to the public. But they have stalled in the Congress.
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