http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/3324110

Aug. 24, 2005, 9:07PM



Mexico judges get guards
Like in Colombia, drug gangs are threatening the lives of officials, some analysts say
By IOAN GRILLO
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

MEXICO CITY - The government has assigned bodyguards to at least seven federal judges and magistrates after death threats were made against them in recent weeks, an official who oversees the federal judiciary said Wednesday.

Some analysts said the announcement, which comes after high-profile killings of police officers and prison workers, shows that Mexican drug gangs are launching an all-out assault on the government and civil servants, as they did in Colombia.

Elvia Diaz de Leon, head of the Federal Judicial Council, said the judges under threat are overseeing cases involving drug gangs.

"Today we have seven or eight cases of threats against circuit judges and tribunal magistrates who have responsibility for organized-crime cases," Diaz told reporters.

Officers from the Federal Agency of Investigation, Mexico's equivalent of the FBI, are providing protection for the threatened judges, Diaz said.

While drug gangs have killed dozens of judges in Colombia, similar attacks have been relatively rare in Mexico, with only a few scattered cases in the last decade.

In January, assassins kidnapped and killed six workers at a federal prison in the border city of Matamoros. In June, gunmen shot dead the police chief of Nuevo Laredo, just six hours after he had taken office.


Revenge for crackdown
"Drug gangs are waging a clear campaign of intimidation and murder against Mexican officials," said Bruce Bagley, a drugs expert at the University of Miami.

Bagley said the attacks on Mexican officials are a reaction to the efforts of the Vicente Fox government to hunt down major drug traffickers.

Since taking office in December 2000, the Fox government has arrested several major kingpins such as Benjamin Arellano Felix of the Tijuana cartel and Osiel Cardenas of the Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel. His administration claims to have arrested more than 30,000 people on drug charges.

But Fox's efforts have sometimes inadvertently helped cause more violence, analysts said, as rival gangs try to take over smuggling routes controlled by mobsters who have been jailed or killed.


U.S. called just as bad
Since Jan. 1, there have been more than 820 drug-related killings in Mexico, mainly in states close to the U.S. border.

Mexican Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca said Wednesday that while drug violence is bad in Mexico, it is no worse than in the United States.

Speaking before the Mexican Senate, he said that in 2004 there were more than 2,000 killings in California, nearly 1,000 in Florida and more than 800 in both New York and Texas. It appears he was referring to total murder figures rather than just those specifically related to drugs. "(Mexico) shouldn't be singled out," Cabeza said. "The problem we have is completely shared."

Cabeza said drug traffickers have increasingly corrupted and infiltrated Mexico's police forces, including the Federal Agency of Investigation.

Recently, several U.S. officials, including Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza, have struck out at Mexico for failing to stop the narcotics-related violence.

Bagley said Cabeza was making a valid point, adding that the number of drug-related murders in the United States was probably underestimated.