Now what was that about Mexico having no crime/ corruption problems?

Mexico's war on drugs no match for corruption By Catherine Bremer
Wed Jan 17, 1:45 PM ET



MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican journalist Olivier Acuna had been reporting on organized crime for eight years when a group of men ambushed him near his home, held a gun to his head, forced him into a car and sped him away.

He says the men put a hood on him, pushed his head to the floor and hissed: "We're going to kill you, son of a bitch, and dump you in a field. How we kill you depends on how you cooperate."

They interrogated him about a local murder by binding his face until they crushed his nose, trussing up his body and sitting on it while forcing water into his mouth from a tank.

Then they handed him to police, who jailed him.

Acuna has now spent a year in prison in Sinaloa state in western Mexico on what human rights lawyers say are trumped up homicide charges typical in a country where crooked police chiefs, judges and business leaders use their power to protect drug bosses who get rich smuggling drugs to the United States.

With drug violence worse than ever, President Felipe Calderon took office last month and immediately sent thousands of troops out to hunt down drug gangs behind 2,000 murders last year, including several journalists and scores of police.

The swoop has been praised by Washington, yet experts say it will fail unless it also targets the corruption that has put police forces and the courts in the service of cartel leaders.

Acuna, 44, who has a wife and two children, says he was framed because of his articles on death squads made up of off-duty police in the pay of drug bosses.

"I feel wretched. I am innocent. I could be here two more years, in prison with child rapists, trying to appeal," he told Reuters by telephone from the Culiacan city jail.

Since Calderon launched his anti-drug campaign, soldiers have made dozens of arrests in western Michoacan state, burned marijuana crops and set up military checkpoints.

In the infamous city of Tijuana on the U.S. border, they seized guns from local police as they moved to take control.

"As a first step, it's very good. But if that's all they do, it will be useless," said Maria Elena Morera, president of Mexico United Against Crime, a lobbying group.

As well as fighting corruption and raising police wages, she said Mexico needs to turn marijuana growers onto other crops and reduce the influence of drug gangs in communities.

INCOMPETENCE, CORRUPTION

Drug cartels wield enormous power, and locals often protect them in exchange for services like paved roads or as thanks for them splashing cash about.

The border town of Reynosa was rewarded for its loyalty last April when the jailed head of the Gulf cartel, Osiel Cardenas, funded a party for 10,000 kids in a baseball stadium, laying on masked wrestlers, clowns and truckloads of gifts.

Under pressure from the United States, former President Vicente Fox declared war on drug gangs, but his campaign only intensified their turf battles and spread violence further south. Fox's attempts at judicial reforms also petered out.

Calderon wants to spread his anti-drug sweep across Mexico state by state. Last week troops were sent to Guerrero state, the scene of a wedding shootout on New Year's Day.

On Tuesday, troops spread into Sinaloa state, home of the infamous Sinaloa cartel run by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Sinaloa's veteran human rights ombudsman, Oscar Loza Ochoa, who is fighting Acuna's case, says Mexico can only end drug violence by attacking corruption and working closely with cocaine producer Colombia and the United States, the dominant consumer market.

"This isn't a police issue," he said. "It's an economic problem. Fabricating guilt is not unusual. It's incompetence on one side and corruption on the other."

Acuna, who says he was intimidated and threatened for years as a reporter, believes his captors were thugs working for a local prosecutor under orders to get him out of the way.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070117/wl_ ... o_drugs_dc