Corruption Probe Targets Baja’s Ex-Attorney General

Mexican federal investigators probing alleged corruption at the highest levels of law enforcement in state government interrogated the former attorney general of Baja California and a state police commander Tuesday.

The intense questioning began Monday night at the headquarters of the federal judicial police, continued past dawn Tuesday and then resumed later in the day, authorities said. Although law enforcement officials on both sides of the border said arrests appeared imminent, the two men were not taken into custody, according to a spokesman for the Mexican federal attorney general’s office.

Federal police have targeted a network of officials they suspect of protecting the Arellano drug cartel. The main suspect appears to be Juan Francisco Franco Rios, the former attorney general who stepped down last month. They also questioned state Police Cmdr. Jorge Alvarez Barriere.

The dramatic arrest last week of the state’s deputy attorney general resulted in a confrontation between state police and a heavily armed contingent of 100 federal officers. The deputy attorney general was charged with aiding the escape of cartel gunmen after five men died in a March 3 shootout between federal agents and state police allegedly working for traffickers. He pleaded innocent and told reporters that investigators pressured him to implicate Franco, the former attorney general, in wrongdoing.

During Tuesday’s interrogation, Franco was questioned about a 1992 incident in which Baja police credentials were found on slain Arellano gangsters after a gunfight in a Puerto Vallarta discotheque, officials said.

Franco says he did not supply the credentials and that someone forged his signature on the identification cards.

Authorities also interrogated Alvarez--who was temporarily replaced as the commander of the state judicial police in Tijuana on Monday--about the chaotic March shootout. They are expected to scrutinize at least five more commanders who were charged in the shootout but cleared by a judge.

Alvarez, who told reporters that he has nothing to hide, was scheduled to return for further questioning Tuesday at 5 p.m. Franco’s interrogation will resume today.

The investigation has been criticized as politically motivated in Baja California, a state run by a conservative party opposed to the ruling party in Mexico City. It comes amid growing tension caused by the politically charged assassinations of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and of Tijuana’s police chief. Critics have accused the federal government of using the Baja crackdown to divert attention from the two unsolved slayings.

Gov. Ernesto Ruffo Appel said Tuesday that he would meet today with President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to discuss crime and state-federal relations.