Top Mexico Prosecutor Vows Purge of Agency : Corruption: Attorney general says crackdown on police, federal lawyers shows president’s commitment to reform.

Mexico’s top law enforcement official on Wednesday ordered a “deep purge” and restructuring of the nation’s federal police and prosecutors, targeting corruption, inefficiency and his agency’s links to powerful drug cartels.

Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano indicated that the sweeping restructuring plan is a key step toward curbing abuses by some federal prosecutors and police commanders, who have run virtual fiefdoms in the Mexican countryside with unchallenged power.

It eliminates several regional power centers within the agency, consolidates several others under Lozano’s personal command and creates for the first time the equivalent of an internal affairs division empowered to investigate and prosecute corruption in the attorney general’s office.

A 13-page document explaining the reorganization of an agency second in power only to the army said the changes were “motivated by the urgent need to answer society’s clamor for a judicial system that provides security and confidence for all, without distinction.”

Lozano told reporters the plan is part of President Ernesto Zedillo’s commitment to establishing a new rule of law in Mexico.

Although the attorney general said he will submit some parts of the program to the Mexican Congress for approval, he said others already are being implemented in “an ongoing process” to root out corruption. And his aides noted that the purge of the federal law enforcement agency already has begun.

Lozano’s internal auditor, Deputy Atty. Gen. Leticia de Anda Munguia, disclosed that 100 federal judicial police officers--also known as federales --have been fired for corruption in recent months. An additional 35 were dismissed for human rights abuses, she said.

But the attorney general, a member of Mexico’s political opposition who has been Zedillo’s point man in the anti-corruption campaign, stopped short of identifying corrupt law enforcement officers.

Lozano has previously acknowledged only in general terms that key prosecutors and commanders are on the payrolls of Mexico’s powerful drug lords and organized-crime syndicates, and he has said it could take as long as 12 years to rid the agency of corruption.

Testimony and documents filed in recent criminal cases in the United States and Mexico show that several high-ranking agents in the attorney general’s office have served as guards--and sometimes full partners--of the drug cartels in Mexican states that are key smuggling routes for South American cocaine entering the United States.

With few controls built into Mexico’s law enforcement system to curb its top echelon, high-ranking officials have operated outside the reach of Mexico’s attorney general himself.

Lozano said his plan “will establish more efficient controls in all areas and stronger [internal] vigilance,” partly by creating an all-powerful “technical council,” which he will head, and the new position of inspector general, accountable only to the attorney general.

It also calls for an elite new counter-narcotics squad assigned to break the nexus between the drug cartels and regional officials.

Twice in the past few months, Lozano has had to call in the Mexican army to make major drug arrests.

The case of Hector Luis (El Guero) Palma in June underscored the problem that Lozano’s restructuring plan seeks to eliminate.

The alleged leader of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, Palma was under the protection of 33 heavily armed federal judicial police officers--including the deputy regional commander--when he was surrounded by 200 army soldiers and taken into custody.

Lozano was challenged by reporters Wednesday to explain his increasing use of the army in his campaign against the drug cartels and the corruption they have spawned.

“The army also is responsible for the internal security of the country,” Lozano said. “Drug trafficking is defined as a problem--a crime--that is a threat to our national security. There’s a clear relationship.”