Zedillo to Sign Sweeping Organized-Crime Package

President Ernesto Zedillo is expected to sign into law this week a controversial organized-crime bill that gives law-enforcement agencies here sweeping powers to attack Mexico’s sophisticated narcotics cartels and other criminal gangs.

The bill, approved late Monday night by the Chamber of Deputies, legalizes government wiretaps and witness secrecy for the first time. It allows undercover operations, creates a witness-protection program similar to that in the United States and increases penalties for criminal conspiracies, such as international drug trafficking.

U.S. officials have urged Mexico to adopt this organized-crime package as “a critically important” step in Zedillo’s campaign to crack down on Mexican drug mafias that make billions of dollars in profit supplying up to 75% of the South American cocaine sold in the United States.

Testifying with several other senior Clinton administration officials at a U.S. House subcommittee hearing on Mexican drug trafficking and money laundering last month, Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state, had said the bill would “enhance the [Mexican] government’s ability to combat organized crime.” A point man at the State Department on drug trafficking, Winer added that Washington had offered Zedillo technical aid and training for Mexican agents in electronic surveillance and undercover techniques if the organized-crime bill became law.

In passing both houses of Mexico’s National Congress, the tough measure overcame stiff opposition and widespread concern that it could lead to government abuse by corrupt or politically motivated individuals in Mexican law enforcement agencies.

Critics noted that such agencies have for years illegally wiretapped Mexicans, foreigners and even other government officials. By legalizing such surveillance and undercover operations, they said, the new law could permit repressive conduct in the name of crime fighting.

In Monday’s lower house debate, opposition lawmaker Mauro Gonzalez Luna asserted that the bill would permit “state terrorism,” not anti-drug work. Other lawmakers from the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party argued that the measure would violate Mexicans’ rights to privacy and due process; they said it would permit government harassment of political enemies and further empower corrupt police and prosecutors.

Still others condemned the measure as a product of U.S. pressure: “This bill you are going to approve today forms part of the United States’ imposition on our country,” opposition Deputy Ysabel Molina Warner declared.

The Chamber approved the bill on a vote of 326 to 40; the Senate had OKd it last month.

Lawmakers from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, argued that Mexico’s drastic times demand drastic measures.

Zedillo aides, who said the president will sign the bill by the end of this week, stressed that the organized-crime package must be viewed as part of a total strategy that includes rooting out official corruption, abuse and politics from Mexico’s judicial system.