Allegations Link Mexican Officials to Cartel

Corrupt Mexican police, military and immigration officers have helped the notorious Tijuana narcotics cartel ship and unload drugs, assassinate fellow law enforcement officers and avoid capture, new documents say.

Most chilling of all, witnesses who dare to testify against the cartel’s notorious hit men have been betrayed by police, according to statements given to U.S. and Mexican prosecutors.

The allegations, made by two confessed henchmen of the cartel, were filed in U.S. courts. They are part of an effort to extradite to Mexico two alleged cartel gunmen, jailed in San Diego, to face charges. A hearing is set March 24.

The web of official complicity portrayed in the documents is viewed by many U.S. law enforcement authorities as the latest confirmation of official drug-related corruption--particularly among Mexico’s federal police.

Mexican authorities, who have fired hundreds of allegedly corrupt federal police this year, had no immediate comment on the allegations.

A ranking U.S. prosecutor who has reviewed the extradition file said the corruption allegations came as no surprise. The extradition proceedings are seen as a positive signal that Mexico is trying to confront the narcotics threat, he said.

“Open acknowledgment of the unreliability of much of Mexican law enforcement is a necessary step on the long road to build a system worthy of trust,” the prosecutor said. “It will not be easy and it will not be accomplished overnight, but the effort is noteworthy.

“These affidavits are part and parcel of a new candor on the part of Mexican authorities,” he said. “This is a very encouraging sign, and is in keeping with declarations by Mexican leaders that they recognize narcotics traffic as a clear threat to Mexican national security.”

One of the statements, made in Mexico, is an alleged confession by Gerardo Cruz Pacheco, a Mexican lieutenant who served in the presidential guard during the presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and later in the military police. In it, he details his role transporting weapons for the September assassination of the Baja California federal police commander, an enemy of the Tijuana cartel.

Another statement alleged that Cruz Pacheco helped a cartel leader obtain a military identification card to ease the transportation of cocaine arriving from South America to Baja by boat.

It also describes how two army privates helped unload Colombian cocaine shipments at remote airstrips in Oaxaca state, and named a military captain who allegedly hid the assassins’ assault rifles.

To analysts of Mexico’s drug war, such accounts call into question President Ernesto Zedillo’s policy of appointing military officers to the front lines of the anti-drug effort.

“I don’t see any reason to assume the military should be immune to this kind of corruption and economic pressure,” said Peter Smith, a UC San Diego expert on narcotics in Mexico. “There have been specific cases in the past of high-ranking Mexican military officers who were thought to be involved in drug trafficking in one way or another. The pressures and temptations are likely to be even stronger at the lower ranks.”

It was Mexican police and other authorities, primarily in Baja California, who were singled out as allies of the alleged leaders of the cartel, the Arellano Felix brothers.

One of the confessed henchman, who was shot by cartel gunmen in October in Tijuana, described how federal police friendly with a reputed cartel lieutenant cleared the way for the shipment of drugs on the highway from Ensenada to Tijuana. He described how a federal police commander helped ship 40 kilograms of cocaine from Mexico City to Tijuana in 1985.

He said state police officers provided escorts for cartel gunmen--even during assassination missions. A Tijuana state judicial homicide agent ensured that investigations of the cartel killings went nowhere--most are unsolved--and told cartel hit men when witnesses implicated them in crimes, he said.

U.S. officials said many of the allegations have been corroborated by other sources since the case began. One former state judicial policeman told U.S. Justice Department officials that he feared his life would be in danger if he did not agree to periodic requests to join the escort for the traffickers.

The alleged role of police as a shield for the cartel became the subject of one of Baja’s biggest law enforcement scandals in March 1994, when state judicial police attacked a squad of federal agents who were trying to arrest a drug lord, then whisked the fugitive away.

Former Mexican attorney general Antonio Lozano addressed the issue of police corruption in August when he fired more than 700 reputedly crooked federal police.

In an interview two days before his slaying in September, Baja federal police Cmdr. Ernesto Ibarra Santes told The Times that the 60 Baja federal police fired in the shake-up--half of the force--were “ not just friends of the traffickers, they were their servants.”

In his statement, the alleged henchman said some of the cashiered federal police used their credentials to assist in the assassination of Ibarra. He said he believed lawyers in the Tijuana federal attorney general’s office--who he said were friends of alleged drug lord Benjamin Arellano--told the killers when Ibarra was arriving in Mexico City.

U.S. law enforcement officers said they always believed that the Ibarra killing was partly an inside job.

“I’m not surprised. The federal police is involved in drug trafficking nationwide. We’ve known that all along,” said a U.S. law enforcement officer who gathers anti-drug intelligence in Mexico. “We know there are people in the government assisting the drug empires. How else can you have a multibillion-dollar industry?”

Baja authorities were silent on the allegations.

Jesus Velasco, the spokesman for the federal attorney general’s office in Tijuana, which oversees the Baja federal police, declined to comment. Antonio Miranda Torres, state judicial police commander in Tijuana, and Teodoro Gonzalez Luna, spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, said they could not comment until they read the documents. A Mexico City spokesmen for the army and federal attorney general’s office also had no comment.

“It’s hard for people to picture the amount of money and power involved,” said a U.S. intelligence officer. “A lot of people want a piece of this.”