Mexican Army Unit to Be Disbanded Amid Drug Probe

MEXICO CITY -- The Mexican army will probably disband an anti-drug battalion of soldiers in Sinaloa state for suspected involvement in drug trafficking, a setback for officials who favor using the military to fight the illegal trade.

The unit of 600 soldiers was confined to quarters in Guamuchil in northern Sinaloa this month and searched after the National Defense Ministry received tips that the unit’s involvement in the anti-drug fight had been compromised.

National Defense Secretary Gen. Ricardo Vega Garcia acknowledged on television this week that members of the unit are being investigated on suspicion of drug smuggling and possession. Of the 48 soldiers directly implicated, 40 tested positive for drug use and an unspecified number were found in possession of “sums of money they couldn’t justify,” he said.

“The upshot has to be that this unit will be dismantled so as to [form] something entirely new,” Vega Garcia said. “You can’t consider [maintaining] a unit of this type, as contaminated as it is.”

Action against the unit came to light last weekend after relatives complained to human rights officials that they were not allowed on the base to talk to soldiers. No specific trafficking allegations against the suspects have yet been leveled by Mexican authorities.

But the incident has reopened the debate on whether the army should be involved in anti-drug activities. President Vicente Fox’s administration has credited the army with capturing top drug traffickers, including Tijuana cartel leader Benjamin Arellano Felix in Puebla in March.

Opponents of the army’s expanded role say troops have committed numerous human rights offenses in pursuit of traffickers. The Washington-based Latin American Working Group, a rights organization, said in a report last week that “basic rights of citizens are being pushed aside” in the anti-drug fight.

Torture, arrests without warrants and even “extrajudicial executions of civilians” have resulted from army operations, the report charged.

Recently retired Gen. Alvaro Vallarta Cecena, now a federal deputy representing the state of Nayarit, said in an interview Wednesday that military leaders dislike using troops to fight drugs, but there is no choice.

“There is no organization to replace the 25,000 troops dedicated to drug eradication efforts, not the police forces whose integrity has been compromised, not the federal investigators whom even the Mexican attorney general has described as still undergoing a process of ‘purification,’ ” Vallarta said.

“The army has to take the risks [of corruption], like when a doctor does who attends a sick person. He runs the risk of contracting the contagious disease,” he added.

In the interview broadcast on Televisa network, Vega Garcia denied media reports that the entire battalion had been detained at its base, saying the concentration of troops and the inspection that followed were normal army procedure. But human rights groups said that 600 army personnel were held for as long as 10 days at their bases and kept incommunicado.

Jaime Cinco Soto, president of the Sinaloa state human rights commission in Culiacan, said several army wives called his office last week to complain about their husbands’ detention but have since shied away from going public for fear of reprisal by the army.

Although most battalion members have been released, some have been sent to army bases in Mazatlan or Mexico City for further questioning, according to news reports.