Friends of Brad Will

Mexico Arrests Ex-Chief of Antidrug Agency

(Malkin repeats the Mexican government suggestion that the human rights abuses, violence, and corruption are all worth it because of their ’success’ in increasing drug seizures and arresting some top traffickers. But the ostensible goal is to lower drug exports to the U.S. and reduce the power of the cartels. Neither of these goals are addressed in the article.

When will the United States Government admit its ‘war on drugs’ approach (Bush’s Merida Initiative aka Plan Mexico) is strengthening by arming and training a brutal and unaccountable, corrupt right-wing government which abuses its own peoples’ labor, indigenous, and basic human rights? And not achieving its ostensible goals of reducing narcotics trafficking into the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/world/americas/22mexico.html?ref=americas

Mexico Arrests Ex-Chief of Antidrug Agency
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: November 21, 2008

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s former senior antidrug official has been arrested and accused of accepting bribes from a drug cartel, the authorities said Friday.

Eduardo Medina-Mora, Mexico’s attorney general, at a news conference on Friday where he announced a major drug arrest.

Noé Ramírez Mandujano, who as the chief of Mexico’s organized crime unit was the closest equivalent to the government’s drug czar, was arrested late Thursday after questioning, said Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora.

Mr. Ramírez is the highest-ranking official to come under suspicion in a purge of the police and prosecutors for possible ties to drug traffickers. While he led the unit, known by its Spanish initials as the Siedo, Mr. Ramírez met twice with a member of a loose federation known as the Pacific Cartel and took a payoff of $450,000, Mr. Medina-Mora said.

In return, Mr. Ramírez passed along information about investigations and actions against the cartel, Mr. Medina-Mora said. The witness who accused Mr. Ramírez of taking the bribe told investigators that more money had also been promised to him.

Mr. Ramírez led Mexico’s organized crime unit for less than two years before resigning in July. He was then appointed to Mexico’s delegation to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna.

The accusations against Mr. Ramírez unfolded as part of a month-old investigation that has uncovered corruption among the senior ranks of the antidrug forces. Officials say the Beltrán Leyva drug-trafficking organization, part of the Pacific Cartel, has bought protection with payoffs to top officials.

In an interview last year, Mr. Ramírez, a former police official, described how drug-trafficking organizations were able to buy off local police forces to obtain the intelligence they needed to operate.

So far, six other high-ranking officials have been charged in the investigation, said Mr. Medina-Mora, who was Mr. Ramírez’s boss. The current and former directors of Interpol’s Mexico office have also been arrested.

The United States has been preparing to release about $400 million in aid for Mexico’s drug war, to be spent on training and on helicopters and other equipment.

President Felipe Calderón has won praise from the United States for beginning a crackdown on drug trafficking shortly after he took office two years ago. He has sent 30,000 soldiers to regions where cartel violence had increased.

Although the government claims success in the growing number of drug seizures and the arrest of several top traffickers, the cartel’s response to the crackdown has increased the violence.