Mexico identifies 12 slain as federal agents

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-15 14:31

Leonel Godoy met in Mexico City with federal Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora, and told reporters afterward that "any person from Michoacan who is responsible for a crime has to face the consequences and if they are innocent they also should get a fair process."

A former Green Party congressional candidate from Michoacan state has also been accused of collaboration with La Familia, Rubido said.

Since Calderon took office in December 2006, he has sent more than 45,000 troops to drug hot spots. More than 11,000 people have been killed in drug violence.

Michoacan, located on Mexico's western coast, has been wracked by a wave of killings and arrests in recent weeks. Federal forces there are fighting La Familia, which is locked in a battle with the Zetas drug hit men, who form a branch of the Gulf cartel. On Tuesday, three bodies were found in the town of Nuevo Urecho.

Near the northern city of Monterrey, six gunmen were killed in a shootout Tuesday with federal police, three of whom were wounded. Police seized guns, ammunition and two vehicles after the shootout, the Public Safety Department said in a statement.

And in the northern state of Chihuahua, gunmen killed the mayor of the town of Namiquipa, on Tuesday, officials said. On Monday in neighboring Coahuila state, four police officers in the border city of Piedras Negras were kidnapped hours after the police chief was pulled from his patrol car, Piedras Negras' Public Safety Director Jose Castillo said.

Officials said the kidnappings could be related to efforts to curb corruption by militarizing the police force in Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas. The city is one of many in Mexico that have turned to the armed forces for help controlling cross-border drug trafficking.

Castillo's predecessor, army Col. Arturo Navarro, was shot and killed in April - less than three weeks after he took over the local force with the aim of purging alleged corruption.

On Monday and Tuesday, soldiers detained 19 police officers from the wealthy Monterrey suburb of San Pedro who are suspected of links with organized crime, authorities said.

The detentions follow the June 26 capture of a Beltran Leyva cartel operative in San Pedro who police said was carrying a list with the names of San Pedro police officers.

In the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, prosecutors announced homicide charges Tuesday against five alleged Gulf cartel hit men for allegedly killing two policemen and 18 of their relatives in massacres carried out in February and May.

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