Posted on 03/18/2006 9:17:07 AM PST by SwinneySwitch
NUEVO LAREDO A spokesman for President Vicente Fox said Friday that federal authorities are working on a theory that Nuevo Laredo city police were involved in the deaths of four federal agents who were machine-gunned in broad daylight.
"Preliminary information shows that they may have been shot by some members of the municipal police force who continue to work with the (Gulf) cartel or with the cartels," spokesman Ruben Aguilar said during his daily meeting with reporters in Mexico City.
Aguilar said the four agents were all members of the federal preventive police (PFP, by its Spanish initials) who had just arrived in the city Tuesday to help reinforce anti-crime efforts in Nuevo Laredo, where nearly 50 people have died violently since the first of the year.
The four had already gathered vital information, Aguilar said, when they were attacked by gunmen in a passing car as the agents were in their unmarked vehicle cruising down Avenida Guerrero near downtown Thursday.
"These four members of the PFP had detected a safe house of the Osiel Cárdenas group," Aguilar said.
Cárdenas heads the Gulf cartel, which is fighting a war with the Sinaloa cartel for control of drug trafficking across the Texas-Mexico border. He was arrested in 2003, but its widely believed that Cárdenas continues to direct his followers from prison.
The governments response to Thursdays bloody attack in Nuevo Laredo has been immediate, Aguilar added.
"The federal preventive police has sent new reinforcements," he said, in answer to a reporters question. "A new company (of agents) arrived Thursday to continue fighting organized crime.
"We will not move backward in our head-on battle against organized crime," he said. "They are not going to threaten the government of the republic, and the nation will emerge victorious in this battle."
No arrests had been made as of Friday night.
City officials had no comment on Aguilars statements Friday, referring all questions to Elizabeth Hernández Arredondo, the local representative of the state attorney generals office.
For her part, she said the case will be handed over to federal authorities to ensure continuity in the investigation.
"Federal authorities are the ones who take charge (in these cases)," she said.
Hernández Arredondo said that Víctor Almanza Hernández, the state police investigator who was first on the case of the four slain agents, has formally declared his inability to continue with the case because the deceased are federal agents.
That formal move starts the process for switching the case to federal hands.
Also Friday, authorities identified the fourth officer who was killed as Miguel Vázquez Cabrera, 33. Cabrera, whose hometown was not listed, was driving the Ford Focus when he and his colleagues were assaulted at about 2:30 p.m. on Avenida Guerrero.
The other victims were Enrique Morán Delgado, 45, of Torreón, Coahuila; Guillermo Rodríguez, 35, of Azcapotzalco, in the state of México; and Luis Antonio Palacios Tepox, who was between 30 and 35 and whose hometown was not listed.
Late Thursday night, after autopsies had been conducted, the bodies were taken to the airport under heavy guard. There, under full honors, the caskets were lifted onto a plane to be taken to Mexico City.
On Friday afternoon, the bodies of the victims were returned to their families for funeral services.
Operation Northern Border Ping!
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off this South Texas/Mexico ping list.
Where the heck is FEMA?
Cartel payoffs vs skimpy monthly paychecks. Guess which is the most?
The federales and the local policia are fighting?
That's like the garbage fighting the sewage.
Both are filthily corrupt and dangerous to
both American and Mexican citizens.
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