Mexico's Military Tied To Traffickers
Secret documents cited in magazine

Reuters
Mexico City

Top Mexican military leaders may have accepted gifts in return for
protecting the nation's most powerful drug lords, a magazine reported
yesterday.

The Proceso weekly magazine quoted top secret documents from a
sixyearlong investigation within Mexico's Defense Ministry that allegedly
showed close ties between highranking officers and some of the nation's
most notorious drug lords.

Mexico's military has been rid died with scandal since the chief of the now
defunct National Institute for Combatting Drugs (INCD) Jesus Gutierrez
Rebollo, was jailed in February amid charges of taking bribes from the
country's top drug kingpin.

The scandal reared up again Saturday with the armed attack on a key
informant who was instrumental in leading to the arrest of Gutierrez.
Ricardo Cesareo Vazquez was shot at as he left his house, but the federal
attorney general's office said he was not badly injured.

Proceso cited evidence that it said linked two generals, two colonels and
three lieutenantcolonels with protecting and accepting gifts from drug
lords Ernesto Fonseca Carillo, known as "Don Neto", and Rafael Caro
Quintero. Both men are now in jail on drugtrafficking and related charges.

Proceso said the allegations came to light after the arrest of two military
officials, who stole the confidential investigation documents from the
office of Defense Minister Enrique Cervantes Aguirre.

The documents were part of an investigation that was begun in 1991 and
ended in March of this year, Proceso said. The magazine did not report the
result of the investigation or how it obtained the documents.

The reports also cite an offer from former top drug lord Amado Carillo to
stop selling drugs in Mexico in return for protection for himself and his
family. Proceso said Carillo did not offer to turn himself in and said he
would keep selling drugs outside of Mexico.

Carillo died after undergoing liposuction and plastic surgery last month.
Authorities say he was killed by an overdose of a sleeping drug.