|
| FILE - In this Aug. 24, 2012. file photo, an armored U.S. embassy vehicle is checked by military personal after it was attacked by unknown assailants on the highway leading to the city of Cuernavaca, near Tres Marias, Mexico. A senior U.S. official says there is strong circumstantial evidence that Mexican federal police who fired on a U.S. embassy vehicle, wounding two CIA agents, were working for organized crime on a targeted assassination attempt. |
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- A senior U.S. official says there is strong circumstantial evidence that Mexican federal police who fired on a U.S. Embassy vehicle, wounding two CIA officers, were working for organized crime in a targeted assassination attempt.
Meanwhile, a
Mexican official with knowledge of the case confirmed on Tuesday that
prosecutors are investigating whether the Beltran Leyva Cartel was
behind the Aug. 24 ambush.
The Mexican
official said that is among several lines of investigation into the
shooting of an armored SUV that was clearly marked with diplomatic
license plates on a rural road near Cuernavaca south of Mexico City.
Federal police, at times battered by allegations of infiltration and
corruption by drug cartels, have said the shooting was a case of
mistaken identity as officers were looking into the kidnapping of a
government employee in that area.
"That's not a
`We're trying to shake down a couple people for a traffic violation
sort of operation. That's a `We are specifically trying to kill the
people in this vehicle'," a U.S. official familiar with the
investigation told
The Associated Press. "This is not a `Whoops, we got
the wrong people.' "
Photos of the gray Toyota
SUV, a model known to be used by Drug Enforcement Administration agents
and other U.S. Embassy employees working in Mexico, showed it riddled
with heavy gunfire. The U.S. Embassy called the attack an "ambush."
When
asked by the AP if the Mexican federal police officers involved in the
shooting were tied to organized crime, the U.S. official said, "The
circumstantial evidence is pretty damn strong."
Both the U.S. and Mexican officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the diplomatic issue.
A
federal police on Tuesday maintained the position that their agents
fired on the vehicle by mistake, thinking it belonged to a band of
kidnappers they were pursuing, according to a spokesman who was not
authorized to speak on the record.
The U.S. State Department declined to discuss details.
"We
will not comment on an ongoing investigation," said William Ostick, a
spokesman. "This is a matter of great significance to both our countries
and we will continue to cooperate with Mexican authorities in their
investigation."
The Mexican official said one
line of investigation is that members of the Beltran Leyva Cartel were
interested in attacking the people in the car because some of their
lookouts had seen them passing through the area and presumed they were
investigating the cartel. It's possible they didn't know they were
Americans.
The rural road near Cuernavaca
where the attack took place is known territory of the remnants of the
Beltran Leyvas, a once-powerful cartel now run by Hector Beltran Leyva
since the Navy killed his brother, drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva, in
Cuernavaca in late 2009. Beltran Leyva was once aligned with Mexico's
powerful cartel, Sinaloa, headed by fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El
Chapo" Guzman. But the groups split in 2008 and continued government
hits on Beltran Leyva leadership since then have splintered that cartel
into small gangs warring for the area.
The CIA
officers were heading down a dirt road to the military installation
with a Mexican navy captain in the vehicle when a carload of gunmen
opened fire and gave chase. The embassy SUV tried to escape, but three
other cars joined the original vehicle in pursuing it down the road,
according to the original navy statement. Occupants of all four vehicles
fired.
"This is somebody with a powerful
automatic weapon just unloading an entire clip, reloading, and
continuing to fire at that same impact point, clearly with the intention
of penetrating the armor and presumably killing those who are inside,"
the U.S. official told the AP.
Surveillance
cameras in the area recorded two civilian vehicles chasing the U.S.
Embassy SUV, the Mexican official said. So far Mexican officials have
said only federal police fired on the SUV.
The
two CIA officers received non-life-threatening wounds and have returned
to the United States. The navy captain was uninjured and radioed the
navy for help.
Twelve officers have been
detained in the case and are being held under a form of house arrest
pending possible charges, and 51 officers have testified in the case.
The FBI, which is leading the investigation for the U.S., has been in on
interviews of the detainees. At FBI headquarters in Washington,
spokesman Paul Bresson declined to comment.
A
Mexican federal police spokesman said last month that the officers may
not have noticed the diplomatic plates. The official said police focused
on the unusual sight of a bulletproof sport utility vehicle traveling
at high speed on a rural road, not on the car's distinctive diplomatic
plates.
But Raul Benitez, a security expert at
Mexico's National Autonomous University, said Mexican military sources
have told him that "the attack was not an error," and "the objective was
to annihilate the three passengers in the car."
"The
same car with the same people had been going up and back (to the marine
training camp) for a week, so perhaps some lookout who worked for drug
traffickers informed the police, or the Beltrans" about the vehicle,
Benitez said.
He said the federal police must have known that they were attacking a diplomatic vehicle.
"I
don't think we're yet in a position to say definitively who did it, who
paid them and why they did it," the U.S. official said. "We have been
assured repeatedly in private and in public that the government of
Mexico will investigate this to the end and provide a final answer as to
what occurred, and I think our posture at this stage is we take them at
their word."
Mexico's federal police agency,
which President Felipe Calderon calls the most professional and highly
trained of the country's law enforcement, has been hit with allegations
of wrongdoing in recent months. In August, all 348 officers assigned to
security details at the Mexico City International Airport were replaced
in the wake of a June shooting of three federal policemen, who were
killed by a fellow officer believed to be involved in trafficking drugs
through the terminal.
Ten federal police
officers were arrested in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez in
2011, accused of running an extortion ring.
Attacks
on diplomatic personnel in Mexico were once considered rare, but the
CIA attack was the third shooting incident in two years.
In
2011, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was killed and
another wounded in a drug gang shooting in northern Mexico.
A drug-gang shooting in 2010 in the border city of Ciudad Juarez killed a U.S. consulate employee, her husband and another man.
That
could be the result of the break-up of larger cartels, said Andrew
Selee of the Washington-based Mexico Institute, noting that historically
drug traffickers didn't want the attention that a hit on U.S. personnel
normally brings.
"The lower level leaders in
the cartels are making decisions the more seasoned leaders wouldn't," he
said. "It's the lower level leaders who feel empowered to order hits."
