MEXICAN COURT REVERSES FIRINGS

Hundreds of law agents dismissed for drug use, corruption

Mexico City

Mexican courts have ordered the attorney general's office to rehire more
than half of the 826 agents it dismissed six months ago because they failed
drug tests or allegedly were involved in corruption.

In a strongly worded statement Tuesday night, Attorney General Jorge Madrazo
criticized the rulings, declaring that his office "does not agree with these
judicial decisions" and will appeal them.

The struggle between the court system and Madrazo's office is part of a long
and often futile effort by Mexican authorities to clean up notoriously
corrupt police and prosecutorial agencies, many of whose employees are on
the payrolls of drug lords and criminal organizations.

In the past two years, federal and state law enforcement agencies across
Mexico have fired thousands of attorneys and police officers only to have
judges order that they be rehired. In other cases, individuals dismissed on
corruption charges by one law enforcement agency have been hired by another.

Judges argue that the attorney general's office and other agencies
frequently do not build solid cases for dismissal of their employees.

But Madrazo's office said it found the latest round of reinstatements
particularly egregious because most of the 826 agents who were fired in
December -had not passed newly required drug tests.

Results snowed that abuut half of those dismissed tested positive for
cocaine use, while others were shown to have used marijuana, amphetamines or
other drugs.

Madrazo's statement said that the judges who ruled the firings illegal did
not consider the drug test results.

Last year, in the aftermath of a series of corruption scandals - including
the prosecution of Mexico's former anti-drug czar on charges that he
protected one of the country s most powerful drug cartels - Madrazo's office
decided to revamp its drug-fighting agency and require testing of all the
agents it employs.

Those efforts have had mixed results. Shortly after the new tests were
imposed, newly approved agents - some under the supervision of the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency - were among 18 law enforcement officials charged with
stealing a half-ton of confiscated cocaine from a federal prosecutor's
office in the border town of San Luis Rio Colorado.

That caw prompted the U S General Accounting Office to report earlier this
year in its assessment of Mexico's anti-drug efforts that "corruption
continues despite measures designed to root it out."

In recent months, Madrazo's office has investigated the former chief of
Mexico's federal police force on charges of protecting drug traffickers
while in office and has filed kidnapping charges against a former official
in Madrazo's anti-kidnapping squad.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett