100 POLICE OFFICERS HELD IN MEXICO

Military, AG Target Drug Corruption In Border State

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican soldiers detained more than 100 police
officers Monday in the Texas border state of Nuevo Leon, and
authorities said the officers would be held in custody and
investigated for allegedly helping drug traffickers.

The joint operation between the army and state attorney general's
office targeted allegedly corrupt police in a dozen towns, and also
in the state security ministry and the state police, authorities said
in a statement.

The officers were identified as a result of recent information
obtained in the town of Marin, and more arrests in additional towns
could be in the offing as a result of the ongoing investigation, the
statement said.

Detained officers would be replaced by state police and those from
other towns, authorities said.

So far this year, 32 people have been killed in Nuevo Leon as a
result of a turf war between the Gulf cartel, based along the
Mexico-Texas border, and the Sinaloa cartel, based in the northern
state of Sinaloa. Fourteen of those killed have been police officers,
according to a count by the Mexico City newspaper El Universal.

Pictures posted on the Internet by Mexican media organizations on
Monday showed army convoys escorting buses full of officers, and the
Mexico City newspaper Reforma said the suspects were being held at
the state police training school.

Since taking office Dec. 1, President Felipe Calderon has used the
military on three other occasions to help civilian authorities detain
police officers.

In Tijuana, the entire police force was disarmed and their weapons
checked to see if they had been used in a series of cartel killings there.

Army soldiers also have intervened in the police forces of
Villahermosa, Tabasco and Oaxaca City. In Oaxaca, police were
investigated for a series of political killings related to street
protests, and in Tabasco their weapons were checked against bullets
found at crime scenes.

Monday was a bloody day even in cartel-ravaged Mexico, with 21
drug-related killings reported, including the discovery of five
bodies inside a truck in the resort city of Cancun. The five were
apparently shot execution-style and their heads covered in tape.