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| Mexican officials work to head off major prison escape |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 08/25/2004 |
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Mexican officials say they are working to head off a possible attempt by major drug bosses to escape from Mexico's top-security prison. The federal Public Security Department, which staffs federal prisons, announced on Tuesday that it is cooperating with other agencies to avert a possible escape from the La Palma prison in Almoloya de Juarez, a few miles west of Mexico City. That was a turnabout from an Aug. 13 statement by the department's former chief, who denied there was any evidence of such a plan. La Palma's rigid security is a stark exception to the sometimes informal arrangements at other Mexican prisons and it is used to hold Mexico's most famous and notorious inmates. Federal Deputy Attorney General Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos first mentioned the possible escape plot in a meeting with reporters on Aug. 13. He said the targets of the plan were Osiel Cardenas and Benjamin Arrellano Felix, alleged leaders of feared drug cartels based in the Gulf coast state of Tamaulipas and in Tijuana. The Public Security secretary at the time, Alejandro Gertz Manero, denied the report, saying there was no evidence of such a plan. But that same day, Gertz resigned. The new declaration by his former agency may indicate a closer relationship with the attorney general's office. Local news media reported that Gertz had a prickly relationship with the other agency. On Monday, Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha said his agency was following "important lines of investigation" and that officials were working with both the Mexican military and U.S. anti-narcotics officials. "We are investigating guards," he said. "We are not going to permit that public servants continue to be involved in acts of corruption and that they facilitate that type of decay within the prisons." |
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