The government has assigned bodyguards to at least seven federal judges and magistrates after death threats were made against them in recent weeks, an official who oversees the federal judiciary said Wednesday.
Some analysts said the announcement, which comes after high-profile killings of police officers and prison workers, shows that Mexican drug gangs are launching an all-out assault on the government and civil servants, as they did in Colombia.
Elvia Diaz de Leon, head of the Federal Judicial Council, said the judges under threat are overseeing cases involving drug gangs.
“Today we have seven or eight cases of threats against circuit judges and tribunal magistrates who have responsibility for organized-crime cases,” Diaz told reporters.
Officers from the Federal Agency of Investigation, Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI, are providing protection for the threatened judges, Diaz said.
While drug gangs have killed dozens of judges in Colombia, similar attacks have been relatively rare in Mexico, with only a few scattered cases in the last decade.
In January, assassins kidnapped and killed six workers at a federal prison in the border city of Matamoros. In June, gunmen shot dead the police chief of Nuevo Laredo, just six hours after he had taken office.
Source: chron.com
In Mexico, two guards drown in pond at Mexican president's ranch
Two members of Mexico's presidential guard drowned in a pond at President Vicente Fox's ranch, the government said Friday.
The two guards, who were not identified, were swimming together Monday when one of them developed a leg cramp and the other tried to save him, the president's office said in a news release. No other details of the accident were released.
The two guards formed part of the security detail at the president's San Cristobal ranch, located in the central state of Guanajuato.
More: signonsandiego.com
7 killed in new wave of violence in Mexico
Seven people were killed and 19 others arrested in a new wave of violence affecting several regions of Mexico over the past 24 hours, police said Sunday.
Among the victims were three guards of a prison near the city of Monterrey in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon, police said.
The guards were thought to be killed in a revenge by drug-traffickers operating on the Mexican-US border.
So far this year, a total of 25 people have been killed in
In Mexico, a Class War Looms
The seven-judge panel known as the TRIFE, charged with deciding the legitimacy of Mexicos murky July 2 election and confirming the new president, is the nations court of last resort. What the judges decree is literally the last word, the end of the line; there is no appeal.
On September 5, the last day the Constitution mandated the TRIFE to rule on the most hotly contested balloting in Mexicos checkered electoral history, the judges pronounced their verdict: Outgoing President Vicente Foxs unconstitutional intervention in the electoral process on behalf of his handpicked successor, Felipe
Mexico Update No Survivors In Mexican Police Copter Crash
"They All Died In The Line Of Duty"
The Mexican government helicopter previously reported missing by Aero-News has been found. It crashed west of Mexico City, striking a piney mountainside at 11,200 feet in what appears to have been controlled flight. There was a postcrash fire.
All nine aboard the aircraft died, including Public Safety Secretary Ramon Martin Huerta, Federal Preventive Police Commissioner Tomas Valencia, other officials, and the two-man flight crew.
The helicopter was not an Mi-17 as Aero-News speculated, it was a Bell 412.
The aircraft was taking the VIPs to La Palma maximum-security
Calderon leads Mexico presidential race
Mexicos ruling party candidate held onto his narrow lead in the disputed presidential election after a partial recount of votes, the top electoral court said Monday in a strong indication that conservative Felipe Calderon will be declared the winner.
But the judges held off on naming the president-elect and still have the option to annul the election.
Calderons leftist challenger Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador reacted to the courts announcement in outrage, calling on supporters never to accept Calderon as president and asking them to decide if he should form a parallel government or carry on a nationwide campaign
Bush vows to make U.S.-Mexico border more secure
President Bush rekindled a debate Monday in his own party, proposing a crackdown on illegal aliens at the Mexican border while allowing some undocumented immigrants to work in the United States.
"We are going to protect the border," Bush vowed in a speech at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Ariz.
In his latest effort to shore up his conservative base, Bush insisted a crackdown would also prevent terrorists from entering the country. He wants 1,000 more border patrol guards, as well as cameras and listening devices, along the border.
But much to the displeasure
Mexico battles to rid Cancun of hurricane scars
All along Cancun's famed hotel strip, laborers are working flat out to patch up the wounds inflicted by Hurricane Wilma, replacing smashed windows, planting new palm trees and rebuilding torn up sidewalks.
Package tourists -- whose absence is costing Mexico's biggest resort town several million dollars a day - should be back in this Caribbean paradise starting in mid-December and local officials insist they will barely notice the difference.
Yet sneak between the cordoned-off luxury hotels, and past surly security guards barring access to the sea, and the picture is more alarming.
Along large sections
Gay kiss in pool causes stir in Mexico
A gay kiss in a swimming pool, which two men say got them thrown out of a luxury hotel, has caused a stir in traditionally macho Mexico, where open displays of homosexuality are frowned upon.
Gerardo Eliud and his partner, Samir Habdu, told police in Los Cabos, a plush beach resort city popular with U.S. tourists, that security guards beat them up and threw them into the street with their luggage after spotting them kissing in the hotel pool in December.
But when leftist deputies demanded an investigation into the incident in Congress this
Protesters Barricade Banks in Mexico
Protesters blocked access to foreign banks in Mexico on Wednesday to protest what they said was election fraud while judges and troops oversaw a partial recount that could decide Julys presidential vote.
Supporters of Andrés Manuel López Obrador surrounded the main offices in Mexico City of U.S.-based Citigroups Mexican unit Banamex, the Bancomer bank owned by Spains BBVA and British giant HSBC. They closed them for several hours.
López Obrador, a fiery anti-poverty campaigner, narrowly lost the July 2 presidential vote to conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderón.
He says many votes for him went untallied while others were
Mexico: Lopez Obrador Will Not Accept Election Ruling Favoring Calderón
Mexicos top electoral court has thrown out allegations of massive fraud in last months presidential election, handing almost certain victory to conservative Felipe Calderón.
Leftist challenger Andrés Manuel López Obrador says the judges unanimous rejection of his complaints is offensive and unacceptable for millions of Mexicans. He vowed not to recognize a government led by Calderón and the ruling National Action Party.
The seven-judge Federal Electoral Tribunal reported it examined 375 challenges to the July 2 election, and discarded about one-half of one percent of the 41 million ballots, due to irregularities. The
