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Mexico detains former top anti-drug prosecutor

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-21 14:30

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican authorities detained a former top anti-drug prosecutor on Thursday as part of an investigation into possible links between senior law enforcements officials and drug cartels.

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The federal Attorney General's Office said in a statement that former Assistant Attorney General for Organized Crime Noe Ramirez was detained a day after he voluntarily spoke to investigators.

Ramirez was named to the post in December 2006 when President Felipe Calderon took office. He submitted his resignation in July at the request of the attorney general and with Calderon's authorization.

Federal officials said at the time that the move was part of a law enforcement shake-up by the Calderon administration.

Several high-ranking Mexican law enforcement officials already have been detained during Operation Clean House, a sweeping probe aimed at weeding out officials who allegedly shared police information with the Beltran Leyva brothers, once associated with the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel.

An official at the Attorney General's Office said earlier Thursday that Mario Velarde, a former close aide to the country's top police official, also was being looked at in the investigation. The official was not authorized to be quoted by name.

Velarde served as Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna's private secretary several years ago, and continued to work in the Public Safety Department in a different job until he was asked to retire this year, according to a spokesperson in Garcia Luna's office who is prohibited by department regulations from being quoted by name.

Velarde has not been charged with a crime, nor has he been detained, prosecutors said.

There was no telephone number listed under Velarde's name in Mexico City and it was not known if he had an attorney.

Mexican law enforcement agencies have been rocked in recent weeks by the detention or house arrest of about a dozen high-level police and prosecution officials on suspicion they leaked information to Mexico's powerful Sinaloa drug cartel.

Those detained in the probe include a Mexican police official who led the local Interpol office.

In another drug-related case, a lawyer for former federal police regional commander Javier Herrera said Thursday that his detention was a reprisal for his complaints about alleged mismanagement on the force.

Herrera was detained Monday for questioning on allegations that he supposedly received money from drug traffickers, but his lawyer, Raquenel Villanueva, said he is innocent and is being punished for publicly alleging earlier this year that Garcia Luna had appointed unqualified police officers.