Mexican Police Foil Drug Cartel Plot to Kill President
August 11, 2009
After a year-long investigation, Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police's counter-narcotics wing, said a suspect had been arrested on and was charged with plotting to kill the president in retaliation for the army's nationwide crackdown on trafficking.
The plot also was intended as retaliation for the seizure of $5m by police during a raid targeting a Sinaloa cartel chief, Mr Pequeno said.
Mr Calderon launched a war on the country's powerful drug cartels in December 2006, dispatching over 36,000 troops and police across the country to disrupt their operations.
Felipe Calderon launched a war on the country's powerful drug cartels in December 2006 Photo: APSince then fighting between rival gangs over drug trafficking routes to the United States and clashes with security forces have claimed nearly 13,000 lives, according to officials and media reports.
Mr Pequeno said the suspect, Dimas Diaz Ramon, had specialised in transporting marijuana stashed in the tires of trucks that carried hot peppers and avocados from the western state of Michoacan to the US border, police said.
During a summit with US President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Mr Calderon said he did not have details on an assassination plot and played down threats from the drug cartels.
"It certainly won't be the first or the last occasion on which we might hear something about an attempt on my life," he said in the western Mexican city of Guadalajara.
"The government can't stop," he added, according to an interpreter's translation of his comments.
"We are destroying their criminal organisations, we're hitting them hard, we're hitting at the heart of their organizations, we're making them back away."