Mexico defends crackdown

2010-02-25 15:01

Mexico City – Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Wednesday defended his military crackdown on the country's powerful drug gangs and denied accusations that some criminals were being spared.

Critics have accused Calderon, who deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to take on drug gangs after he took office in late 2006, of protecting the Sinaloa gang, based on the Pacific coast, run by the country's most notorious fugitive Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman.

"That false, bad faith accusation, which is made to do I don't know what to the government, doesn't stand up," Calderon told a news conference.

"We have equally hit cartels linked to the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mexican Pacific," the Mexican leader said, referring to umbrella groups of drug gangs on both coasts.

Arresting fewer leaders

Analysts, opposition politicians and other drug gangs have accused Calderon of arresting fewer leaders of the Sinaloa gang than their rivals.

Guzman has been on the run since escaping from jail in 2001 and last year made Forbes' magazines list of the world's richest people.

Calderon pointed to the recent arrest of the brutal drug trafficker Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental, who was linked to the Sinaloa cartel, and the extradition to the United States a week ago of Vicente Zambada, son of one of the leaders of the same cartel.

But the recent victories followed big hits on the Beltran Leyva gang – former allies-turned-enemies of Guzman – including the killing of its leader, Arturo Beltran Leyva, last December.

Despite the government crackdown, more than 15 000 people have died across the country in a wave of drug-related violence in the past three years.

- SAPA