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Mexican policemen killed despite army surge in border city

Three Mexican police were abducted, killed and dumped on a heavily patrolled road near the US border on New Year's Day despite an influx of troops in the area, the state attorney general's office said on Thursday.

The policemen from the sprawling border city of Tijuana near San Diego, California -- one of them a senior city police officer -- were found wrapped in sheets outside the nearby beach town of Rosarito on a highway with several army checkpoints.

"This looks like a response by organized crime to the military's increased presence here," an official from the Baja California state attorney general's office said.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has been using some 25,000 troops and federal police to battle powerful organized crime gangs and drug cartels since he came to power a year ago.

The government sent hundreds more troops to Tijuana and Rosarito late last month and disarmed Rosarito's police force after a failed attempt to kill the town's police chief raised suspicions it was infiltrated by drug gangs.

The police executions were the first drug-related murders in Baja California, Mexico's most violent state, this year.

Last year, the state counted more than 400 drug-related killings as more than 2,500 people were killed nationwide in spite of the military assault on traffickers.

Meanwhile, a cousin of the president was abducted at gunpoint, beaten and held for several hours, local media reported on Thursday.

Mexican dailies Reforma and Milenio said armed men seized businessman Alfonso Reyes in the western state of Michoacan on Wednesday but dropped him back home four hours later.

It was not clear whether the abduction was related to the president and his battle against organized crime, and Calderon's office could not immediately confirm the incident.

Abductions for extortion are common in Mexico, which has one of the world's highest kidnapping rates. Most common are "express kidnappings," where gangs abduct victims for a few hours and force them to withdraw cash from bank machines.

Mexican news agency Quadratin, which first reported the story, said Calderon's brother had confirmed the abduction. It did not know whether a ransom was paid or any cash extorted.

Reyes, a middle-aged businessman, was seized while driving with his wife in the state capital of Morelia. where he owns a foreign exchange business. Milenio daily said the abduction was related to his work.

"They got him out of his van, handcuffed him, beat him and put him in the kidnappers' vehicle. Later we found out from Felipe Calderon's brother that they had freed his cousin," Quadratin reporter Jonathan Arredondo said.

A spokeswoman for Michoacan's state attorney-general's office said they were not pursuing the case after they called his home and Reyes answered the phone.
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