Authorities arrested Guatemala’s anti-drug czar and national police chief on Tuesday in a case involving stolen cocaine and slain police, acting just two days before US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives to discuss the drug war.
The detentions were the latest embarrassment for Guatemala’s embattled anti-narcotics effort and came amid US complaints that corruption is impeding the battle to stop the flow of drugs north through Central America.
Attorney General Amilcar Velasquez said police chief Baltazar Gonzalez, anti-drug czar Nelly Bonilla and police officer Fernando Carrillo were detained after an investigation by Guatemalan authorities and the UN-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity.
None of the three men had been charged and their lawyers could not be immediately reached for comment.
The commission’s head, Carlos Castresana, said the three arrested on Tuesday, five other agents detained in January and five more officers killed in a gunbattle with drug traffickers last year were part of a criminal network that stole drugs from organized crime.
Members of the group had stolen 700kg of cocaine from a trafficker’s warehouse in the town of Amatitlan and returned for 350kg more and an arsenal of weapons when they were ambushed by gangsters, Castresana said. Five officers died in the April firefight that resulted in police seizing automatic weapons and about 500 rocket-launched grenades.
“We can’t say whether it was the first or last time they had stolen drugs,” Castresana said.
He said authorities became suspicious of the slain officers after learning anti-narcotics agents had blocked federal prosecutors from reaching the crime scene and noticing the national police didn’t open an investigation into the officers’ deaths.
At the time of the gunbattle, police said it involved members of the Zetas, a group of hit men and drug traffickers linked to Mexico’s powerful Gulf cartel. The Zetas have extended their operations into Guatemala in recent years after coming under pressure from Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s drug war.
Clinton is scheduled to discuss Guatemala’s drug war when she meets with Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom tomorrow, winding up her tour through Latin America this week.
Officials say Guatemala has become a transshipment point for cocaine heading north from Colombia, with Mexico’s powerful drug cartels deepening their reach into the impoverished Central American country.
Guatemala has witnessed the arrests of a string of top law enforcement officials responsible with overseeing the fight against both local gangs and foreign cartels.
Bonilla is the second drug czar to be detained and Gonzalez, who previously served as drug czar, is the second national police chief to be jailed for alleged drug ties in recent years.
In September, National Police Chief Porfirio Perez was suspended and later detained for allegedly stealing US$300,000 from smugglers.
He is awaiting trial.
In one of the biggest cases involving police officials helping cartels, former anti-drug czar Adan Castillo was caught on tape accepting US$25,000 from an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to protect a US-bound cocaine shipment. Castillo and his assistant were arrested in 2005 in Virginia after being invited by the DEA to attend an anti-narcotics training session. He remains jailed in the US.
“Where legitimate institutions are weak and fragile then you’re going to have criminal institutions moving into that vacuum and that’s what’s happening there,” said George Grayson, a professor at the College of William and Mary in Virginia who has written about Mexico’s drug cartels.
On Sunday, Colom fired Interior Minister Raul Velasquez, who had signed a US$6.2 million contract with a private company to buy fuel for the country’s national police. Authorities say the company embezzled the money. Velazquez was not charged.
In a corruption case reaching the highest levels of government in Guatemala, former president Alfonso Portillo was arrested in February after being indicted in a US court on money laundering charges. He already was on trial on corruption charges brought by Guatemalan prosecutors.
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