Mexican federal police have arrested the mayor of the resort city of Cancun on drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime charges, the latest blow to this year’s state and local elections already marred by violence and allegations of drug cartel involvement.
Gregorio Sanchez, who took a leave of absence from the Cancun mayoral post to run for governor of the coastal state of Quintana Roo, was taken into custody on Tuesday at Cancun’s international airport after arriving on a flight from Mexico City.
The federal Attorney General’s Office said Sanchez is suspected of offering information and protection to the Zetas drug gang and the Beltran Leyva cartel.
Officials said they could not immediately recall another case in which a gubernatorial candidate had been arrested on drug charges.
“This takes us all by surprise, it is unprecedented,” Quintana Roo Governor Felix Gonzalez Cantu said.
Ricardo Najera, a spokesman for the federal Attorney General’s Office, said the charges allege that Sanchez played a role in fomenting or aiding drug trafficking, engaging in organized crime and making transactions with illicitly obtained funds.
Meanwhile, Sanchez’s Web site carried an article in which the candidate for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party and two smaller parties said he was being persecuted for political reasons.
The also site quoted Sanchez as saying he had been threatened.
Observers have voiced fears that Mexico’s drug cartels could seek to infiltrate politics and control the Jul. 4 local elections in 10 states by supporting candidates who cooperate with organized crime and killing or intimidating those who don’t.
On May 13, gunmen killed Jose Guajardo Varela, a candidate for mayor of Valle Hermosa, a town in the border state of Tamaulipas which has been ravaged by drug gang violence.
The leader of Guajardo Varela’s conservative National Action Party said the candidate had received threats telling him to quit the race.
In December, the newspaper Reforma published a photograph of Jesus Vizcarra, a candidate for governor of Sinaloa state, attending a party many years ago with a man identified as Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the No. 2 leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
Sanchez, a populist who pledged to bring services to the impoverished majority of residents who live on the outskirts of the resort city, took on the established and entrenched political machine of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Drug cartels have long been active in the state, as well.
Last year, prosecutors arrested Cancun’s police chief, Francisco Velasco, on suspicion of protecting the Zetas drug gang. Velasco already was detained for questioning in the killing of retired general. Mauro Enrique Tello, whose bullet-riddled body was found in a car early last year, shortly after the city government hired him as a security consultant to combat local corruption.
Quintana Roo state, where Cancun is located, has seen its share of officials detained for allegedly aiding drug cartels, including a former governor who was arrested in May 2001 just after he left office and later sentenced to 36 years for money laundering and helping a drug cartel smuggle narcotics.
Former Quintana Roo governor Mario Villanueva was extradited to the US this month to face an drug and money-laundering charges.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not