Mexico security minister killed in helicopter crash

By Eduardo Quiros

HUIXQUILUCAN, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexico’s public security
minister, a key figure in the war against drug cartels, was
killed along with eight others on Wednesday when his helicopter
went down in mountains near the capital.

Rescue workers found the burned wreckage of Ramon Martin
Huerta’s aircraft six hours after contact was lost early into a
flight from the capital to a high security prison.

In a televised address, President Vicente Fox vowed to push
on with his fight against violent gangs running drugs into the
United States.

“Today, more than ever, I repeat the commitment of my
government and of the nation to build a safe Mexico, of
justice, peace and freedom,” he said.

Fox said the Bell 412 helicopter had crashed in a “terrible
accident” but gave no reason for the crash. Martin Huerta was
one of the president’s closest aides and an old friend.

The chopper was flying to the La Palma maximum-security
penitentiary that holds several of Mexico’s most feared drug
capos. He was headed to the prison for a minor ceremony.

Tomas Valencia, the head of the Federal Preventive Police,
one of Mexico’s federal police forces, was among the dead.

Martin Huerta, a former governor of the central state of
Guanajuato, was a top figure in a battle launched this year on
drug-related crime on the U.S. border and western Mexico, where
violence has spiraled.

More than 1,000 people have been killed this year as drug
gangs fight over lucrative smuggling routes to the United
States.

DEATH THREATS

Jose Antonio Bernal, an inspector from the National Human
Rights Commission, a state-run watchdog, was also killed in the
helicopter crash.

Bernal’s office had rejected a complaint of rights abuses
by Osiel Cardenas, the jailed head of the infamous Gulf Cartel
drug gang, a commission spokesman told Reuters.

He had received at least three death threats from Osiel,
the spokesman said.

“They intensified or were repeated in recent days,” the
spokesman said.

More than 100 infantry troops and paratroopers had searched
a wooded hill in banks of cloud for the wreckage.

(Additional reporting by Tim Gaynor, Alistair Bell and
Lorraine Orlandi)