Mexico security minister missing in chopper flight

By Eduardo Quiros

HUIXQUILUCAN, Mexico (Reuters) – A key figure in Mexican
President Vicente Fox’s war on drug cartels was missing on
Wednesday after his helicopter went down in fog.

Troops searched a wooded hill near Mexico City for the Bell
412 helicopter carrying Public Security Minister Ramon Martin
Huerta and eight others. It lost contact with the ground 10
minutes after taking off from a military base.

“All we know is that contact was lost. We don’t know
whether it was an emergency landing or a crash,” government
spokesman Ruben Aguilar told reporters.

One local radio station, citing police sources, said the
helicopter made an emergency landing and that the passengers
were unharmed. But that report could not be confirmed more than
five hours after the aircraft disappeared.

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

More than 1,000 people have been killed, including 15
police officers, as drugs gangs fight over lucrative smuggling
routes to the United States.

Tomas Valencia, the head of the Federal Preventive Police,
one of Mexico’s federal police forces, was also in the
helicopter. The officials were headed for a ceremony at the La
Palma prison, home to several drug capos.

An inspector from the National Human Rights Commission, a
state-run watchdog, was believed to be among those missing. He
had received at least three death threats from Osiel Cardenas,
the jailed head of the infamous Gulf Cartel drug gang.

“(The threats) intensified or were repeated in recent
days,” a commission spokesman told Reuters.

The office of the inspector, Jose Antonio Bernal, had
rejected a complaint by Cardenas of rights abuses, the
spokesman said.

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