Raid on Mexican state police

Hundreds of Mexican federal police and soldiers surrounded a state police headquarters and arrested top commanders in a raid apparently linked to an assassination attempt against a public safety secretary.

The raid, in Villahermosa, the capital of the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, involved 350 federal police and about 150 soldiers disarming state police.

It followed the March 6 shooting attack in Villahermosa in which retired Gen Francisco Fernandez Solis, the new head of state public safety, was wounded and his driver killed.

The raid resulted in the arrest of three top state police commanders, and two other former commanders.

Investigators had originally said they thought the attack on Fernandez Solis had been carried out by drug traffickers, but yesterday’s arrested lent credence to reports the shooting had been the work of a shadowy “brotherhood” of rogue policemen angered by his rigorous approach to combating the drug trade and other crimes.