The body of Fernando Marti, son of one of the owners of the country's largest sports store chains - abducted at the end of June - was discovered

The body of Fernando Marti, son of one of the owners of the country's largest sports store chains - abducted at the end of June - was discovered last Friday in the trunk of a car. His driver and bodyguard had also been killed. The abduction and assassination of a 14-year-old Mexican boy and the arrest of police officers suspected of the crime have caused a public outcry in corruption-plagued Mexico.
A police commander from Mexico City and two other officers have been arrested in the case, which has sparked a wave of emotion similar to that which four years ago drove hundreds of thousands of Mexicans to the streets in protest at growing insecurity.
The police officers allegedly involved were reportedly part of a group of dishonest cops known as The Flower.
As Mexicans despaired over endemic police corruption, the camps of conservative President Felipe Calderon and leftist Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard threw accusations of responsibility for the crime at each other. Activists, including Jose Antonio Ortega, president of the Ya Basta, or That's Enough, organisation, have called for a return to the right to carry a personal weapon, and the use of private armed security companies. "Yet again (we see) the implication of police officers in abductions and other atrocious crimes, repugnant excuses and lies from ministry officials and prosecutors, and the fake consternation and empty promises of governors and politicians," Ortega wrote in a statement on Wednesday. Others are seeking the re-establishment of the death penalty in Mexico, although the public prosecutor, Eduardo Medina Mora, refused that idea on Wednesday. Some 438 abductions were reported in Mexico in 2007, 35% more than in the previous year. Since Calderon came to power in December 2006, 59 cases of abductions followed by assassinations have been identified, according to Ortega. But most abductions fail to be reported to the police in order to allow discreet negotiations with kidnappers. Mexico's kidnapping record has now overtaken that of Colombia. Citizen groups are now responding to this poor record, although the public has not reacted to the more than 2,000 assassinations and settling of scores linked to a crackdown on drug gangs since the start of the year. The former head of Mexico's biggest bank, Banamex, Alfredo Harp Helu - who was himself kidnapped for six months - published a page in newspapers on Wednesday calling for more action. "A change is needed urgently. Impotence is invading civil society. Let's unite to ask our authorities to fight delinquency, and for personal security," he wrote. Meanwhile, President Calderon and Mexico City's mayor Ebrard denied any responsibility for police incompetence in the Marti case.

Posted in: Mexico