Drug traffickers, rogue cops take over

GUATEMALA CITY -- The distinguished guests from El Salvador entered this capital city with one set of police officers as bodyguards, and another set of police officers waiting to ambush them.

As they drove along mountain roads, Eduardo D'Aubuisson and his fellow legislators were entering a trap set by rogue Guatemalan officers hired by drug traffickers, officials said. The police bandits believed the Salvadorans were using their diplomatic immunity to work for rival traffickers.

The final, violent hours of D'Aubuisson's life, and the equally disturbing events of the days that followed, seem plucked from the plot of the Oscar-winning movie "The Departed," where trust is illusory and crosses and double-crosses are bloody. But that is reality in today's Central America, a region of weak institutions, where crime bosses control police death squads and organized crime is said to be more powerful than the state.

Fear of rogue police is widespread.

"There are criminal cases where a witness has named a police officer, and the prosecutor will say to the witness, 'Are you really sure you want to say that?' " said an adviser to Guatemala's public prosecutor's office, who declined to be named because he fears for his safety. "The prosecutor says this not only because he is afraid that the witness might be killed. The prosecutor is afraid he will be killed, too."

Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein said last week that organized-crime groups have "penetrated" most of the agencies of the criminal-justice system, including the police, the public prosecutor's office, the courts and the attorney general's office. Such corruption is also endemic in El Salvador and Honduras.

"This is not just a Guatemalan problem, it's a regional problem," Stein said. "These groups transcend borders, and they have more resources than we do."

Suspects slain in prison

Four Guatemalan police officers were arrested in the killing of D'Aubuisson and two other legislators. The suspects were themselves slain in a maximum-security prison three days later, in a stunning extrajudicial crime that placed new pressures on the government to take radical measures.

At one point, Guatemalan defense officials, business leaders and diplomats "from a friendly country" suggested to President Oscar Berger that he declare a state of emergency and place the police under military control, Stein said. The president ignored that advice.

"We don't want to relive the past ... with the military running civilian agencies in violation of the constitution," Stein said. To do so would have been a violation of the peace accords that ended Guatemala's civil war a decade ago, he added.

Berger was expected to ask President Bush for help in fighting organized crime when the two men met here Sunday.

A swirl of accusations, official leaks and rumors has linked the killings to top officials of the Guatemalan security forces and also to crime groups and legislators in El Salvador.

D'Aubuisson and two other members of the Central American Parliament, which promotes and regulates regional trade, left San Salvador by car the morning of Feb. 19 for a meeting in Guatemala City.

Guatemalan officials said privately they have long suspected that some members of the parliament engage in drug dealing. Central America is a key conduit of cocaine between Colombia and Mexico. The legislators have diplomatic immunity, so their cars cross Central American borders without being inspected.

Although a number of Salvadoran legislators have been linked to drug trafficking, officials in Guatemala and El Salvador say there were no indications D'Aubuisson, 32, was involved in illicit activities.

"My brother was an upstanding person who was just starting his political career," Roberto D'Aubuisson Jr. said. But D'Aubuisson said he did not believe the killing was a case of mistaken identity either, a theory floated by some Salvadoran officials. "The question is, What was the motive?"

"Payback" killings?

D'Aubuisson said he believed former Salvadoran congressman Roberto Silva, who was thrown out of the legislature last year for alleged drug ties, ordered the killing of his brother as "payback" against the government of Salvadoran President Tony Saca. The D'Aubuissons are sons of Roberto D'Aubuisson Sr., the controversial founder of the ruling party in El Salvador. Silva evaded arrest and remains a fugitive.

The rogue cops were reportedly led by Luis Herrera, head of the National Police's anti-organized-crime unit. On the surface, he was a respected officer. When armed robbers stole $8 million in cash at Guatemala City's airport that was headed for the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank in September, Herrera helped lead the investigation.

But Herrera also allegedly worked for a "cleansing unit" in the National Police. Also known as "death squads" here, the groups had their origins in the 1990s, when they began carrying out extrajudicial executions of crime suspects.

The "cleansing squads" and other groups of rogue cops have evolved into multipurpose crime groups linked to a variety of illicit activities, including the shipping of stolen cars, kidnapping, human trafficking and the drug-trafficking networks that bring Colombian cocaine to the U.S., according to official sources here and human-rights groups.

Last week, retired Gen. Otto Perez Molina, a former chief of military intelligence who is now a presidential candidate, charged that Victor Rivera, a top adviser to the Interior minister, ran one of the "cleansing squads." Members of Molina's Patriot Party also produced evidence that they said linked Rivera to kidnappings. Rivera has not responded to the charges.

In Honduras, former President Ricardo Maduro said in a recent interview that organized-crime groups effectively controlled parts of eastern Honduras where drugs are shipped by sea and air. He said the government had little hope of asserting its authority there.

Drug trafficking by top officials in Guatemala's security forces has long been a problem. In 2005, U.S. officials lured Adan Castillo, Guatemala's top drug cop, to Virginia and arrested him and two other top Guatemalan drug-enforcement officials on charges of smuggling several tons of cocaine.

U.S. officials said they had assisted Guatemalan authorities in background checks on all new hires to the security forces. But old hires were not vetted, and many corrupt elements remain in the force.

U.S. officials also expressed frustration at resistance to a plan to create a U.N.-backed "Commission Against Impunity" to assist the criminal-justice system.