MEXICO CITY -- Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari fired the nation's top law enforcement officer in a move widely viewed as an attempt to end corruption and human rights abuses.
Enrique Alvarez del Castillo was replaced Tuesday as federal attorney general by Mexico City Attorney General Ignacio Morales Lechuga, the president's office said.
Alvarez del Castillo was made general director of the National Bank of Public Works and Services and the Mexico City attorney general's office will be headed by Miguel Montes, former Guanajuato gubernatorial candidate.
Alvarez del Castillo had been rumored to be on the way out because of inability to cope with corruption and human rights abuses by the federal judicial police controled by his office.
An official from the attorney general's office who asked not to be named said Alvarez de Castillo's replacement 'will have the obligation to clean up and reform ... the office and its federal police from the bottom up.'
A large number of judicial police were expected to resign to avoid prosecution for human rights abuses, drug trafficking, and other illegal acts, the official said.
A string of recent incidents made the attorney general's office, already infamous for alleged abuses by its much-feared federal judicial police, increasingly unpopular.
The recent discovery of telephone bugging devices in the offices of the Mexico's Human Rights Commission, created by the president to deal with complaints of police abuse of human rights, further tarnished the attorney general's image.
The discovery set off a spate of newspaper stories alleging that the office regularly tapped the phones of politicians, journalists and others with the cooperation of Telefonos de Mexico, the giant phone monopoly.
The Human Rights Commission fielded scores of complaints against the federal judicial police. One dealt with the killing of a family of 14 in Sinaloa by overeager police waiting to ambush drug traffickers.
On Monday, the New York daily Newsday published a story implicating judicial police in the killing of two Colombians and their lawyer in Brownsville, Texas.
The Mexico City daily La Jornada also published stories Monday blaming the prison riot at the Tamaulipas state prison that left 18 dead on attempts by judicial police officers and local government officials to control cocaine traffic through the border city of Matamoros into the United States.
