Lawmakers call for Mexico death penalty

MEXICO CITY, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Mexican lawmakers, responding to public anger at a wave of kidnappings and drug killings, say they are considering reinstating the death penalty.

Only three years after the death penalty was abolished, Mexico's Green Party, or PVEM, has drafted a bill calling for executing kidnappers who are or were police officers, or those who kill or mutilate victims, The San Antonio Express-News reported Sunday.

Although legislators from other parties may be reluctant to approve reinstating the death penalty, the PVEM says it is responding to an outcry over rampant kidnappings and the increasingly bloody and indiscriminate drug gang violence in Mexico.

"We find ourselves in a kidnapped country," Francisco Elizondo, a PVEM congressman promoting the bill, told the newspaper. "Mexico has gone from a country where we only had narco-trafficking problems to (one with) many other problems with organized crime like terrorism and kidnapping."

Organized crime has been blamed for well over 3,000 deaths in Mexico this year, including an Independence Day grenade attack in central Mexico by the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel that killed eight civilians.