Credit: Reuters/Tomas Bravo
Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto looks on during a meeting with lawyers in Mexico City November 21, 2014.
Pena Nieto has been under growing pressure from protesters to end impunity and brutality by security forces since the 43 students were abducted by corrupt police in the southwestern city of Iguala on the night of Sept. 26.
The government says local police handed over the students to a drug gang, which apparently murdered them and then incinerated their bodies. In a speech to an assembly of political leaders, Pena Nieto said: 'Mexico cannot continue like this.'
'After Iguala, Mexico has to change,' he said, noting that the reforms also aimed to create a new law against infiltration by organized crime and redefine powers in the penal system.
The president said he would send an initiative to Congress to unify often multi-layered police forces in Mexico's states and had ordered a special security operation in the Southwest, large swathes of which are plagued by drug gangs.
Pena Nieto said the government would also launch a program to boost growth in economically backward and troubled areas of the country including the Southwest, ensuring they would get preferential financing conditions.
Only about 2 percent of crimes in Mexico result in convictions, and despite several indictments in U.S. courts against senior Mexican officials, very few of them have had to face investigations at home, let alone trial.
(Reporting by Mexico Newsroom; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Posted by Unknown on Thursday, November 27, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
0 comments "Mexico president vows police reform in bid to quell massacre anger"
Post a Comment