Latinnews Archive
Caribbean & Central America - 15 June 1995
[No Title]
The government is preparing a new law to deal with telephone tapping. The point of the law is to clamp down on unauthorised eavesdropping on conversations. Recently a leading Mexico City newspaper Reforma published excerpts of conversations between Jose Cerdoba Montoya, President Salinas's former chief of staff and Marcela Bodenstedt, a model and former news-reader and an alleged associate of drug traffickers. Bodenstedt has also been a member of the Policia Judicial Federal. Bodenstedt is accused, by the former student leader Eduardo Valle, who has fled to the US, of being a close friend of Juan Garcia Abrego, the head of the Cartel del Golfo and one of the most wanted persons in Mexico. The newspaper said that the tapes had come from Mexican intelligence services.
In a separate case, Pablo Chapa Bezanilla, who is leading the investigation into the murders of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional's presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, the PRI's secretary general, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, and the cardinal-archbishop of Guadalajara, was recorded talking to the editor of the Hermosillo newspaper El Imparcial. He was asking about the source of a story, published on 18 May, that Colosio's assassin had been tortured during an illegal interview held by people who were not from the Procuraduria de Justicia.
The attorney general, Antonio Lozano Gracia, the only member of the cabinet who does not belong to the PRI said that there must be clear rules over who is allowed to tap and for what reasons. He also promised to institute heavy punishments for people who broke the new law.
The existing law has penalties which range for a fine of 50 pesos (US$ 8) to five years in prison.
An opposition politician, Carlos Navarrete, a deputy from the Partido de la Revolucian Democratica, claims that the current government is leaking the tapes to send a message to the former President, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, to keep out of the country. The current government, Navarrete says, is hinting to Salinas that it has enough information to wreck him if he tries to protect his brother or any of his other associates who are currently being accused of everything from murder to drug-smuggling.
Union leaders claim that at least 200,000 telephone lines are tapped in Mexico. Among those subject to tapping are union leaders, journalists and businessmen.
Return to top