Gunmen kill top Mexican police official, bodyguard Top Mexican police official, bodyguard slain
MEXICO CITY — Assassins gunned down a top federal police commander in Mexico City Thursday, the latest in a string of attacks on senior law enforcement officers in the capital.
The gunmen killed Igor Labastida, a senior investigator, and a bodyguard as they ate in a restaurant not far from Mexico's presidential compound. Three other bodyguards and several civilians were wounded in the spray of bullets.
Labastida reportedly was director of the division of the Federal Preventative Police dealing with drug trafficking and other contraband. Police offered no explanation of who might have killed Labastida or why.
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Until last spring, drug-related violence was rare in the capital. But in the past three months, at least three senior police officers have been killed in the city.
The violence has flared as President Felipe Calderon stepped up a campaign to deploy army troops and paramilitary police to areas controlled by the powerful drug cartels that smuggle cocaine and other narcotics into the United States.
Labastida's death came less than two months after the slaying of Edgar Millan, the acting chief of the federal police, in the capital. Millan was killed as he arrived at one of his Mexico City homes in the late evening.
Authorities have accused another police official of involvement in Millan's assassination. And they pointed to the Beltran Leyva family, one of Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking organizations, as being behind the killing.
The Beltran Leyvas' war with another Sinaloa drug gang, headed by trafficker Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was blamed for the escalating wave of violence that has rocked Mexico this year.
The Mexico City newspaper Reforma reported in its online edition Thursday that the attorney general's office had investigated Labastida in 2004 for his alleged ties to Guzman.
By various government and media tallies, nearly 5,000 people — including some 500 local, state and federal police officers — have been killed in the 18 months since Calderon launched the campaign against the drug gangs.
Even as the authorities have cracked down on the smugglers, rival gangs have gone after one another with escalating violence. While many police have been killed in the line of duty, others have been targeted by one gang because they served as protection for another, authorities acknowledge.
"A structural degeneration of authority has been going on for decades, tied to abuse, corruption and haughtiness," Genaro Garcia Luna, Mexico's federal public security director and Labastida's boss, said in a speech last week.
"This has generated, up till now, a social aversion to police operations, which opened space for the flourishing of impunity," he said.
Labastida also was implicated in a 2005 scandal that involved the killing of Enrique Salinas de Gotari, a brother of former president Carlos Salinas, whose suffocated body was found in a car in a Mexico City suburb.
Prosecutors in Mexico state, where the suburb is located, accused federal police of extorting Enrique Salinas in return for not arresting him on a corruption-related arrest warrant issued by French authorities.
Labastida, who at the time was the head of investigations in the federal police's equivalent of the FBI, was not charged with a crime. But he apparently was demoted in the aftermath of the scandal to his current position.
Swiss authorities last week agreed to return $74 million to the Mexican government from the bank account Raul Salinas de Gortari, another brother of the former president. Raul Salinas was released from prison two years ago, where he had been held on corruption charges since 1994.
dudley.althaus@chron.com
Gunmen today opened fire in a Mexico City restaurant, killing a top police official in charge of monitoring the country's illegal drug trade, as well as one of his bodyguards, Mexican officials said. The attack is the latest waged against authorities attempting to fight Mexico's powerful drug cartels.

Security officials in Mexico City say the attack occurred as Igor Labastida Calderón, commander of the federal police's Traffic and Contraband division, was eating lunch with one of his bodyguards, Jose Maria Ochoa. According to Minerva Amado, spokesperson for the attorney general's office, two unknown subjects got out of a black vehicle, entered the restaurant, and opened fire on Labastida Calderón. 

Reports differ on who else was injured in the attack. Amado said two other bodyguards were injured and hospitalized, while Mexico City newspaper ''El Universal'' reports that three civilians were injured.

The motive for the attack remains unclear. No arrests have been made so far, as police continue to search for the assailants. Federal police have refused to comment.

President Felipe Calderón has sent over 20,000 troops throughout Mexico in an attempt to take back areas controlled by the country's drug cartels. Since Calderón took office in December 2006, more than 4,000 people have been killed by these drug cartels, allegedly including federal police chief Édgar Millán Gómez, whose May death was attributed to the Sinaloa Cartel.