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 Editorials | Issues | February 2008 
Mexico Bomb Seen Too Amateur for Cartel Campaign
 Catherine Bremer - Reuters
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| | A woman looks out through a shattered window after a bomb blast in Mexico City February 15, 2008. A bomb exploded on a street in central Mexico City near the security ministry on Friday, killing one person and wounding two. (Henry Romero/Reuters) | | |
Mexico City - A botched bomb attack aimed at a Mexico City security chief looks more like a vendetta by small-time drug peddlers than the start of a wider bombing campaign by big cartels, experts say.
Friday's intended attack, which backfired when the device went off early and killed the man carrying it, rocked a busy area of the capital. It raised fears that Mexico's powerful drug gangs had escalated their fight with the government.
But details released by police and security camera footage of the bungled operation suggest the bomber was a common criminal on the fringes of the capital's underworld and not one of the cartels' many professional hitmen.
Security experts say the use of explosives nevertheless sets a worrying precedent in a country where more than 2,500 people were killed last year as gangs such as the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels fought each other and security forces.
"It's unclear who was behind this. It could be a personal vendetta of some sort, but are we seeing perhaps the tripwire toward the use of the IED (improvised explosive device) in these kinds of environments?" said Fred Burton, a former U.S. counter-terrorism agent at security consultant Stratfor.
Investigators are probing possible links to organized crime as they hunt for half a dozen suspected accomplices of Juan Manuel Meza, who was blown up by a homemade bomb police say he meant to plant under the car of a top security official.
Police say they do not know if he was working alone or for a criminal gang.
Experts question why a big cartel would hire an amateur bomb maker when its well-armed hitmen carry out dozens of murders each week and rarely get caught.
Security camera footage aired this week showed Meza and a suspected female accomplice wandering outside a car park where senior police leave their cars.
"You can see he was messing around. He didn't check there was a camera above him. They're not professionals," said a security official and cartel expert in Veracruz state.
"If it had been a cartel, they would have prepared it very well. It would have been a much more sophisticated job," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
WORRYING PRECEDENT
Mexico has no known major terrorist groups, but drug violence has exploded in recent years. President Felipe Calderon sent out the army to crush the cartels on taking office in December 2006.
The cartels, who regularly slay police chiefs and judges but never before with bombs, have been hit by a rash of raids and arrests in Mexico City in recent weeks.
Mexico City's top prosecutor Rodolfo Felix says investigators will comb evidence for links between the bombing and drug gangs or even with corrupt police. "We are not ruling out any possibility," he said on Wednesday.
Mexican media said the woman seen walking with Meza was a drug dealer in the rough Mexico City barrio of Tepito. The woman, badly burned, is being questioned by police.
Meza, 44, took cocaine the day of the bombing, an autopsy showed. His brother told police he was an alcoholic and on-off taxi driver who cut himself off from his family six years ago.
Felix said the bomb was made from triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, an explosive dubbed "Mother of Satan" and used by suicide bombers in the Middle East, and by thwarted Islamist shoe bomber Richard Reid in 2001. Its ingredients, acetone, hydrogen peroxide and sulphuric acid, are sold in pharmacies.
The explosive is sensitive to impact, temperature changes and friction, possibly explaining why it went off early.
Meza was wearing two layers of clothing, suggesting he meant to flee, and did not plan a suicide bomb attack. "The intention was to change clothes and head for a place where he could escape with different clothes," Felix said.
Burton said the bomb set a worrying precedent. "What I find troubling about this event is the tactical shift," he said.
Felix has appeared to rule out involvement by a small Marxist rebel group which bombed fuel pipelines last year.
(Editing by Jackie Frank) |
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