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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2008 
Dead Suspect Named in Botched Mexico City Bombing
 Mica Rosenberg & Luis Rojas - Reuters
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| | Members of the Mexican special police check a car at the scene of a bomb blast in Mexico City February 15, 2008. (Reuters/Henry Romero) | | |
Mexico City - Mexico City investigators on Monday identified the suspect behind a bungled bomb attack and said the man, the only one killed by the explosion, had targeted a director at the capital's public security ministry.
Mexico City's top prosecutor Rodolfo Felix named the victim of Friday's bomb, a man believed to have been carrying it when it exploded, as 44-year-old Juan Manuel Meza. He did not say whether Meza was working alone or for a criminal gang.
On Friday, Felix said the blast may have been a botched attack by one of Mexico's powerful drug cartels, and appeared to rule out a small left-wing guerrilla group that bombed fuel pipelines last year.
"From the investigations and the evidence we have gathered, we can state that the target of the explosive device was a director of the public security ministry," Felix told a news conference late on Monday.
He said a woman who was badly burned in the explosion was being treated as a suspect after security camera footage, which he aired, showed her talking to Meza shortly before the blast.
Meza, who was killed when the bomb he was apparently carrying went off prematurely, was lying in wait for his target in a street near the ministry headquarters in central Mexico City, Felix said.
The injured woman, named as Tania Munoz, had raised suspicions by asking questions about her companion as she was taken to hospital on Friday.
The video footage showed her walking along the street with Meza, who was carrying a small bag, minutes before the small homemade bomb exploded, also hurting a third man.
Mexico City police chief Joel Ortega said security was being tightened across the capital of 18 million people, one of the world's largest cities. He said more police helicopters would fly overhead and bomb squads would patrol busy areas.
"We want to have rapid response capabilities at strategic points," he said. Police checked cars leaving the city over the weekend.
Mexico has no known major terrorist groups, but feuding drug cartels killed more than 2,500 people last year in brutal gangland-style executions, as President Felipe Calderon deployed the army to crush them.
Drug gang hit men regularly murder police chiefs and judges, and three heavily armed men arrested in January were planning to kill the country's deputy attorney general. However gangs have not been known to use bombs so far.
Since Friday, city authorities have received nine calls warning of bombs, but all were false alarms, police said.
(Writing by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Eric Walsh) |
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