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Mexico: Bad weather likely cause of copter crash
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-23 09:20
A helicopter crash that killed a Cabinet minister and his deputy appears to
have been caused by bad weather, the president's office said Thursday, AP
reported.
While one official aboard the craft had received death threats from a drug
trafficker, authorities said that poor visibility probably was to blame for
Wednesday's crash that killed Public Safety Secretary Ramon Martin Huerta and
Federal Preventive Police Commissioner Tomas Valencia, in addition to five other
passengers and two crewmembers.
The helicopter went down shortly after taking off from Mexico City, striking
a mountainside about 20 miles outside the capital and scattering debris among
pine trees at the 11,200-foot crash site.
"All the elements that we have at hand, all the experts that were consulted,
say that there is sufficient evidence to consider that we are dealing with an
accident," presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said at a news conference. "But
we must wait for the results of the investigation."
Civil aviation authorities at the Communications and Transportation
Department were leading the investigation.
The first body recovered from the scene was airlifted Thursday morning to the
offices of the Mexico State attorney general's office for identification.
Mexican Public Safety Secretary Ramon Martin
Huerta, who heads Mexico's federal police, speaks during a news conference
in Mexico City in this Jan. 10, 2005 file photo.
[AP/file] | "They all died in the line of duty," President Vicente Fox said in a
televised address Wednesday, his voice cracking with emotion. "They are heroes.
... I have lost not just a co-worker, but a close friend, Ramon."
Martin Huerta led Fox's campaign for state governor in Guanajuato in 1995.
As public safety secretary, Martin Huerta was a key figure in Mexico's fight
against drug gangs and he led a campaign to clamp down on security at
high-security prisons. He had been headed to La Palma prison outside Mexico City
for a swearing-in ceremony for new guards.
Also among the dead was Jose Antonio Bernal, an official from the country's
National Human Rights Commission. It announced shortly after the helicopter
disappeared that Bernal been threatened in the past by reputed drug lord Osiel
Cardenas, reportedly for refusing greater privileges for Cardenas in prison.
Aguilar said officials were puzzled by the announcement, calling the timing
of the commission's letter so soon after the crash "strange."
Martin Huerta was appointed to lead Public Safety in 2004 after the previous
secretary, Alejandro Gertz Manero, resigned to return to private life.
Valencia had been promoted to his police chief post, answering to Martin
Huerta, in January after his predecessor was fired for a botched response to an
attack by a mob in Mexico City that left two federal agents
dead.
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