Condensed from "Kidnapped Mexican Forced to Name Names," copyright Ken Ellingwood, the Los Angeles Times, published in the Cambodia Daily, Oct. 28, 2010. All text below is copyright Ellingwood/the Los Angeles Times.
MEXICO CITY -- The gunmen pointed rifles at his head, demanding answers. The captive named names. He had lots to say about the Juarez drug cartel.
But this drug war interrogation, captured on [video], carried a twist.
The handcuffed man before the camera was no nameless cartel henchman. He was the kidnapped brother of Patricia Gonzalez, the former top prosecutor of Mexico's most violent state, and his account was startling: that his sister took bribes to protect the so-called Juarez cartel and even ordered several high-profile killings.
In the video, Gonzalez claims to have served as middleman between La Linea, a Cuidad Juarez-based gang closely tied to the Juarez cartel, and his sister, who became attorney general in Chihuahua in 2004.
Mario Gonzalez alleges that his sister ordered several infamous killings, including that of Juarez newspaper journalist Armando Rodriguez, who had written unflatteringly about her family's legal woes shortly before his slaying in 2008.
As attorney general, Gonzalez often spoke against deep-rooted police graft and won praise from reformers and US law-and-order experts for the state's efforts to modernize courts and root out corrupt officers.
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