MEXICO CITY, Feb. 5 -- Federal authorities have detained the head of President Vicente Fox's travel staff on suspicion he was feeding information to drug traffickers, the attorney general said Saturday.
Nahum Acosta, director of the office coordinating presidential tours, was taken into custody by federal agents Thursday as he left his office at the presidential residence, Los Pinos. Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha said he might have passed at least part of Fox's travel plans to a narcotics trafficking organization. Acosta has not been formally charged.
"We realized that there were factors that indicated a leak of information from inside the president of the republic's office, basically in the form of how the president traveled around diverse parts of the nation," the attorney general told reporters after appearing at an event with Fox in the state of Queretaro.
Later Saturday, police and federal agents raided Acosta's home in an exclusive Mexico City neighborhood, the attorney general's office said in a statement.
A leak within the president's office could indicate that drug traffickers, who have often killed federal, state and local officials, might have been targeting the president. Fox late last month pledged to "wage the mother of all battles against organized crime" during a crackdown on drug-linked corruption in Mexican prisons.
[In separate incidents Saturday, three police officers and a teen were shot dead Saturday in the resort city of Acapulco in violence authorities said could be linked to local elections on Sunday, the Reuters news agency reported.
[Two gunmen in a car killed a police officer and a teenage boy near the airport, and in a separate incident, three gunmen opened fire on two police officers in downtown Acapulco, killing them both. Shortly afterward, someone threw a grenade at an police station, injuring some passengers in a bus, police spokesman Enrique Martinez told Reuters.
[Mexico's main opposition party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is battling to retain the governor's seat in Guerrero state, and political commentators have warned of election-related violence over concerns about possible vote-rigging.]
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