Retired Mexican army general Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro was gravely wounded with a bullet to the throat in what police are calling a mugging attempt in the Federal District's Cuauhtémoc division May 18. By official accounts, Acosta Chaparro was shot multiple times in his car by an assailant trying to steal his watch, and driven to a hospital by his chauffeur. Police are said to have arrested a suspect. However, there is much speculation about a link to Mexico's ongoing narco wars. In 2007, Acosta Chaparro was investigated by both the Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) and Prosecutor for Military Justice (PJM) for ties to Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the late kingpin of the Juárez Cartel. The general was cleared in one of the most high-profile cases of military corruption in recent Mexican history. (El Universal, May 19)

Acosta Chaparro was also a leader of the army's counter-insurgency campaign against peasant guerillas in Guerrero state in the late '60s and '70s, and was recently named by survivors as a mastermind of "disappearances" who should be called to testify on the whereabouts of mass graves.

See our last post on Mexico's narco wars.

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