Mexico's Special Investigative Sup-Prosecutor for Organized Delinquency (SIEDO) says it is probing plans by the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) to kidnap high federal government officials and bomb foreign embassies. The plans were supposedly revealed by Hermenegildo Torres Cruz, a member of the Democratic Popular Left (IDP), under interrogation after being detained as a "witness" by the Public Ministry. (La Jornada, Sept. 16) Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) has released a statement denying any connection to Arturo Duque Alvarado, arrested by Guerrero state police on charges of being a leader of the organization Aug. 26 in the community of Camacua de Michelena, Coyuca de Catalán municipality. The statement also protested the "disappearance" of supposed EPR militants Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Alberto de la Cruz Sanchez as part of a "campaign of state terror," calling them "prisoners of war in the military installations of the Mexican narco-state." The statement explicitly did not make any judgment for or against the recent EPR attacks on oil pipelines in Veracruz. (El Universal, Sept. 12; La Jornada, Aug. 26)

Ex-guerilla and IDP spokesman Felipe Edgardo Canseco Ruiz said the Veracruz attacks are "a clear message" that the EPR "will keep acting" until Reyes Amaya and Cruz Sánchez are returned alive. He said if the government of President Felipe Calderon thinks it can annihilate the EPR, "they are totally mistaken. Their structures have many years of antiquity and clandestinity; they were constructed and designed to survive decades of repression, since their origins in the years of the '70s." (La Jornada, Sept. 13)

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