Mexico appoint intel chief who couldn’t find missing girl

MEXICO CITY – Mexico has a poor history of police intelligence work, and the government is raising eyebrows with its announcement of a new intelligence chief — a onetime prosecutor who failed to find a missing girl who lay dead in her own bed for nine days.

The Interior Ministry announced Thursday that ex-Mexico State prosecutor Alberto Bazbaz is taking over as head of the National Center for Security and Investigation.

Bazbaz resigned as prosecutor in 2010 after he announced that 4-year-old Paulette Gebara had accidentally smothered and her body was in her own bed during the nine days that police and family searched for her. Prosecution agents apparently found her only after the body began to smell.

Many recent high-level drug arrests in Mexico have resulted from intelligence provided by U.S. authorities.