Tijuana ex-mayor arrested over guns at home – Mexico

TIJUANA – Tijuana’s billionaire ex-mayor and prominent politician Jorge Hank Rhon was arrested Saturday for illegal possession of weapons, Mexican officials said after raiding his home.

Mexican troops seized 88 guns – 40 rifles and 48 handguns – along with cartridges, ammunition and a grenade, the Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.

The controversial 55-year-old member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) runs horse racing and gambling operations in a city known as a key drug smuggling route to the United States.

Ten other men were arrested after the raid on Hank Rhon’s home in Tijuana, the Mexican city across the US border from San Diego, California. It was raided after a neighbor’s complaint.

The former mayor, whom press freedom organizations have sought to link to the murders of two journalists in 1988 and 2003, was questioned Saturday by the office of the Attorney General in Tijuana.

Hank Rhon is the son of the late Carlos Hank Gonzalez, who was one of the most influential figures in PRI, the former socialist-oriented party that dominated Mexican politics for decades.

Hank Rhon was Tijuana’s mayor from 2004 to 2007, and afterward ran for governor of the state of Baja California but was defeated by the candidate from the ruling conservative National Action Party (PAN).

The former mayor also was detained in 1995, for alleged trafficking in the skins of endangered animals, but was acquitted.