MEXICO CITY (AFP) -- A top Mexican security official resigned Friday after the release of security camera footage showing that 53 dangerous criminals had walked out of a jail as prison guards stood by.
Alejando Rojas Chalico, the public security minister of Zacatecas, stood down six days after an armed commando dressed in police uniforms broke into a prison in the northern state on Saturday and released 53 inmates, the state government said.
The footage of the prison break, first published by Reforma newspaper on Thursday and then released publicly by the attorney general's office, showed a convoy of trucks with federal police markings arrive at the Cieneguillas prison.
Some 20 men disembarked and, in apparent complicity with the prison guards, entered the jail and released the prisoners without firing a shot.
Interpol has issued an international security alert for 11 of the prisoners released, with many suspected of being members of drug gangs, or involved in kidnappings or robberies.
Mexico has set a reward of 1 million pesos ($80,000) for information on each of the prisoners, officials said Thursday.
The prison's guards told local media that they had been threatened for months by the members of the Zetas - the armed wing of the powerful Gulf drug cartel - and that officials had failed to react to their complaints, La Jornada newspaper reported Friday.
Mexico's police are notoriously corrupt, but criminals also often procure fake police uniforms.
A spokesman for the attorney general's office on Thursday explained how the police uniforms used by the commando involved in the jail break resembled old models that were no longer used.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires 05-22-09 1613ET Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.