Mexico City:
Mexican President Felipe Calderon faces a growing scandal in the last days of his administration as prosecutors accuse top federal police officers of lying in the shooting of a US embassy car.
Calderon promised to give Mexico one of the best police forces in the world, but as he prepares to step down on December 1, the reputation of the federal police agency is tainted by the August 24 attack that wounded two US government employees.
Fourteen police officers have been charged with attempted murder, while the attorney general's office accused four commanders on Sunday of making false statements in the case. A fifth police chief was already charged with lying.
Prosecutors say the 14 officers were wearing civilian clothes and riding civilian vehicles when they fired 152 rounds at the bullet-proof car, which was taking two Americans and a Mexican navy captain to a military facility south of Mexico City.
The five commanders are accused of ordering their men to switch into police uniforms and bring out patrol cars before investigators arrived at the scene of the crime.
Prosecutors have not given a motive for the attack, but sources say authorities are investigating whether the officers were working with organized crime in a deliberate strike against suspected CIA agents.
The US embassy has described the attack as an "ambush."
The case has turned into a public he-said-she-said squabble between the attorney general's office and the federal police, a unit of the public security ministry.
The police says the officers were investigating a kidnapping when they shot up the car, suggesting that the incident was a case of mistaken identity.
Federal police chief Maribel Cervantes said this week that the officers testified that they had not noticed that the sport-utility vehicle had diplomatic plates.
The officers opened fire because they were "under the impression, they say, that there had been a shot in the air" from the SUV, she said.
The attorney general's office, however, says the officers were never assigned a kidnapping case and that all the bullets found at the scene came exclusively from their guns.
Behind the scenes, the incident appears to have raised tensions with Calderon's administration. El Universal newspaper says the public security minister, Genaro Garcia Luna, and Attorney General Marisela Morales, shouted at each other during a cabinet meeting.
In another twist, the country's top anti-gang prosecutor, Jose Cuitlahuac Salinas, stepped down last week, three days before details of the case were made public on Sunday. He cited personal reasons for his departure.
The attorney general's office, the police and the military have been pillars in Calderon's six-year battle against drug cartels, which has been marked by a surge in violence that has killed some 60,000 people since 2006.
Eduardo Gallo, former president of the non-governmental group Mexico United Against Crime, said the infighting between prosecutors and police was "smokescreen" since both departments are infiltrated by organized crime.
Calderon increased the size of the federal police from 6,000 to 36,000 officers, hoping it would take over the drug fight from local police units often accused of working with traffickers.
But the federal police has struggled to gain trust.
The August incident was not its first misstep: In June, three officers were killed at the capital's airport, in front of stunned travelers, by colleagues accused of drug trafficking.
Garcia Luna, the public security minister, gained vast political powers and became a favorite of Calderon, said Raul Benitez Manaut, a national security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
"But he did not have enough control over corruption and the respect of human rights," Benitez told AFP.
The scandal-plagued police faces a shake-up after president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto is sworn in on December 1.
The new leader said last week that the federal police would move to the interior ministry, signaling the death knell of the public security ministry.