Mexican soccer receive extortion threats

The president of the struggling Mexican soccer club Indios says his players have received extortion threats from unspecified sources.

The club in Ciudad Juarez, a city on the U.S. border, had more than 2,500 murders last year and has the highest rate of organized crime activity in the country.

The Indios club is bottom of the standings in the Mexican Clausura and is certain to be relegated to the second tier.

``My players ... I'm not going to say any names, but some have been extorted. Their families aren't in Juarez,'' Indios president Francisco Ibarra said at a news conference late Monday. ``Our third-choice goalkeeper was here one day and gone the next because he received death threats, and bad people were demanding money from him.''

Sergio Belmonte, a spokesman for Ciudad Juarez city hall, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that soccer players were logical targets for the violence in the city that authorities attribute to warring drug cartels.

``We don't doubt this has happened because it's a problem that affects every sector,'' Belmonte said. ``There's certainly a state of insecurity that they can't escape, being public figures.''