Jailed Diva Pregnant, Cop Fired

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP)- Brazil's government fired a top federal police officer after Mexican pop music diva Gloria Trevi got pregnant while in a police jail.

Paulo Magalhaes was removed from his post as the chief of federal police in the capital Brasilia for "administrative reasons,'' national police chief Agilio Monteiro said Wednesday. But police sources and numerous media reports said the real motive was Trevi's pregnancy.

The singer, who is fighting extradition to Mexico on charges of corrupting a minor, was recently found to be five months pregnant.

Trevi apparently got pregnant in May, precisely when there was an uprising in the federal police jail that held her in Brasilia. Trevi indicated in a recent interview that her pregnancy was involuntary, which led to speculation she was raped.
"Those who know the truth can rest easy because I will never tell,'' she was quoted as saying by the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Globo. She was transferred to the Papuda Penitentiary in Brasilia last month.

Trevi, her manager, Sergio Andrade, and choreographer, Maria Raquenel Portillo, were arrested in Brazil in January 2000 after fleeing Mexico.

Prosecutors in Chihuahua have accused the three of corrupting a 17-year-old girl whose parents had turned her over to Andrade's care at age 12 for musical training, allegedly at Trevi's behest. The girl abandoned a baby in Spain in 1998, saying Andrade was the father.
In December, Brazil's Supreme Court approved Mexico's request for extradition, and in March the government rejected her request for political asylum.

Trevi claims her life would be in danger if she were returned to jail in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. She says that prominent businesspeople and politicians there want to silence her before she talks about local corruption.

Sometimes called Mexico's Madonna, Trevi stormed to success in the 1980s with a sexually flamboyant and rebellious image. She talked of someday running for president and released a series of nude calendars that poked fun at Mexican politics.