MEXICO CITY – Fifty-nine bodies were found buried Wednesday in a series of pits in the northern Mexico state of Tamaulipas, near the site where suspected drug gang members massacred 72 migrants last summer, officials said.
Security forces stumbled on the site as they were investigating reports that passengers had been pulled off several buses by gunmen in the area in what may have been an attempt at forced recruitment by a drug gang.
State and federal authorities conducted a raid that netted several suspected kidnappers and freed five kidnap victims.
Then they made a grisly discovery — a total of eight pits, containing a total of 59 corpses. One of the pits held 43 dead.
The Tamaulipas state government said the find was made Wednesday, and 11 suspects were detained, but the federal Interior department said the first pit was found Saturday and five suspects were detained by soldiers.
TEGUCIGALPA – Honduras' defense minister said Friday that the country's armed forces will join the police for the first time in the fight against drug trafficking.
Members of the navy and air force are being trained to tackle traffickers, Defense Marlon Pascua said in comments reported Saturday in the newspaper La Tribuna.
"There is much to be done in the fight against organized crime and drug trafficking, but results will be seen soon," Pascua said in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. He added that the government lacks the necessary funds to fight both problems.
The Associated Press could not reach Pascua or his spokesman for comment.
Washington has provided Honduras about $15 million in the last four years to combat drug traffickers, which are using the Central American country to ship drugs north.
"Even though the drug traffickers have greater resources than us, we will fight with the little we have to prevent crime from taking over the country," Pascua said.
Mexican drug cartels operate virtually unchecked in Central America as U.S.-supported crackdowns in Mexico and Colombia have pushed traffickers into a region.
A recent Security Ministry report said Mexico's Sinaloa and Zetas drug cartels operate cocaine-trafficking routes in northern and eastern Honduras.
The laundering operations run by these women don’t take place in smoke-filled billiard rooms—they manage boutiques, hotels, and beauty parlors, profitable fronts for their even more profitable illegal activities.
MEXICO CITY – Investigators found 26 badly decomposed bodies at a vacant lot in the northern Mexico state of Durango on Wednesday and said they were looking for more.
The grisly Holy Week discovery came just days after police found 10 complete bodies, three headless bodies and four severed heads in a pit in Durango, a state that has become a battleground between the Zetas and Sinaloa drug cartels.
Acting on information that there were skeletal remains at the lot, state and federal authorities launched a joint operation to search the site in the state capital, also known as Durango.
The search uncovered 26 bodies, but they were too badly decomposed to immediately identify them or their cause of death, the Durango state prosecutor's office said in a statement.
Prosecutors did not answer phone calls seeking to determine whether the bodies were found in multiple-burial pits, like the 145 bodies that have been pulled from mass graves in the border state of Tamaulipas.
A total of 51 bodies have been recovered from two locations in Durango City. 17 in La Providencia sector and 34 from Las Fuentes sector; 47 in the last 10 days.
ACAPULCO, Mexico – Police in Acapulco say four women and a teenage girl have been found with their throats cut in the Mexican resort city. All appear to have been connected to the same beauty parlor.
Guerrero state police say the bodies of two of the women and the 14-year-old girl were found inside the beauty parlor outside the tourism district. They had been stripped of their clothes and their hands and feet were tied.
The other two victims were found separately in other parts of Acapulco — one in an abandoned car and the other on a street behind a church.
Acapulco has seen violent turf battles among at least three drug gangs. But the mass killing of women is not a usual calling card of drug traffickers.
On April 05 2011 12:47 Souma wrote: Jeeze, something is incredibly wrong when the criminals have better weapons than police officers. I know it can be seen in a lot of places, but that still doesn't make it right.
You do realize that the majority of weapons that the drug cartels use come straight from the United States ? So something is definitely wrong.... perhaps with the gun laws?
Sad reality is there is just WAY WAY WAY to much money to be made in drugs. This is the reason why drug's will never be decriminalized because the economy would pretty much collapse over night.
I can tell you that many of those guns including many of the fully automatic weapons and grenade launchers are not street legal. The problem isnt necessarily the gun laws. You can only buy certain types of guns. The cartels are using heavy artillery which is the main problem in gunfights.
The problem is also that many of these cartels have no regard for innocent bystanders during these killings. They will throw a grenade into a crowd of 50 just to kill 1 guy.
MEXICO CITY – One of the first Mexican drug kingpins to oversee mass shipments of cocaine was extradited to the United States on Friday to face drug-trafficking charges, ending an eight-year effort by U.S. authorities to take custody of a man who once controlled one of the world's most powerful cartels.
Benjamin Arellano Felix, who allegedly led the Tijuana cartel from its beginnings in the late 1980s, is one of the highest-profile drug suspects to be extradited under the administration of President Felipe Calderon.
The cartel's power began to wane after Benjamin was captured by the Mexican military in 2002 in central Mexico, ending more than a decade as a terrorizing force while his cartel moved tons of cocaine from South America to the U.S.
"He led the cartel at the height of its power," the Mexican Attorney General's Office said in a statement. "He was also who kept the family together."
Mexican federal agents handed Arellano Felix over to U.S. marshals at an airport on the outskirts of Mexico City on Friday, the statement said.
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Mexican federal police said Saturday they discovered a basement arsenal hidden behind the mirrors of a home gym that included three anti-aircraft guns, dozens of grenades, a grenade launcher, AK-47s and other high-powered weapons.
The neatly ordered stockpile found in an upscale neighborhood in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, also contained several makes of machine guns, rifles, a shotgun and more than 26,000 ammunition cartridges, according to Raul Avila Ibarra, the federal police commissioner in charge of the city.
Police say they discovered the weapons Friday while searching a house near the U.S.-Mexico border. Avila said the police acted on an anonymous tip that there were kidnapping victims in the house, but no one was found.
The mirrors of the gym opened at the touch of a button near the floor, allowing access to the secret shelter, which also held more than 50 military uniforms, as well as bulletproof vests and gas masks. Three money-counting machines were also found.
No one was detained in the search. The police didn't reveal the origin of the weapons found.
The point of this thread is? No offense by that, but I'm not sure the direction you want to go.
Mexico is rather poor. The best way to make $ is to sell drugs. The reason it isn't stopped is because people in the government claim to be against it, but don't act like their pockets aren't thicker because of bribes. It is really unfortunate and nobody can stop people from buying drugs, but there can be a good effort to stop those selling/growing/transporting drugs. As far as I'm concerned the proof is the 10 Million illegals in the US. If MEX was stopping people from coming in (i personally don't mind them coming) but checking for drugs ect they wouldn't have this problem. Drugs in mexico are cheap if they can't get them accross the boarder it suddenly doesn't become a good business. Up to the MEX govt to stop this as well as the US. 3000 Mile long boarder practically unguarded that when crossed leads to a large source of untaxable income.
On May 01 2011 11:48 NoobSkills wrote: The point of this thread is? No offense by that, but I'm not sure the direction you want to go.
Mexico is rather poor. The best way to make $ is to sell drugs. The reason it isn't stopped is because people in the government claim to be against it, but don't act like their pockets aren't thicker because of bribes. It is really unfortunate and nobody can stop people from buying drugs, but there can be a good effort to stop those selling/growing/transporting drugs. As far as I'm concerned the proof is the 10 Million illegals in the US. If MEX was stopping people from coming in (i personally don't mind them coming) but checking for drugs ect they wouldn't have this problem. Drugs in mexico are cheap if they can't get them accross the boarder it suddenly doesn't become a good business. Up to the MEX govt to stop this as well as the US. 3000 Mile long boarder practically unguarded that when crossed leads to a large source of untaxable income.
Where to start...
Mexico as a nation is not poor, in fact if it is to be believed Mexico will become one of the largest economies in the world. Add to the fact that Mexico holds more U.S. debt than France the word poor is a farce.
The reason drugs are so powerful is not only due to wages in Mexico being low, so low in fact that working for cartels one has access to healthcare, education, very good pay, paid vacation, and yes even 401ks, the cartels actually invest on Wall St.
The United States is also the largest importer of marijuana and cocaine in the world so there's that, securing the border would slow the trade down but not stop it as there are already crooked cops, border guards and yes even U.S. troops that actually help move drugs and even guns across the border, back and forth. It also doesn't help when the U.S. in terms of budget cutting puts drug education and counseling on the list.
On May 02 2011 07:11 BlackFlag wrote: Prohibition was never an answer for anything.
Really? so we should just let crack meth and any and all of the drug cartels, gangs, and outlaw motorcycle gangs to just sell openly in the streets? beacuse that won't cause any problems in our society at all.
On May 01 2011 11:48 NoobSkills wrote: The point of this thread is? No offense by that, but I'm not sure the direction you want to go.
You do realize that these problems only exist as a result of US-Mexico foreign policy and the US "drug war", right?
Well how where we suppose to know that kicking their ass in a war 100 years ago and driving out the cartels in all of south america would screw them up so bad?
Really sad that we both saved an entire continent and a revolutionary people only to start a drug driven civil war in another country.
EPT![[image loading]](http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20110430/capt.803bed04528c434293f2a6ff012dd3e5-803bed04528c434293f2a6ff012dd3e5-0.jpg?x=400&y=265&q=85&sig=do3cf1m7p.ptLHhzU3RxYA--)
