Mexico's Drug War - Page 34

MEXICO CITY (AP) — One of the main operators in a drug cartel war that devastated the border city of Tijuana was captured by federal troops after he opened fire on a car carrying two rivals over the weekend, officials said Monday.

Juan Francisco Sillas Rocha, 34, allegedly reported directly to the head of the Arellano Felix cartel, which controlled the smuggling of cocaine, marijuana and other drugs through the cities of Tijuana and Mexicali into the United States during the 1990s, according to Mexican officials.

The cartel was weakened in the last decade by the capture or killing of the brothers who led it. The powerful Sinaloa Cartel, which controls many of the smuggling routes along the border, has reportedly tried to seize control of criminal activities in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California.

Fernando "The Engineer" Sanchez Arellano, a nephew who now heads the Arellano Felix cartel, ordered Sillas to regain control of Tijuana from rival leader Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental, who had broken from the Arellano Felix group and reportedly rose through the Sinaloa ranks by ordering bodies dissolved in vats of lye.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican Secretary of the Interior Francisco Blake Mora, a leading figure in the country's deadly war with drug traffickers, died Friday in a helicopter crash on his way to a meeting of judicial officials. He was 45.

Blake Mora was President Felipe Calderon's point man in the all-out military and law-enforcement push against traffickers, frequently traveling to violence-torn cities for meetings with besieged state and local security officials.

For many Mexicans, he embodied the government's get-tough attitude on the narcotics business, publicly pledging on many occasions to keep bringing the fight to the traffickers instead of backing down.

He often promised to step up the presence of troops and federal police in violent areas, and not leave until and drug gang members there were caught.

"Organized crime, in its desperation, resorts to committing atrocities that we can't and shouldn't tolerate as a government and as a society," Blake Mora said after investigators found more than 100 bodies in pits near the U.S. border.

He later announced a five-point initiative to investigate the crimes and to increase security, including the federal monitoring of buses such as those used by the migrant victims.

On November 18 2011 20:14 Andtzen wrote:
Hey guys, I was thinking of holding a presentation regarding this matter in class and the talk of legalizing marijuana (and maybe other drugs) is especially interesting.

What would be the actual pros and cons of legalizing the drugs? Would mexico benefit from it? Would the cartels lose power? Would it actually make a dent in the drug industry at all? Would all countries become filled with stoners?
(Yes, I've read through the thread.)

I would love if some of you could state your reasons for supporting/opposing drug legalization. It would help alot!

On November 19 2011 03:06 dmgdnooc wrote:

IMO the pros and cons of legalisation will mostly prove to be moot points.
Each country's laws are modelled on the same UN Convention and are in conformity with it, they can only be altered as the Convention is altered.
Lots of luck there buddy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_Drugs

If you read the page you will see that there is some wriggle room provided in the interpretation of the Convention's wording as regards the 'possession' for personal use.
It appears that this need not be a penal offence under the the terms of the Convention. And, country by country, the response to 'possession' for personal use may range from mere censure to years in prison to the death penalty.

An end to hard sentencing practices for 'possession' for personal use is the only window available for so called 'legalisation' arguments. Anything that softens the response to 'trafficing' will not be permitted by the terms of the 'Convention'.

Emotionally I rebel at our leaders infantile and ill-considered attempts at 'social engineering' and hold them in contempt for their efforts to protect me from myself.
But in my reasoning parts I hold that the best argument for de-criminalisation of personal use is that the terms of the Convention are clearly aimed at stopping those who involve themselves in illicit 'trafficing' in these substances and not at those who, for many and varied reasons, are attracted to their use.

In October of 2008, Chicago-based drug trafficker Margarito “Twin” Flores was summoned to the Sinaloa Cartel’s mountaintop compound. The leaders of the Mexican narcotics syndicate were pissed. The brother of a top lieutenant had been arrested by the government and risked being extradited to the United States; the Sinaloans wanted to retaliate — in a massive and deadly way, and in the heart of Mexico City.

“Let it be a government building, it doesn’t matter whose. An embassy or a consulate, a media outlet or television station,” cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman said. Even the U.S. embassy might be fair game.

“Twin, you know guys [in the U.S. military] coming back from the war,” the lieutenant’s son, Jesus Vincente Zambada Niebla, told Flores. “Find somebody who can give you big powerful weapons, American shit. We don’t want Middle Eastern or Asian guns, we want big U.S. guns, or RPGs [rocket propelled grenades].”

“You know what I’m talking about,” Zambada added. “We don’t need one, we need a lot of them, 20, 30, a lot of them.”

“Make it your job,” Guzman said.

At least, that’s how Flores says the meeting went down. Now an informant for U.S. authorities, Flores described the meeting in a proffer filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago (.pdf) and first described by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Following the meeting, Flores told a DEA agent about the plot and asked for “black market prices for rocket and grenade launchers.” This way, he’d have something to report back to the cartel. The proffer presents an audio transcription of that report.

“Hey, do you remember what we talked about? About those toys?” Flores asked. “I have somebody that just got out of the service and he said he could hook me up, but they’re going to charge twice as much.”

“That’s fine, just let me know,” Zambada answered.

But the Sinaloa Cartel didn’t find any veterans willing to supply the weapons, and the would-be attack went nowhere. Why?

CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) — Sixteen men were shot dead and burned in two pickup trucks in the western city of Culiacan, officials said Wednesday, and seven other people were slain in the same state.

Neighbors called police after seeing a pickup truck on fire early Wednesday in the Antonio Rosales neighborhood of Culiacan, capital of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, said state Attorney General Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez.

Investigators found 12 bodies on the bed of the truck, some of them handcuffed and wearing bulletproof vests, Higuera said.

He said authorities are trying to determine if some of the victims are part of a group of nine people, including three local police officers, who were kidnapped in the town of Angostura on Monday.

Minutes after the first fire was reported, authorities received another call about a pickup truck burning behind a store. Police found four bodies inside that vehicle, and one had been decapitated.

Higuera said all 16 had been shot.

A group of Mexican activists has lodged a war-crimes complaint against President Felipe Calderon at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

A lawyer for the group of 23 activists who have signed the complaint of war crimes against the president said Calderon's offensive against drug cartels had involved about 470 cases of human rights violations by the army or police.

The activists accuse Calderon of systematically allowing troops to kill, kidnap and torture civilians.

The complaint filed Friday at the court in the Netherlands also names Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the Sinaloa cartel leader.

Netzai Sandoval, the lawyer, said Mexican drug lords had also committed crimes against humanity during the conflict, which has cost 35,000 to 40,000 lives since late 2006.

"The violence in Mexico is bigger than the violence in Afghanistan, the violence in Mexico is bigger than in Colombia," Sandoval said.

"We want the prosecutor to tell us if war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Mexico, and if the president and other top officials are responsible."

Calderon's administration has denied the accusations, saying that it is an elected, democratic government fighting criminals and that it has established mechanisms to protect human rights.

A key leader of Mexico's powerful Zetas drug cartel, Raul Lucio Hernandez Lechuga, has been arrested in the state of Veracruz, say officials.

Hernandez Lechuga, alias El Lucky, was allegedly a founding member of the cartel and ran its activities in Veracruz, Puebla and Oaxaca states.

Security forces had placed a 15m peso (£700,000: $1m) bounty on his head.

At least 40,000 people are thought to have died in drugs-related violence in Mexico in the past five years.

Mexico's navy said marines had captured Hernandez Lechuga in the Veracruz town of Cordoba, where the Zetas have been battling another powerful cartel, the Sinaloa, for control of the lucrative drugs market.

President Felipe Calderon also announced the capture on Twittter.

Some 50,000 troops and federal police are actively involved in tackling the country's drugs gangs, with top leaders being targeted.

Mr Calderon says 22 of the 37 most-wanted drug lords have now been accounted for.

A Mexican state plagued by drug violence has disbanded the entire police force in the major port city of Veracruz in an effort to stem corruption, with naval marines deployed in its place.

The Veracruz state government said Wednesday's decision is part of an effort to root out police corruption and start from zero in the state's largest city.

Gina Dominguez, the state spokeswoman, said 800 police officers and 300 administrative employees were laid-off.

At a press conference, she said they can apply for jobs in a state police force, but must meet stricter standards for an agency with officers "who are better trained and more committed and who can deliver under our current security circumstances".

Armed marines barricaded the police headquarters on Wednesday and navy helicopters were seen flying above the city where 35 bodies were dumped in September in one of the worst gang attacks of Mexico's drug war.

The change was agreed on Monday by Javier Duarte, the governor of Veracruz, and Alejandro Poire, the federal interior secretary.

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican army announced Sunday that it had captured the head of security for Sinaloa drug cartel head Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, one of the world's most wanted men.

The suspect, who was not identified by name, was captured in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan and will be presented to the media Monday morning, the army said.

Guzman, Mexico's top drug lord, is one of the world's richest men, and has eluded authorities by moving around and hiding since his 2001 escape from prison in a laundry truck.

The army said the man they had arrested also ran cartel activities in Durango and southern Chihuahua state, and was responsible for carrying out secret burials of cartel victims, kidnapping, extortion and arson. They did not say if the arrest moved the military closer to capturing Guzman, an arrest that would be seen as a major victory for the government of President Felipe Calderon.

Guzman is worth more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which has listed him among the "World's Most Powerful People." He has a $7 million bounty on his head, and thousands of law enforcement agents from the U.S. and other countries working on capturing him.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — When convoys of soldiers or federal police move through the scrubland of northern Mexico, the Zetas drug cartel knows they are coming.

The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a "halcon," or hawk.

The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a solar panel. A signal-boosting repeater relays the message along a network of powerful antennas and other repeaters that stretch hundreds of miles (kilometers) across Mexico, a shadow communications system allowing the cartel to coordinate drug deliveries, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes with the immediacy and precision of a modern military or law-enforcement agency.

The Mexican army and marines have begun attacking the system, seizing hundreds of pieces of communications equipment in at least three operations since September that offer a firsthand look at a surprisingly far-ranging and sophisticated infrastructure.