Mexico's Drug War - Page 53

Mexico has questioned local police over the disappearance and killing of three US siblings in the troubled north-eastern state of Tamaulipas, the state attorney general said on Saturday.

Erica, 26, Alex, 22, and Jose Angel Alvarado, 21, went missing on 13 October from the cartel-riddled border city of Matamoros.

Their decaying bodies were found on 29 October along with that of José Guadalupe Castañeda, a Mexican citizen, the Tamaulipas state attorney general’s office said in a statement.

“We can confirm the deaths of US citizens Erica, Alex, and Jose Angel Alvarado near Matamoros, Mexico,” a statement from the US embassy in Mexico City said on Saturday.

“We have been in contact with Mexican officials both in Washington and in Mexico to find out further details of the case and will take appropriate action once more is known on the circumstances.”

The incident is the latest example of drug-related violence in Mexico, where corrupt police are often working at the behest of local drug lords.

A regional security chief in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas was shot to death along with his wife, authorities said Monday.

It was the latest round of violence affecting Tamaulipas, one of Mexico’s most dangerous states, and about 2,000 residents gathered in the state capital of Ciudad Victoria to protest the killings and disappearances.

The dead man, Ricardo Nino Villarreal, was security chief for the area around Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas. The area is considered the turf of the vicious Zetas drug cartel, which has been battling the Gulf cartel.

Nino Villarreal was a former general and one of several ex-military officers designated as regional commanders as part of a plan announced in May to stem a wave of violence in Tamaulipas.

The killings took place as Mexico continues to search for 43 students who disappeared in Guerrero state after local police allegedly handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors), a violent gang. The case has outraged Mexicans even in a country where abuse of authority is common in remote areas.

The state government said the killing took place Saturday on a roadway in neighboring Nuevo Leon state. However, it wasn't until Sunday that passers-by noticed the couple's car and alerted police.

A Mexican mayor characterized as a "probable mastermind" in the mass abduction of 43 students has been taken into custody, meaning authorities have tracked down a top target who eluded them for weeks -- even if they still haven't managed to locate the missing.

Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda -- dubbed "the imperial couple" by local media for how they presided over their southern Mexican city -- were detained at a house they had rented in Mexico City's Iztapalapa neighborhood. They did not resist arrest, according to Mexican media.

Their capture, which Mexican Federal Police spokesman Jose Ramon Salinas reported on his Twitter account, signals a major milestone in the high-profile case. Yet it's not clear how much closer the arrests get authorities to finding the 43 students, wherever and in whatever state they now are, dead or alive.

The victims were mostly men in their 20s studying to become teachers at a college in rural Ayotzinapa. On September 26, they traveled on buses and vans to nearby Iguala for a protest.

Some months ago, Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto’s security and logistics team arrived in the northern state of Tamaulipas to plan an official visit. This procedure is commonly called in Mexican political jargon as “la avanzada” or “the advancement” and consists of scouting where the president is due to arrive and verifying hotels, routes, travel times and establishing coordination with state and municipal governments.

Nonetheless, this time an obscure incident interrupted the logistics team’s efforts. Members of a local drug cartel intercepted the government employees and ordered them to leave the state. They hopped on the first flight for Mexico City. After witnessing the clear and present danger, the federal government launched a law enforcement plan to rescue Tamaulipas. Nonetheless, Monday the northern Tamaulipas chief of military security and a woman were assassinated, their bodies found lying on a highway than connects Tamaulipas with the state of Nuevo León.

In the past years, the government has lost certain territories to organized crime and the ability of cartels to corrupt state and municipal law enforcement is putting Mexican high-ranking officials at great risk. Impunity even seems to be affecting the president’s plans.

Another incident shows organized crime lurks everywhere, even under the commander-in-chief’s nose.

On weekends, Peña Nieto hits the golf course at Ixtapan de la Sal, a resort town about two hours away from Mexico City. This is Peña Nieto’s favorite spot for relaxing. Ixtapan de la Sal is a presidential retreat, a Mexican Martha’s Vineyard or Camp David.

However, the town made recent headlines when the entire municipality’s police department was detained by federal forces and taken to nearby military headquarters for questioning.

Eighty police officers that should have been on the lookout for potential threats as the president golfed are now believed to have been on the payroll of Guerreros Unidos, the criminal gang behind the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa college students.

Suspects in the disappearance of 43 college students have described a macabre and complicated mass murder and incineration ending with ashen remains in a landfill or being dumped into a river in southwest Mexico, Mexican authorities said Friday.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo cited the confessions of three detained gang members. Murillo said the detainees admitted they set fire to members of the group in a rubbish dump near the southwestern city of Iguala, where the students went missing on Sept. 26 after clashing with police on their way to a rally to protest proposed government educational reforms.

Dozens of police are also among more than 70 people held in connection with the case, amid accusations that they colluded with the drug gangs in abducting the students. If true, the charge would undermine President Enrique Peña Nieto's claims that Mexico has become safer on his watch.

"There are many indications ... that could indicate it is them," Attorney General Jesus Murillo told a news conference, referring to the corpses found at the trash dump. Murillo showed taped confessions of the detained, photographs of the location where remains were found and video re-enactments of how the bodies were moved.

"The confessions we have gathered ... very sadly point to the murder of a large number of people," he added.

Furious protesters burned several vehicles and threw firebombs at a southern Mexican state's headquarters on Saturday after authorities indicated that gang hitmen slaughtered 43 missing students.

More than 300 students, many wearing masks, descended on the Guerrero government headquarters and burned around 10 vehicles, including trucks.

Mexico was confronted with one of the grisliest massacres in years of drug violence after gang suspects confessed to slaughtering 43 missing students and dumping their churred remains in a river.

The confessions may have brought a tragic end to the mystery, but parents of the victims refuse to accept they are dead until DNA tests confirm their identities, saying the government has repeatedly told them lies.

"It appears that the federal government, with great irresponsibility, is interested in closing this matter because it's all based in testimony. There is nothing definitive," Meliton Ortega, uncle of a missing student, told AFP news agency on Saturday.

Al Jazeera's Rachel Levin, reporting from Mexico City, said the remains have been sent to Austria for forensic examination.

"Families insist on getting independent verification of the DNA as they don't trust the state authorities. These children were kidnapped by police forces," Levin said.

Three suspected Guerreros Unidos gang members told investigators that local police handed them the students between the southern towns of Iguala and Cocula.

In taped confessions, the suspects said they bundled the 43 in the back of two trucks, took them to a nearby landfill, killed them and used fuel, wood, tyres and plastic to burn their bodies for 14 hours.

If the confessions are true, the mass murder would rank among the worst massacres in a drug war that has killed more than 80,000 people and left 22,000 others missing since 2006.

An off-the-cuff comment by the attorney general to cut off a news conference about the apparent killing of 43 missing college students has been taken up by protesters as a rallying cry against Mexico’s corruption and drug trade-fueled violence.

During the televised appearance on Friday, attorney general Jesus Murillo announced that two suspects had led authorities to trash bags believed to contain the incinerated remains of the students missing since being led away by police in the southwestern town of Iguala on 26 September.

After an hour of speaking, Murillo abruptly signalled for an end to questions by turning away from reporters and saying, “Ya me canse” a phrase meaning “Enough, I’m tired.”

Within hours, the phrase became a hashtag linking messages on Twitter and other social networks. It continued to trend globally Saturday and began to emerge in graffiti, in political cartoons and in video messages posted to YouTube.

Many turned the phrase on the attorney general: “Enough, I’m tired of Murillo Karam,” says one. Another asks: “If you’re tired, why don’t you resign?”

Hundreds of protesters in the Mexican state of Guerrero have attacked government buildings in the capital, Chilpancingo, burning cars.

They accused the government of involvement in the murder of 43 students in the town of Iguala in September.

The protest came after the attorney general said gang members had confessed to the killings.

He said the students were killed by the criminals acting on police orders.

Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said three alleged gang members had claimed the students were handed over to them by police.

They said some were already asphyxiated and they shot the others dead, before setting fire to all the bodies.

MEXICO CITY—Even in Tamaulipas, one of the most violent states in Mexico, there was something cavalier, or worse, about the way the “Hercules Group” operated. Back when its existence was officially still a secret, citizens of Matamoros, a border city about five miles south of Brownsville, Texas, complained to the police about a militarized strike force that took orders from city hall. The complaints reached such a pitch that in July, when Hercules was less than a month old, a city councilman named Ulises Ruiz demanded that Mayor Leticia Salazar say more about the group, which, back then had no name.

Then as now, Mayor Salazar was short on details: The strike force existed, its mission was to fight organized crime, its members drawn from the ranks of ex-marines and ex-army regulars, trained by the Mexican navy, how many there were and how much all of this cost was classified.

The state government in Tamaulipas was hovering in the background, airing its concerns that Mayor Salazar’s strike force was uncertified, unregulated, and without legal standing. The mayor responded defiantly with a kind of military pageant that was truly bizarre for such a secretive organization. The public debut of the Hercules Group is a day that not many in Matamoros are likely to forget. A militarized strike force onstage, attired in all black with faces smeared in black as though prepped for a nighttime raid. Behind them, a royal blue backdrop with the city’s logo and its slogan “Land of Progress.” Before them, and a head shorter than the rest, Mayor Salazar at the lectern attired in militant black beret and matching uniform with Hercules Group emblazoned in Spanish above one breast pocket and her last name stitched above the other.

“We are all Hercules,” Mayor Salazar told the assembly of reporters and well wishers that day, “defending our city from the trenches.” In her remarks, the Hercules Group was synonymous with peace and safety. But the president of the state chamber of commerce said it was nothing more than a personal security detail for the mayor and her secretary of social welfare, a wealthy and scandal-ridden automobile importer named Luis Biasi. The mayor and Biasi are a popular topic of gossip in Matamoros. She somehow retained him despite an embarrassing customs raid on a warehouse of his in January that turned up cases of contraband beer, whiskey, and cigarettes. Then in August, the Mexican IRS fined both of them for a scheme to import used cars from the United States and sell them in Mexico as a part of an ill-defined public-welfare program. The worst kept secret in Matamoros is that Biasi and Mayor Salazar are more than colleagues. The president of the state chamber of commerce went a step further and accused Biasi of being the real power behind the Hercules Group. “We don’t understand how the secretary of public welfare can go around deputizing police. Are you the secretary of public welfare or the commander of the Hercules Group?” the chamber president intoned in the press.

Thousands of Mexicans blocked the access to Acapulco airport on Monday in protest at the authorities' handling of the case of 43 missing students.

The demonstrators clashed with police and blocked the entrance to the airport for three hours.

Officials said on Friday that gang members had confessed to killing the 43 students and burning their remains.

Relatives say they will not believe they are dead until independent forensic tests confirm it.

Protesters in Mexico have set fire to the governing PRI party's offices in south-western Guerrero state to vent their anger at the official handling of the case of 43 missing students.

Their disappearance more than six weeks ago from the town of Iguala has sparked a series of sometimes violent protests.

Officials say local gang members have confessed to killing the students and burning their bodies.

But remains found nearby have not yet been matched to the missing.

About 1,000 people marched in the Guerrero state capital, Chilpancingo, before unrest broke out.