War on illegal drugs

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Kidnap capital...

Mexican fury grows at kidnappings
Monday, 11 August 2008 - Mexico public's faith in police dives amid abduction epidemic

The kidnapping and murder of a 14-year-old boy has caused national outrage in Mexico. Fernando Marti was abducted in June. His decomposed body was found in the boot of a car in Mexico City this month, even though his family had reportedly paid a ransom. The murder of the teenager, who belonged to a wealthy family that co-owns Mexico's largest chain of sports stores, was shocking enough in itself.

But the impact of his death was compounded by the news that a number of police officers, including a police commander, have been arrested in connection with the case. Television, radio, newspapers and the internet have been filled with people's reactions to Fernando's killing. The emotions expressed recall four years ago when Mexico saw huge marches amid a similar sense of insecurity provoked by rising crime. A new demonstration is already planned for later this month, with tens of thousands expected to attend.

'Repugnant excuses'

Jose Antonio Ortega, president of the Ya Basta (Enough is Enough) organisation, spoke for many when he said: "Yet again, [we see] police officers implicated in abductions and other atrocious crimes, repugnant excuses and lies from ministry officials and prosecutors, and the fake consternation and empty promises of governors and politicians."

His comments have resonance because they enforce two widely-held views here. First, that crime is endemic. And second, that the country's various police forces are deeply corrupt. Fernando Marti's death is not just a personal tragedy for his family. It has become a political issue as well. "Either I could risk a few scratches by jumping out of the car, or I would go with them. I chose to jump" - 'Adriana', kidnap victim

More BBC NEWS | Americas | Mexican fury grows at kidnappings

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Druglords gonna be runnin' Bolivia pretty soon...

Bolivia to sideline U.S. in anti-cocaine war
Tue Aug 12, 2008 - Frustrated by the way the United States spends money to fight cocaine production in Bolivia, the government has decided to take over the program, the country's anti-drug tsar said on Tuesday.

"We're planning to nationalize the war against drug trafficking," Felipe Caceres told Reuters. "We will still welcome cooperation in the future, but the Bolivian government will decide how that money will be spent." "It's a question of sovereignty, of dignity," added Caceres, President Evo Morales' deputy minister of social defense and controlled substances.

Caceres, who like Morales owns a plot for growing coca, the raw material used to make cocaine, advocates cultivation of the plant for traditional uses such as making tea and fighting altitude sickness and hunger. But as South America's poorest country distances itself from its colonial past with Morales' reforms and seeks to break away from U.S. influence, the government also wants to be the leading voice in the domestic war against narcotics.

Bolivia is the world No.3 cocaine producer after Colombia and Peru. The United States has contributed about $25 million to interdiction efforts this year. It also funds programs to encourage coca farmers to switch to alternative crops like peppers, bananas, citrus fruits and coffee.

More Bolivia to sideline U.S. in anti-cocaine war | Special Coverage | Reuters

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Corrupt officials on the cartel's take...

Mexico anti-drug officials worked for cartel: government
Wed Aug 13, 2008 - Six members of a government crime-fighting unit have been arrested on suspicion of working for a powerful drug cartel run by the country's most-wanted man, the attorney general's office said on Wednesday

The officials, who focused on organized crime, are accused of passing crucial information about anti-drug operations to the Sinaloa cartel from Mexico's Pacific coast. It is led by kingpin Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman. The suspects gave the information to a part of the cartel that has recently turned on Guzman, the government said.

That internal conflict has sparked a surge in the drug-related violence that has killed some 2,000 people in Mexico this year. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has made crushing drug gangs the main goal of his six-year term, sending troops across Mexico on taking office in December 2006.

But drug violence has spiraled as rival gangs fight for control of lucrative smuggling routes into the United States. Endemic police corruption has further complicated efforts to rid Mexico of cartels, with some police officers moonlighting as drug hitmen and kidnappers.

Mexico anti-drug officials worked for cartel: government | International | Reuters

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Mass killings in Mexico...

23 slayings in 24 hours in drug war
August 15, 2008 - AT least 23 people died in the most violent 24 hours in recent years in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua.

The toll included nine people slain during a prayer service. A gang armed with AK-47s sprayed the mass in a drug rehabilitation center with bullets on Wednesday in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, killing eight patients and their minister, police said. At least five people were seriously injured in the shooting, as violence escalated in Mexico's northern border regions where drug gangs are fighting for territory. After the shooting, the assassins calmly passed security forces, who did nothing, said a statement from the municipal office of public security, quoting witnesses. Two people were also killed in a nearby rehabilitation centre last weekend.

Meanwhile, 14 others were found dead yesterday in separate incidents in Chihuahua state, eight of them in volatile Ciudad Juarez. They included a local police officer and a lawyer murdered execution-style in his office. Police found two bodies in a house where drugs were being stored, and four others lay in the street with bullet wounds. Ciudad Juarez is the battleground in the power struggle between the Sinaloa drug cartel, headed by fugitive Joaquin "El Chapo'' Guzman, and the Juarez cartel, led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

Since last Friday more than 60 people have been murdered in the town, which has registered 780 homicides so far this year. The battle for control of the US border expands throughout Chihuahua state, and five men were kidnapped and later murdered yesterday in state capital Chihuahua town, the local prosecutor's office said. Another man died in hospital from bullet wounds. Federal authorities have sent more than 36,000 soldiers across the country, including 2500 in Ciudad Juarez, to combat drug trafficking and related violence. Some 2000 people have been killed so far this year.

23 slayings in 24 hours in drug war | NEWS.com.au

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Mexican police deal with drug lords
Thursday 14th August, 2008 - In Mexico, six anti-drugs unit specialists have been roped in on conspiracy charges.

The men have been arrested on suspicion of having passed on police information to the notorious Sinaloa drugs cartel.

The Sinaloa cartel is one of the most powerful in Mexico, and is led by the country's most wanted man, Joaquín Guzman, who is sometimes nicknamed 'shorty'.

For years Mexican drug gangs have been at war with each other and with the government. This year alone 2,000 people have died in the violence.

Mexican police deal with drug lords

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Is Mexico losing the drug war?...

Mexico's drug killings 'soaring'
Sunday, 17 August 2008 : Drug-related killings in Mexico already exceed last year's total despite the deployment of 30,000 troops, reports say.

The Mexican newspaper, El Universal, said 2,682 people across Mexico had been killed since the start of this year, compared to 2,673 in 2007. The northern state of Chihuahua on the US border was by far the worst hit. President Felipe Calderon pledged to curb drug-related killings when he came to power in December 2006.

Troops deployed

According to El Universal, more than one-third of this year's drug-related killings occurred in Chihuahua, where one 20-day period saw 326 murders. The state has been hit by 1,026 deaths since January, including 780 in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, where local drug gangs are battling the powerful Sinaloa cartel. On Wednesday night, gunmen killed eight patients and injured six others in an attack on a drug rehabilitation centre in the city.

About 40 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Ciudad Juarez in the past week. In other states, drug-related violence killed 516 people in Sinaloa, 159 in Baja California, 134 in Guerrero and 117 in Michoacan, El Universal reported. Mexican authorities have deployed more than 36,000 soldiers across the country since 2007, including 2,500 in Ciudad Juarez, in an effort to combat drug trafficking and drug-related violence.

Last week, the authorities launched an anti-kidnapping squad amid public anger over the abduction and killing of a prominent businessman's son. The decomposed body of Fernando Marti, 14, who was kidnapped in June, was found in the boot of a car in Mexico City even though his family had reportedly paid a ransom.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Mexico's drug killings 'soaring'

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Drug Trafficking Spurs Violence On U.S. Border...

Tijuana: Where the 'Drug War' Is Real
Aug. 19, 2008 - Calderon Government Declares Drug Cartels National Security Threat

In Mexico, the "war on drugs" isn't just an expression people use. Half an hour drive from San Diego in frontier towns like Tijuana, it's a war zone. Authorities are fighting a bloody battle against the drug lords. Since the beginning of the year, more than 1,500 people have been killed, a third of them members of the military and police officers. "This is a war, and in a war, you have tragedies," Tijuana Police Chief Alberto Capella said. "And we are not finished paying the costs." Capella had a near miss, himself, when drug lords showed up at his home in November. He said 20 gunmen laid siege to his house in the middle of the night, firing 250 shots.

"The noise is incredible, incredible noise," he said. "They start shooting, and when I saw my room, it [was] illuminated from the bullets." Capella shot back at them and survived, earning the nickname "Tijuana's Rambo" for his bravery. The violence has been fierce for 18 months, ever since Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels. Calderon has said that drug trafficking is more than a crime -- it is a national security threat that affects the safety of the country's institutions and people. He has enlisted the army, deploying 25,000 troops along the border with the United States, to stop smugglers. It is estimated that $40 billion worth of narcotics are moved across the border and hit America's streets each year.

But "this is a two-way street," Mexican criminal justice expert Jorge Chabat said. "We send drugs and you send arms to Mexico, which are used by drug traffickers. Obviously, they commit a lot of crimes with these arms," he said. While the violence between traffickers and the authorities is on the rise, that is just one aspect of the increasingly bloody drug war in the region. Traffickers have been killing one another and there has also been fighting within cartels, themselves.

More ABC News: Tijuana: Where the 'Drug War' Is Real

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Implants to counter kidnappings...

Implants help track kidnap victims
August 22, 2008 - WEALTHY Mexicans, terrified of soaring kidnapping rates, are spending thousands of dollars to implant tiny transmitters under their skin so satellites can help find them tied up in a safe house or stuffed in the trunk of a car.

Kidnapping jumped almost 40 per cent between 2004 and 2007 in Mexico, according to official statistics. Mexico ranks with conflict zones like Iraq and Colombia as among the worst countries for abductions. The recent kidnap and murder of Fernando Marti, 14, the son of a well-known businessman, sparked an outcry in a country already hardened to crime. More middle-class people also are also seeking out the tiny chip designed by Xega, a Mexican security firm whose sales jumped 13 per cent this year.

The company injects the crystal-encased chip, the size and shape of a grain of rice, into clients' bodies with a syringe. A transmitter then sends signals via satellite to pinpoint the location of a person in distress. Cristina, 28, who did not want to give her last name, was implanted along with seven other members of her family last year as a "preventive measure." "It's not like we are wealthy people, but they'll kidnap you for a watch ... Everyone is living in fear," she said.

The chips cost $US4000 plus an annual fee of $US2200. Most kidnappings in Mexico go unreported but independent analysts say there were 6500 abductions last year, many of them "express kidnapping" where the victim is grabbed and forced to withdraw money from automatic cash machines. Official statistics show 751 kidnappings in Mexico last year but most abductions go unreported and the crime research institute ICESI says the number could have been as high as over 7000 in 2007.

More Implants help track kidnap victims | NEWS.com.au

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Mexico Outraged Over Corrupt Police, Kidnappings
Aug. 21, 2008 - Mexicans Call For Death Penalty Against Police Involved In Deadly Kidnappings

After kidnappers in police uniforms set up a fake checkpoint to snatch 14-year-old Fernando Marti off a Mexico City street, his businessman father paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom, and waited for his son's safe return. Instead, the boy and his driver turned up dead, their bodies found in car trunks. Days later, prosecutors alleged that a police detective was a key participant in the kidnapping plot.

Suspicions of police involvement in such kidnap-killings have moved a nation where many had grown numb to kidnappings and the drug cartels' beheadings and midday shootouts. Mass street protests are planned in several cities. Some lawmakers are even changing their minds about opposition to capital punishment, saying police who kidnap and kill should be put to death. "They should put their eyes out, so they can't commit any more crimes," said Ignacio Noriega, a 26-year-old university student who says he no longer feels safe anywhere. "Prison isn't a solution anymore. They just form their own gangs inside prison and come out stronger."

Mexico has one of the world's highest kidnapping rates, according to the anti-violence group Pax Christi, and the problem is only getting worse. Kidnappings are up 9.1 percent this year, averaging 65 per month nationwide, according to the Attorney General's Office. The prosecutor's office blames a growing web of drug cartels, cops, former cops and informants who point out potentially lucrative victims. Official numbers vastly understate the problem, since most kidnappings go unreported for fear of the police.

The nonprofit Citizens' Institute for Crime Studies determined the actual kidnapping rate to be more than 500 per month after surveying Mexicans about unreported crime. Fully 86 percent said they had little or no trust in their local police in the 2006 survey, which was released on Wednesday.

More http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...n4368923.shtml

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Druglords killin' the police chiefs...

Mexico police chief, 10 others killed by gunmen
24 Aug 2008, The Hidalgo state police chief was kidnapped and shot to death, a police officer was killed in southeastern Tabasco state and nine people were murdered in northern Chihuahua state, local officials said on Saturday.

The relentless killing spree in Mexico has claimed the lives of more than 2,700 people so far this year, despite a crackdown by authorities against drug trafficking and kidnapping gangs and organized crime in general. In the latest violence, Hidalgo state police chief Raymundo Zamorano was kidnapped at gunpoint while patrolling the streets of Pachuca in his official car late on Friday, state public safety secretary Damian Canales said. Zamorano's bullet-riddled body was found on Saturday 60 kilometers (96 miles) outside the city, he added.

Another police officer was gunned down outside a police station in the Tabasco capital of Villahermosa by hitmen in three pickup trucks, a state public safety official told radio Formato 21. Another police officer was wounded in the shooting. In Chihuahua state, where most of the killings take place, nine people were killed on Saturday, eight of them in the Ciudad Juarez, state officials reported.

Violence has escalated throughout Mexico since President Felipe Calderon, who took office at the end of 2006, launched a crackdown on drug trafficking that included deploying more than 36,000 soldiers across the country. Ciudad Juarez -- across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas -- has the highest murder toll of the country this year, with 867 killed, according to a count. The Juarez drug cartel is fighting a turf war for control of Chihuahua state and its key drug routes to the United States with the Sinaloa cartel, from the neighbouring state further south.

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Heads rollin' in Mexican drug war...

Decapitated bodies found near Tijuana
August 26, 2008 -- Wave of mostly drug-related violence has swept Mexico; Three decapitated bodies found on empty lot outside Tijuana; Heads nearby and appeared to have been burned

Three decapitated bodies were found Tuesday in an empty lot outside Tijuana, the federal attorney general's office said. Officials said the bodies had messages on their backs, but would not give details about what the notes said. Witnesses said the bodies had their hands tied behind their backs. The heads were found nearby and appeared to have been burned.

The killings were the latest in a wave of mostly drug-related violence that has swept Mexico. Cartels have turned to decapitating their victims as a way to intimidate their rivals. Another decapitated body and a man who had been stabbed to death were found Monday on the outskirts of Tijuana.

Nearly two years ago, President Felipe Calderon launched a nationwide battle to take back territory controlled by some of the world's most powerful drug gangs. Cartels have responded with unprecedented violence, especially along the U.S.-Mexico border.

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Thirty Percent of New Border Agents Leave Their Jobs in Less Than 18 Months
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - Border Patrol Struggles to Keep Newly Hired Agents

Law enforcement officers wanted: must work graveyard shifts alone in remote towns along the Mexican border, put in long hours and perform well in triple-digit temperatures. That message is never touted in U.S. Border Patrol recruitment brochures, but the sobering reality of working on the border has created an environment in which about 30 percent of agents leave their jobs in less than 18 months.

"This has complications up and down the line," said Richard Stana, director of homeland security issues at the Government Accountability Office. "You're constantly in a recruiting mode ... If this population keeps churning, you're constantly training." The Border Patrol's struggle to keep new hires has become more evident as the agency comes close to meeting President Bush's target of 18,000 agents by the end of the year, up from 12,000 two years ago and double the number from eight years ago. The hiring surge means 42 percent of agents have less than three years on the job.

The GAO estimates that taxpayers pay $14,700 for each trainee at the Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, N.M. That 2006 figure doesn't take into account the many additional hours that senior agents spend training hires during a two-year probationary period. Money aside, a revolving door means a large percentage of the force will always be inexperienced. "You've got to fill the slots, but you want quality people who are not going to leave," said Jeremy Wilson, associate director of RAND Corp.'s Center for Quality Policing. "You don't want to spend time and resources on someone if they're just going to up and leave."

More http://www.cnsnews.com/public/conten...x?RsrcID=34705

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Wave of protests follow Mexico's crime spike...

Mexicans rally nationwide against crime
30 Aug.`08 - Activists plan marches in every state, testing Calderon's presidency

Hundreds of thousands of frustrated Mexicans, many carrying pictures of kidnapped loved ones, marched across the country Saturday to demand government action against a relentless tide of killings, abductions and shootouts. The mass candlelight protests were a challenge to the government of President Felipe Calderon, who has made fighting crime a priority and deployed more than 25,000 soldiers and federal police to wrest territory from powerful drug cartels.

Cries of "enough" and "long live Mexico" rose up from sea of white-clad demonstrators filling Mexico City's enormous Zocalo square. The protesters held candles twinkling in the darkness as they sang the national anthem before dispersing. "I've had enough. Kidnapping, corrupt police, a rotten judicial system," said Ricardo Robledo, a 43-year-old music producer who said he had been robbed numerous times. "This may begin a change."

City officials refused to give a crowd estimate, but the Zocalo can hold nearly 100,000 people. Tens of thousands overflowed into the surrounding streets, unable to squeeze into the square. Thousands more protested in cities across the country.

'We're desperate'

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8 US citizens among Mexico border city deaths this month: Consul
31 Aug 2008, Eight US citizens were killed and five wounded in attacks in the volatile northern Mexico border city of Ciudad Juarez in August, the US consul in Mexico said on Friday.

"During the month of August they (hitmen) killed eight US citizens and injured five more on this side of the border," said Raymond McGrath at a meeting on border issues in Ciudad Juarez. Violence has escalated throughout Mexico since President Felipe Calderon, who took office at the end of 2006, launched a military crackdown on drug trafficking and related attacks, but nowhere more than in Ciudad Juarez. The city has had an average of four murders a day this year, according to police and news reports, which increased to eight a day in the month of August.

The consul did not give names of the US citizens or details of their deaths, but said they "were not direct targets of the violence." Of some 2,700 murders across the country this year, official figures this week showed almost 1,000 have been in Ciudad Juarez -- across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas -- including three in the most recent attacks on Friday. The US government in April warned its citizens to be careful in Ciudad Juarez and along the rest of the US-Mexico border, but McGrath recommended that they avoid the area completely if possible due to "a higher risk of violence" than before.

"Although Mexican citizens are the main victims of these crimes, the uncertain security situation also implies a risk for US citizens," he said. Between January and the end of August, some 946 murders were reported, including 110 police, according to official figures, in the city of some 1.5 million. Some 5,000 families are reported to have fled Ciudad Juarez since the start of the year.

The Juarez drug cartel is fighting a turf war for control of Chihuahua state and its key drug routes to the United States with the Sinaloa cartel, from the neighbouring state further south. The deployment of 2,500 soldiers in Ciudad Juarez, part of the federal deployment of more than 36,000 across the country since Calderon took office at the end of 2006, has so far failed to stem the violence.

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