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UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF VIOLENT GROUPS (www.isvg.org) DAILY BORDER NEWS REPORT FOR 15 NOVEMBER 2011
COMPILER, INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF VIOLENT GROUPS (www.isvg.org) EDITOR, JOINT TASK FORCE NORTH (www.facebook.com/USA.JTFN)
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Compiled By: Mr. Tom Davidson, Institute for the Study of Violent Groups Edited by: Mr. Jonathan Kaupp Approved for Release by: Dr. Rodler Morris
CONTENTS: (Note: All active EXTERNAL hyperlinks have been removed)
Table of Contents CONTENTS ...... 1 1. CANADA AND NORTHERN BORDER STATES ...... 3 A. Four Arrested in Border Jump Attempt (BC) ...... 3 B. Report Faults Border Patrol on Bus and Train Searches (NY) ...... 4 C. Canada Border Guard Sentenced to Five Years in U.S Jail (WA) ...... 6 D. RNC Talks Drug Raids (NL) ...... 6 E. Drugs Found in Vehicle (BC) ...... 7 2
F. Pot Bust Shocks Linden Woods (MB) ...... 7 G. Oxycontin Smuggling from Canada Rises Sharply (ON) ...... 8 H. Adirondack Drug Task Force Seizes Trafficking Money (NY) ...... 10 2. INNER UNITED STATES ...... 11 A. [Iowa Senator]: [AG] Refusing To Provide 11 Witnesses for Fast and Furious Interviews (DC) ...... 11 B. Union President Gives Congress Emails Backing Testimony: ICE Ordered Agents Not To Arrest Illegals (DC) ...... 12 C. Drug Kingpin Wanted Mexico City Attack To Retaliate against U.S. Crackdown, Feds Say (IL) ...... 13 D. Heroin Bust Is Wilkes’ Largest (NC) ...... 15 3. MEXICO AND SOUTHERN BORDER STATES...... 16 A. Roundup: A Look at News South of the Border (US/MX) ...... 17 B. Face of Anonymous Flees North as Drug Cartels’ War on Bloggers Heats Up (TX) ...... 18 C. Summary of Events (MX) ...... 19 D. Mexico Military Personnel Get Long Terms in Civilian Killings (SIN) ...... 22 E. Mexico’s Los Zetas Cartel Buying Heavy Weapons in Central America (TAMPS/NL/SLP) ...... 23 F. Mexican Drug Cartel Tries To Silence Internet (NL) ...... 25 G. Arrests in 3 Murder Cases: Police Say Victims Were Targets of Cartels (NL) ...... 27 H. Sex Offender Caught Entering Country (NM)...... 27 I. Nogales CBP Officers Make Significant Drug Seizure (AZ) ...... 28 J. Convicted Child Abuser Banned from US for Life (AZ) ...... 29 K. State Governor’s Nephew Slain in Northern Mexico (COAH) ...... 29 L. Bloody Thursday in Culiacan (SIN) ...... 30 M. Culiacan Update (TAMPS/VER/GRO) ...... 31 N. Mexican Norteno Singer Shot Dead by Gunmen in Sinaloa (SIN) ...... 33 O. Mexico's Interior Minister Killed in Helicopter Crash (DF) ...... 34 P. Mexican Soldiers Uncover Drug Bunker in Camargo (TAMPS) ...... 36 Q. Mexican Army Burns More Than 36 Tons of Marijuana (TAMPS) ...... 37 R. Socorro on High Alert (NM) ...... 37 S. Feds Use More Unmanned Aircraft To Secure US-Mexico Border as Drug War Violence Continues (AZ) ...... 38 T. Money-Laundering Case Speaks to Border Fears (TX) ...... 40 U. Nuevo Leon, Mexico “Commander Chaparro” Los Zetas! Arrested! (NL) ...... 42 3
V. Mexico Helicopter Crash Caused by Foggy Weather, Government Says (MEX) ...... 43 4. CARRIBEAN, CENTRAL, AND SOUTH AMERICA ...... 44 A. Violence in Nicaragua after Ortega Election Victory (NI) ...... 44 B. Bolivia Restores Ties with US, But Rejects DEA (BO) ...... 46 C. Washington Nationals Catcher Wilson Ramos Rescued after 2 Days Kidnapped in Venezuela (VE) ...... 46 D. Nicaragua Forces Seize 1½ Tons of Drug, Slay 4 Traffickers (NI) ...... 47 E. Lynchings Up 500% in Guatemala Since 2004 (GT) ...... 48 F. Trinidad and Tobago Drug War Crackdown Just a Reprieve (TT) ...... 49 G. Lobo May Grant Policing Powers to Military (HN) ...... 50 H. Colombian President Calls for Global Rethink on Drugs (CO) ...... 51 I. Police Wrest Control of Rio's Largest Slum (BR) ...... 53 J. Ex-Ruling Party Wins Violence-Scarred Mexican Race (MICH) ...... 55 5. OPINION AND ANALYSIS...... 56 A. US Predicts Return to Caribbean Drug Trafficking Routes...... 56 B. Mexican TCO Members Quietly Living among Us - for Now (TX/TAMPS) ...... 57 C. Documents Reveal Confirmation Prosecutors Knew Abuse 'Victim' Lied (TX) ...... 59 D. 'Twitter Manifesto' Confronts Gang Threats to Mexico Bloggers (NL) ...... 62 E. Mexico Drug-War Deaths May Have Peaked (BC/CHIH)...... 65 F. Mexico under Siege ...... 66 G. Buses Becoming Preferred Medium of Terror Attacks: US Intelligence (US) ...... 68 H. Never- Ending Drug War Moves to Central America (CR) ...... 68 I. Facing Attacks by Cartel Hit Men, Twitter Users Refuse To Go Silent (NL) ...... 70 J. INVASION USA (TX) ...... Error! Bookmark not defined. K. Cuba's Spy Apparatus, a Conduit of Latin America Insurgency (CU) ...... 72 L. Colombia: America’s Other Border (CO)...... 74 M. Nation’s Spies to Help in Fight against Narco Cartels & Other Illegal Marijuana Growers in States (CA) ...... 76
1. CANADA AND NORTHERN BORDER STATES
A. Four Arrested in Border Jump Attempt (BC)
9 November 2011 4
Vancouver Sun
Abbotsford police arrested four men for jumping the border into Canada Monday around 2130 hours near Gladwin Road.
With the help of a canine unit and American border patrol's Black Hawk helicopter, the men, with ages ranging from 22 to 36 years old, were arrested and held overnight in Abbotsford before being transferred to the custody of the Canada Border Services Agency.
Const. Ian MacDonald of the Abbotsford police said the group may have come from Central America, but that one man said he was originally from Cameroon and another claimed he was originally from Ethiopia. He said they deal with potential border breaches on a weekly basis, and about every three weeks they catch someone who crossed the border illegally.
There are three main types of border jumper, MacDonald said. The first are day-trippers or hikers who "are well aware of the fact that they are in close proximity of the international boundary - they're simply hiking or on a few occasions they're having a bit of fun with the fact that there's just a ditch separating the two countries."
There are also the criminals, who cross the border moving drugs, guns and contraband, the majority of which are from North America, he said.
The four men recently captured most likely belong to a third group, said MacDonald. These are "people who are seeking to make a better life for themselves or their families through migrant work."
Source: [www.vancouversun.com/Four+arrested+border+jump+attempt/5680030/story.html] Return to Contents
B. Report Faults Border Patrol on Bus and Train Searches (NY)
8 November 2011 NY Times
For years, Border Patrol agents have been boarding domestic trains and buses in upstate New York, often many miles from the Canadian border, inspecting passengers’ IDs and arresting illegal immigrants.
Officials have said the checks are an important component of border security and the fight against terrorism, noting that agents have jurisdiction to enforce immigration laws within 100 miles of the border.
But immigrant-rights advocates have countered that the tactic is unconstitutional and akin to racial profiling, and represents a shift from the agency’s principal mandate of policing the border. 5
Now a new report, to be released Wednesday and based on four years of Border Patrol arrest data from the Rochester area, provides the first in-depth public analysis of the practice.
About three-quarters of those detained during transportation raids between 2006 and 2009 had been in the country for at least a year, and 12 percent had been in the country for more than 10 years, according to the report, which was prepared by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University’s law school.
Only 1 percent of the people detained had been in the country for less than three days, and less than 1 percent were caught as they entered the country. The report used data released by Customs and Border Protection, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, through Freedom of Information Act litigation, its authors said.
“The data paints a disturbing picture of an agency resorting to mission creep in order to increase arrest rates, without regard for the costs and consequences of its practices, including to its own mission to protect the border,” the report concludes.
A spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, said Tuesday that she could not comment on the report because its authors had not yet provided a copy to the agency.
Last month, The Associated Press, citing unnamed Border Patrol sources, reported that the agency had “quietly” stopped the transportation searches. The spokeswoman said Tuesday that while the agency had reduced its transportation checks as part of a shift in strategy, it had not ceased them.
“It’s not that we’re stopping them,” she said. “We’re just trying to be smarter about how we do it.” Agents are “being more efficient” with intelligence, she said.
The change appears to be in line with a general shift in the administration’s approach to immigration enforcement, which now focuses deportation efforts on immigrants who have committed serious crimes or who are deemed a threat to national security.
The advocacy director of the New York Civil Liberties Union said a decrease in transportation checks was “a potentially positive development.” But he said he still wanted to know how transportation checks would be carried out, and expressed concern that agents would now shift their efforts “further from public view, like individual encounters on the street rather than on buses and trains.”
In other findings, the report asserted that Border Patrol agents in the Rochester region “widely violate” agency rules that require a person other than the arresting officer to evaluate the case and determine the legal course of action. In 77 percent of transportation arrests between 2006 and 2009, the same officer conducted both the arrest and the evaluation, the report said.
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Among a list of recommendations, the authors urged the agency to cease sweeps on trains and buses and to limit its activities to the border. In addition, the report said that if agents continued to engage in “interior enforcement operations,” they should respond only to “specific suspicion of unlawful activity.”
Source: [www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/nyregion/border-patrol-searches-faulted-in-new- report.html?_r=2] Return to Contents
C. Canada Border Guard Sentenced to Five Years in U.S Jail (WA)
11 November 2011 The Indo-Canadian Voice
A Canada Border Services Agency border guard who helped cocaine traffickers smuggle drugs into B.C. has been sentenced to five years in a U.S. jail, followed by four years of supervised release.
Jasbir Singh Grewal, 40, was handed the term in Seattle by a U.S. court on Friday. Grewal who lived in Abbotsford pleaded guilty in July to one count of conspiracy to export cocaine from the U.S. into Canada.
Also charged in connection is a Rapinder (Rob) Sidhu, a former RCMP officer who is currently on trial in Surrey for allegedly impersonating a police officer to illegally access information about the Bacon brothers gang.
Source: [www.voiceonline.com/2011/11/11/canada-border-guard-sentenced-to-five-years-in-u- s-jail604/] Return to Contents
D. RNC Talks Drug Raids (NL)
12 November 2011 VOCM First News
Routine traffic stops and home raids are just two ways RNC members take drugs off the streets. Police in St. John's have seized a quantity of cocaine and tens of thousands of dollars in cash as a result of drug busts during November alone. RNC Constable Suzanne FitzGerald says their drug investigators also have to consider other forms of drug transfer, such as smuggling by air or by boat. She says where there is a method of transportation, there is a method that a drug trafficker is willing to exploit. She says that is why the investigative units have to be on top of things and work with other organizations, like Marine Atlantic and Canada Post, to help them carry out their drug raids.
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Source: [www.vocm.com/newsarticle.asp?mn=2&id=18467&latest=1]
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E. Drugs Found in Vehicle (BC)
12 November 2011 The Barrie Examiner
An expired license plate led Barrie police to a drug bust, Thursday evening.
Police say around 1730 hours, officers stopped a vehicle in the Duckworth Street and Highway 400 area and found what they believe to be a few grams of heroin and more than $10,000 in cash.
According to police, the two passengers from British Columbia were in Barrie visiting a friend and are thought to have sold the drugs in the area.
The drug was sent to Health Canada for testing.
A 27-year-old man and 30-year-old woman, both from Vancouver, were arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance and possession of the proceeds of crime.
The duo were released with a future court date and police continue to investigate.
Source: [www.thebarrieexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3367143]
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F. Pot Bust Shocks Linden Woods (MB)
12 November 2011 Winnipeg Free Press
More than 1,500 plants with a total estimated street value of $1.7 million were seized from a home at 10 Ridgebury Place, as well as equipment worth about $40,000, a Winnipeg Police Service spokesman said Friday.
"It is big, even to the (WPS) Green Team," said Const. Jason Michalyshen, the police service public information officer.
"It is a significant grow operation. The house contained plants on the upper and lower levels, and it was a very sophisticated operation."
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It was about 1930 hours when Urbanowich and his wife noticed flashing red lights and looked out to see a lot of police officers at one house on the block. "We thought it might be a break in," he said.
Ridgebury Place is a short street in a maze of streets that include long-established neighborhoods next to new subdivisions. Homes sell in the range of $400,000 to $500,000.
"You just don't see your neighbors that often," said Glenn Rogers, who was stringing Christmas lights across the front of his home Friday.
Water damage in one corner could be seen through the front window of the house.
From the exterior, it looked like any of the other homes on the street, with a grey Dodge Caravan parked in front of the two-door garage.
The one item that made it stand out was a notice from the Office of the Fire Commissioner stating, in big red letters, that entry was prohibited.
Two men, ages 27 and 25, were arrested inside the house during the Thursday raid and taken into custody. They face a number of charges, including production of a controlled substance and possession of a substance for the purpose of trafficking.
Both were released on a promise to appear in court.
Source: [www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/pot-bust-shocks-linden-woods-133736098.html]
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G. Oxycontin Smuggling from Canada Rises Sharply (ON)
14 November 2011 Globe and Mail
Americans desperate for a heroin-like high are turning to a version of the popular pain killer OxyContin smuggled in from Canada, which is easier to abuse than an updated formula available in the U.S.
The assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's operations in the state of New York said his agency has seen a sharp increase in cross-border smuggling of the prescription narcotic pills in the past year. “I’m talking about trafficking organizations that are bringing in a thousand pills or so at a time,” he said.
The medication’s active ingredient is oxycodone, a powerful opioid drug similar to heroin and morphine that is designed to be released over 12 hours. But people can get the full and 9 sometimes lethal dosage by crushing the pills and then snorting, injecting or chewing the medication.
In April of 2010, the manufacturer Purdue Pharma got approval from the American Food and Drug Administration to replace its pills in the United States with a more tamper-proof version, but a safer format will not be on the market in Canada until 2012.
The disparity between the American and Canadian product has meant premium prices – and hefty profits – in the United States for the illegal pills.
The DEA says Canadian OxyContin pills on the American black market can go for as much as $1 a milligram, or between $80 and $100 for a single pill.
By contrast, a box of 60 tablets can be bought legally with a prescription in Canada for about $300 – around $5 a pill.
“That’s a pretty substantial profit margin right there,” the agent said. “We expect to see an increase in traffic until the pills are reformulated in Canada.”
But that may take a while. Five months after the FDA okayed the new version in the United States, Purdue Pharma submitted what it called OxyNEO to Health Canada in September, 2010. It took until August of 2011 for Ottawa to grant what it calls “market authorization.”
“The tablets have been hardened by a unique process to reduce the risk of being broken, crushed or chewed,” said Randy Steffan, director of communications for Purdue in Canada.
When exposed to moisture or dissolved in water, the new pills gum up into a thick, unusable gel making snorting or injecting difficult.
But Mr. Steffan said ongoing discussions with the provinces whose public insurance programs pay for prescribed drugs will mean the new pills will be available “in the coming months.”
“It’s important to obtain Canada-wide approval for coverage of OxyNEO by provincial drug plans,” he said.
The delay has Canadian drug-abuse experts worried.
“It’s unfortunate – having it sooner rather than later is obviously what we would like,” said Beth Sproule, a clinician scientist specializing in prescription drug abuse at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. She said the high dosage of opioids in OxyContin and its vulnerability to tampering means the upsurge in abuse in recent years has been “dramatic.”
The most recent CAMH survey of Ontario students in Grades 7 to 12 in 2009 shows that almost one in five have taken opioid pain relievers for non-medical reasons – the third highest substance abuse after alcohol and marijuana.
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In the meantime, the older Canadian pills have become a hot commodity in the illegal American drug trade.
Three weeks ago, Joseph Julien of Stevensville, Ont., was arrested near Buffalo in a joint American-Canadian investigation in what prosecutors allege was “a large conspiracy” of OxyContin trafficking, involving more than 10,000 prescription pills. Mr. Julien, currently in custody in Buffalo, faces several charges of conspiracy, distribution and trafficking.
Last November, the DEA and other agencies arrested another man and woman from Ontario on charges of smuggling OxyContin across the St. Regis Mohawk Reserve and the DEA Agent said there are several “ongoing cases” still under investigation.
He said the newer American version of the pills is so unpopular among criminals that recently thieves interrupted their hold up of a pharmacy when they discovered that was all that was available.
“They just turned around and left,” the DEA agent said. “They didn’t want to be bothered.”
Source: [www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/health-news/oxycontin-smuggling- from-canada-rises-sharply/article2235080/]
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H. Adirondack Drug Task Force Seizes Trafficking Money (NY)
13 November 2011 Press-Republican
PLATTSBURGH — The Adirondack Drug Task Force has seized $2 million in Canadian currency related to international drug trafficking.
According to a news release from Plattsburgh Police Department, during September and October of this year the task force and Canadian authorities investigated the criminal movement of millions of dollars through the United States.
The release said that post-investigation, authorities found that the money was from the sale of cocaine and was being smuggled between the United States, Canada, Panama and Columbia by criminal organizations.
They also found and infiltrated a Lebanese criminal cell in Bogota, Columbia, that was directing money movement through the states to other countries, the release said.
About $2 million was seized and believed to be from the sale and distribution of cocaine in North America.
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The head of the criminal ring has not been identified, but goes under the alias of "Mike Fattal."
No further information was available at this time.
Source: [pressrepublican.com/0100_news/x1267472421/Adirondack-Drug-Task-Force-seizes- trafficking-money]
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2. INNER UNITED STATES
A. [Iowa Senator]: [AG] Refusing To Provide 11 Witnesses for Fast and Furious Interviews (DC)
10 November 2011 The Daily Caller
WASHINGTON, DC – 8 NOVEMBER: The U.S. Attorney General testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing about the controversial "Operation Fast and Furious" gun running program on Capitol Hill, on November 8, 2011 in Washington, DC. "Operation Fast and Furious" was set up to be a sting set up by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that allowed weapons to be purchased from Arizona gun shops by Mexican drug cartels to trace cross boarder gun trafficking. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The Iowa Republican Senator said Thursday that the Attorney General is continuing to stonewall congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious. This time, he is refusing to provide 11 of the 12 witnesses the Senator and the House Oversight Committee Chairman have requested be made available for interviews.
“We have requested 12 Justice Department witnesses be made available for transcribed interviews,” he said in a Thursday Senate Judiciary Committee executive business meeting. “Despite the department’s promises of good faith cooperation, only one witness has been provided so far — the former U.S. Attorney. The department has refused to schedule interviews with any of the other 11 witnesses. That is not the good faith cooperation I was promised, and it is unacceptable.”
The Senator and the Chairman are demanding to know who was involved in crafting a February 4 letter to the Department of Justice sent to Congress, which contained claims — now understood to be false — that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not allow guns to walk into Mexico.
Allowing guns to walk means that ATF agents did not interdict weapons traffickers when they had opportunities to do so, opting to track the weapons into Mexico to determine their ultimate destination. In Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF lost track of as many as 2,500 weapons, 12
assisting criminals in hundreds of murders in Mexico and the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. . . .
Source: [dailycaller.com/2011/11/10/grassley-holder-refusing-to-provide-11-witnesses-for-fast- and-furious-interviews/#ixzz1dKy5iZoF] Return to Contents
B. Union President Gives Congress Emails Backing Testimony: ICE Ordered Agents Not To Arrest Illegals (DC)
8 November 2011 CNS News
The president of the union that represents the nation’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers has provided the House Judiciary Committee and the Republican Senator from Alabama with what he says are internal ICE emails that back up testimony he gave in July and October that ICE headquarters had verbally ordered officers in the field not to arrest illegal aliens who did not have prior criminal convictions--even if they were fugitives evading deportation orders or were individuals who had illegally re-entered the United States after being deported and were thus committing a felony.
“Increasingly, ICE headquarters leadership refuses to put directives to supervisors, agents and officers in the field regarding law enforcement operations in writing,” he told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration in written testimony submitted on July 26.
“Orders and directives are given orally to prevent the activities of ICE's leadership from becoming public,” the president of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council 118, testified. “Agents and officers in the field are frequently under orders not to arrest persons suspected of being in the United States illegally.
“At times those no-arrest orders include ICE fugitives, who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge, as well as individuals who have reentered the U.S. following deportation which is a federal felony,” he testified. “Agents and officers report that they are ordered not to run criminal or immigration background checks or even speak to individuals whom they reasonably suspect are in the U.S. illegally.”
“These directives prevent officers and agents from enforcing U.S. immigration laws and prevent the apprehension of fugitives, felons and other individuals who may present a threat to public safety,” he said. “Situations in which officers and agents are ordered not to run criminal background checks or speak to individuals create an especially high risk to public safety as agents may unknowingly walk away from individuals who pose a public threat.”
When he returned to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration on 12 October, he repeated his testimony that ICE agents had been ordered not to arrest some illegal aliens.
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“Aliens who could not be arrested included but were not limited to ICE fugitives that had been ordered deported by a federal immigration judge as well as aliens who had illegally re-entered the United States after deportation, a federal felony,” he told the subcommittee.
“ICE officers and agents also alleged that they were not permitted to arrest or even speak to confirmed or suspected illegal aliens encountered in the field during operations and were prohibited from running standard criminal record checks for wants and warrants,” said the union president, who also serves as an active-duty ICE officer.
He testified in October that the House Judiciary Chairman (R-Texas) had allowed the union to “bring officers forward as witnesses” and “to turn over several internal ICE documents” backing up his previous testimony.
“I would like to thank the Chairman and his staff for working with the union regarding this matter after the July 25 hearing,” he testified. “Chairman […] provided us with the opportunity to bring officers forward as witnesses. We were also able to turn over several internal ICE documents which appear to not only verify that these activities did in fact take place, but also named several senior level ICE managers allegedly involved in issuing the directives nationwide.”
. . . .
Source: [cnsnews.com/news/article/union-president-gives-congress-emails-backing-testimony- ice-ordered-agents-not-arrest]
C. Drug Kingpin Wanted Mexico City Attack To Retaliate against U.S. Crackdown, Feds Say (IL)
12 November 2011 Borderland Beat / Chicago Sun-Times
At his mountaintop lair in Mexico, Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, the head of the world’s biggest narcotics cartel, told a Chicago drug trafficker he wanted dozens of military-grade assault weapons to stage an attack in Mexico City in retaliation against U.S. authorities who were messing with their drug business, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
“This government is letting [American law enforcement] do whatever they want,” said one of Guzman’s lieutenants, Ismael Zambada-Garcia, according to a cooperator in the case, Margarito Flores. “It will be good to send [them] a message.”
“They are f------us everywhere,” Guzman allegedly said of the government during a meeting on the mountaintop compound. “Let it be a government building, it doesn’t matter whose. An embassy or a consulate, a media outlet or television station [attack a Mexican or U.S. government or media building in Mexico City].”
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Guzman remains at large, but is a critical piece of the massive case that is headed to trial early next year in Chicago — one of the highest-profile drug prosecutions in the nation.
Guzman’s remarks were quoted in the so-called “Santiago Proffer” filed by federal prosecutors Thursday in the wide-reaching case targeting the Sinaloa Cartel. The 63-page filing gives the most detail yet about the case that charges a conspiracy involving the shipment of massive amounts of cocaine and heroin from Mexico into the United States. The newly filed papers show that twin brothers from Chicago — Margarito and Pedro Flores — will be among 10 cooperating witnesses who will testify at trial and that the government has a recorded conversation of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, allegedly asking for follow-up on plans for an explosive retaliation.
Even though Zambada-Niebla’s defense has warned it may not be prepared to begin trial in February, the U.S. District Judge has asked parties to aim for that date.
The top DEA official in Chicago has referred to Guzman “as the most dangerous criminal in the world and probably the most wealthy criminal in the world.” Authorities say his cartel has flooded Chicago with marijuana and other drugs — leading the Sun-Times last week to refer to him as “Chicago’s New Scarface.” Guzman remains on the Forbes list as one of the top billionaires in the world. The Sinaloa Cartel is among the warring Mexican drug organizations engaged in gruesome, bloody slayings that together are suspected of tens of thousands of murders in the country.
In Chicago’s drug conspiracy case, allegations here have centered on one man who is in custody at Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center — Zambada-Niebla — whom the government describes as a high-ranking leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.
According to the proffer, Zambada-Niebla ordered Margarito Flores to make it a priority to secure weapons and retaliate against the government.
“Twin, you know guys coming back from the war. Find somebody who can give you big powerful weapons, American s---. . . . We don’t need that small s---, I want to blow up some buildings. We got a lot of grenades, we got a lot of .50 calibers, we’re tired of AKs,” Zambada- Niebla allegedly said. “You’re good with me. You want to be really good with me, get me my s-- -, my guns. F--- the money, f--- the drugs, I want to blow s--- up. I want some bazookas, some grenade launchers.”
At the time, Flores had already been cooperating. He reported the conversation to a DEA agent. Authorities then recorded a call between Margarito Flores and Zambada-Niebla on Nov. 29, 2008, where they discuss the plot further, according to court papers. The government, however, then does not allege any further action with regard to a plot to blow up a building.
Zambada-Niebla’s attorney said Thursday any comment on the new filings would come in a defense court filing. Zambada-Niebla has leveled a series of charges against the United States, including that he had been cooperating with U.S. agents when they turned around and charged him.
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The Flores brothers, who are in custody, had done business with two warring drug cartels, authorities have said. Each cartel threatened the Flores brothers with violence if they did business with the other, according to the charges. The brothers approached authorities in 2008 and offered their cooperation.
Source: [www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/11/drug-kingpin-wanted-mexico-city-attack.html]
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D. Heroin Bust Is Wilkes’ Largest (NC)
11 November 2011 Wilkes Journal-Patriot
Investigators made the largest heroin seizure ever in Wilkes County and shut down a major area source of the illegal drug when they arrested a husband and wife in Wilbar about 1000 hours Tuesday, said the Wilkes Sheriff.
Roberto Torres Contreras, 38, and his wife, 42, were arrested at their mobile home on Piney Ridge Road, which is off N.C. 16 North on the Blue Ridge Mountain escarpment.
A Lieutenant, in charge of the Wilkes Sheriff’s Department’s narcotics division, said about 10½ ounces of heroin with a street value of about $20,000 was seized after a search warrant was served. He said about 95 percent of it was “black tar” heroin and the rest was brown heroin. Black tar heroin is more pure and more potent than powder heroin.
Also seized were about 9 ½ ounces of cocaine, 141 Oxycodone pills, a pound of marijuana, $20,496 in cash and a .25caliber and a 9mm handgun. The officer said the entire investigation resulted in the seizure of about $80,000.
Street values of the other drugs seized Tuesday include about $10,000 for the cocaine, about $5,600 for the Oxycodone and about $1,000 for the marijuana, which he said was grown locally. The drugs, cash and guns were seized from an outbulding near Mr. and Mrs. Contreras’ home and on their land.
The officer said a four-month undercover investigation resulted in the couple being identified as major suppliers of heroin, particularly in Wilkes, Watauga and Ashe counties, by regularly selling it from their home on Piney Ridge Road. Wilkes Sheriff’s Department investigators found a methamphetamine lab several years ago at the home, which is near Piney Ridge Baptist Church.
He charged Contreras and Mrs. Contreras with one count each of trafficking in heroin, trafficking in cocaine, trafficking in Oxycodone and felonious possession of marijuana.
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He said Contreras is an illegal alien from Mexico. Mr. and Mrs. Contreras are both listed as unemployed.
The Ashe Sheriff’s Department charged them with conspiracy to traffic heroin. They remain in the Ashe County Jail under secured bonds of $1 million each.
More state charges against Contreras and Mrs. Contreras are pending and federal charges could be filed against them. Two young women, one from Ashe and the other from Watauga, who came to the Contreras home to buy drugs while investigators were there Tuesday could also be charged.
The Sheriff said the two women had numerous needle marks on their arms, apparently from injecting heroin. He said one of them had an abscess (severe infection) on her arm that likely resulted from using an unsanitary needle.
The sheriff said authorities have seen heroin trafficking increase in the southeastern United States in the last 10 years, starting in urban areas and then spreading to rural areas.
Only recently have authorities detected an increase in heroin trafficking in Wilkes, he added. “It probably took it so long to come into Wilkes because of the prescription drug problem here,” he said, referring to the illegal sale of prescription painkillers like Oxycodone.
Law enforcement officials report that illegal drug users have become attracted to heroin with a higher purity level than in the past.
According to a July 2009 news release announcing the federal indictment of seven men for conspiracy to distribute heroin in the Western District of North Carolina, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported a 77 percent increase in heroin seizures in North Carolina in 2007-08.
The charges resulted from a continuing investigation of black-tar heroin by a multi-agency Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force involving federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. Over 2 pounds of black tar heroin from Mexico were seized when the DEA arrested the seven men.
A 2009 U.S. Department of Justice report said Mexican drug trafficking organizations were actively trying to expand heroin distribution in new market areas.
Source: [www.journalpatriot.com/news/article_8d5410bc-0c99-11e1-a016-0019bb30f31a.html]
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3. MEXICO AND SOUTHERN BORDER STATES
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A. Roundup: A Look at News South of the Border (US/MX)
11 November 2011 Tucson Sentinel
A roundup of news coverage from the Mexican side of the border, with stories from websites in Sonora, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, and Mexico City.
Only a day after Human Rights Watch denounced the Mexican government's handling of the drug war, the Washington Office on Latin America said that the Merida Initiative, the main program through which the U.S. government helps the Mexican government fight the drug cartels, had actually generated more violence, rather than diminishing it, reported El Imparcial on Thursday.
Along the border, U.S. Customs at the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales found 3,000 pounds of marijuana hidden among watermelons on a truck, reported Nuevo Día on Thursday. Authorities in Nogales, Sonora burned nine metric tons of marijuana and other drugs on Wednesday, reported Nuevo Dia. The drugs were left over from seizures made recently by local, state, and federal law enforcement. Law enforcement capitalized on a tip and seized more than 1,200 pounds of marijuana on its way from Hermosillo to Nogales, Sonora, reported Nuevo Día on Thursday.
In national news about the drug war, six law enforcement officials in the state of Aguascalientes were arrested for allegedly helping drug cartels move their product. No names were released, reported El Diario de Juarez on Thursday. Ovidio Limon Sanchez, considered by the Drug Enforcement Agency to be one of Chapo Guzman's top lieutenants, with a $5 million reward for his capture, was caught in Culiacan, Sinaloa, reported El Universal on Thursday. Community news
The federal police officers stationed in Agua Prieta, Sonora are annoying local residents by parking their trucks in more than one parking space, reported El Periodico de Agua Prieta. Photos taken last Friday show a federal police truck taking up at least two spots while apparently the driver went into a convenience store for some sodas. A few days later, an elite unit of the Mexican federal police was photographed searching random people on the streets of Agua Prieta, reported El Periodico de Agua Prieta.
A man was killed by machine gun bullets in the streets of Nogales, Sonora late Sunday night, reported Nuevo Dia. Two triple-murders, in separate locations in the state of Chihuahua, were reported by El Diario de Juarez on Thursday.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection inaugurated a new system designed to speed up the process of going through checkpoints at the border in El Paso. In the new system, pedestrians can use identification cards equipped with radio frequency chips, reported El Mañana on Thursday.
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The National Forestry Commission warned residents of Mexico's northern states that the dryness of the past few months has created the conditions for fires from now until December, reported El Imparcial on Thursday.
The number of Mexicans living abroad who registered to vote in Mexican elections rose 239 percent since 2005, reported El Imparcial on Thursday. Mexican officials received 2,963 registrations, with 97 percent of them coming from Mexicans living in the United States.
The Mexican government announced a plan to keep shoppers on the southern side of the border during Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and reputedly the most hectic shopping day of the year, reported El Mañana on Thursday. Mexican shoppers will be able to take advantage of discounts on a wide array of goods so that they keep their business in Mexico.
Representatives from Atlas Advertising, Inc. met with business leaders and politicians in Nogales, Sonora to discuss how to make the city more attractive to investors, reported Nuevo Dia.
In two weeks, bidding will begin on the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Juarez to Chihuahua. The construction is expected to begin early next year at a cost of $600 million, reported El Diario de Juarez on Thursday.
Mexican President Calderon pushed for more agricultural production in greenhouses, saying that it was a more profitable way of farming and would spare Mexican farmers from losing their crops due to freezes, as happened last year, reported El Imparcial on Thursday.
Ivan Barona will meet with the Secretary of Communication and Transportation on Friday to show good faith in his offer to invest $400 million to save the state-owned airline, El Universal reported on Thursday.
Standard & Poor's elevated its economic risk rating for Mexico. Part of the reason for the change was the vulnerability of the Mexican economy to the economic cycles of the United States, El Diario de Juarez reported on Wednesday.
Source: [www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/111011_borderroundup/roundup-look- news-south-border/] Return to Contents
B. Face of Anonymous Flees North as Drug Cartels’ War on Bloggers Heats Up (TX)
10 November 2011 Gawker
The man known as “the face of Anonymous”, made CNN last week with bold taunts of the Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas. Now he is booking it north. Probably a good idea, judging from the gruesome news out of Mexico. 19
He was the public face of the hacktivist collective Anonymous' botched anti-drug cartel operation, Opcartel. Opcartel planned to avenge the alleged kidnapping of an Anonymous member by leaking the identity of dozens of Zetas collaborators using stolen Mexican government emails. “Give us back our #Anonymous participant or many of you die within a week," he tweeted on 2 November.
Nothing came of OpCartel, which was called off after Anonymous announced the cartel had miraculously returned their missing member. Still, the Anonymous representative feels that he is in enough danger that he is high-tailing it out of his Dallas home, whose address he says has been made public online by some of the many enemies he has made during his career as an informal Anonymous spokesman.
"I've got ex-military people releasing info on me and family. Have to leave Texas," he tweeted. "Anyone who can buy me ticket to NYC/Boston and have me pay them back in month, let me know. [email protected] Home no longer secure."
But what about the six-figure advance he says he got for his upcoming book? He told D Magazine that he does not get the advance for another month or so. Seems like he will not need the money: According to a tweet, members of OccupyDC fronted the cash for a ticket to New York.
(We called Amazon, which is publishing his book, to confirm the sum but have not heard back.)
Makes sense. If it were me, I would be hiding out on an isolated drilling platform in Alaska by now. Just yesterday, a man was discovered decapitated in the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo; taped to his body was a note warning users of an anonymous message board dedicated to tracking drug cartel movements. It is the fourth drug cartel death in three months in Nuevo Laredo associated with bloggers and social media.
Even with the Zetas breathing down his neck, the Anonymous spokesman did manage to fit one last live-streamed bubble bath in before he left.
Source: [gawker.com/5858405/face-of-anonymous-flees-north-as-drug-cartels-war-on-bloggers- heats-up] Return to Contents
C. Summary of Events (MX)
11 November 2011 Blog Del Narco
**Asterisk denotes death involving a police officer or a member of the military serving in that capacity.
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HIDALGO, NUEVO LEÓN
A well-known local dentist, 61 years old, left his home on Monday 11/7, and came between a group of gunmen and the Mexican Army. He was hit with several bullets, and rescued by the military, but died at the hospital.
CULIACAN, SINALOA*
A Municipal Police officer was shot and killed by a group of assassins on Tuesday afternoon 11/8.
MONTERREY, NUEVO LEÓN*
A State Police Officer was shot and killed inside his patrol unit at about 8 am on Tuesday morning, 11/8. He was identified as Jose Luis Castillo Valerio, aged 50, who had 26 years with the State Police and an impeccable record. The assassination occurred near an elementary and kindergarten school. Narco banners were then hung on his car. A mother bringing her children to school was gravely wounded, and is fighting for her life in a hospital. The shooting was in front of the home of Aldo Fasci Zuazua, former Secretary of Security for the state. A police spokesman was quick to say there had been no threats against Aldo Fasci, and “it was just a coincidence”. But Aldo Fasci said it was a message to him, and he did not know who was responsible, if it was a cartel or the Federal government.
The controversial former official gave a press conference where he said he received a message, from the State of Nuevo Leon, saying the head of the PGR (Attorney General’s office) was upset with him, and asking him to “tone it down”. It is noteworthy that Aldo Fasci was responsible for representing the citizens who were affected in the Casino Royale case, which he investigated and put pressure on the authorities to tell the truth, as some officials have claimed that the situation will be forgotten. Aldo Fasci, also said he will continue working, but stated that he is already “dead” thanks to the threats he has received, and adding that the execution took place today outside his home. The former official said, “The message is for me.”
SALTILLO, COAHUILA
The violence continues in the city, as several clashes were recorded between cartel and the military on Tuesday the 8th. The 3 clashes resulted in a ‘red alert’ to warn residents. There are unconfirmed reports that 3 suspects were killed and 2 soldiers wounded.
ALLENDE, NUEVO LEÓN
A Jehovah Witness preacher was executed in his truck along a roadway. He was enroute to preach at El Alamo. 21
STATE OF MEXICO
Tuesday, 11/8, the Attorney General for the State of Mexico announced the arrest of Alejandro Chavez Moreno, alias Alex, who is identified as chief killer of La Mano con Ojos cartel. The 33 year old man admitted to participating in at least 70 executions, and said many of the victims were beheaded, all with the purpose of maintaining control of the group. Also captured were Manuel Chavarria Hernandez, alias El Jarro, 35, and Jorge Perez Pastelín, aka El Pastllito, 41.
ACAPULCO, GUERRERO
As part of Operation Guerrero Seguro, Federal police captured 5 members of CIDA, or the Cártel Independiente de Acapulco. The five were involved in or selling drugs.
CARBO, SONORA
The Federal Police received a call of a drug load on a train, coming from Hermosillo and stopped it near this town. Recovered from one of the cars was 630 kilograms of marijuana in 60 packages. Three men sent with it to guard it were detained.
MEOQUI, CHIHUAHUA
An attorney was driving his car when he was intercepted by gunmen, who then assassinated him. His body was left in the car. He was the brother of the head of Civil Protection in Delicias, Chihuahua.
JILOTLAN DE LOS DOLORES, JALISCO
The Mexican military located and dismantled 2 narco labs. One was located here, where they found 4 kilos 700 grams of chemicals to manufacture synthetic drugs, 49 drums, each with capacity of 200 liters, 20 tanks of gas, seven stills, four dryers, three water tanks, each with a capacity of 5,000 liters, two boilers, a weighing machine, and a dryer with 200 kilograms of marijuana, a long gun and 10 cartridges. Then in Jamay, Jalisco, the military on routine patrol discovered another lab with two kilograms of methamphetamine, 100 grams of Crystal, just over a kilo of chemicals to manufacture synthetic drugs, five plastic containers, each with a capacity of five liters, three steel vats with capacity of about one thousand liters, three metal stills with a capacity of approximately 200 liters, two tanks of gas, and other diverse material. In San Miguel el Alto, Jalisco, soldiers were able to locate a person who had 50 doses of Crystal, 50 grams of synthetic drug, a kilo 500 grams of marijuana, a long weapon, 23 rounds of ammo, a fragmentation grenade, and a vehicle.
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MADERA, CHIHUAHUA
The military announced on Thursday that on Monday a narco camp was discovered, and the forces seized 14 long guns, five fragmentation grenades, a thousand 844 cartridges, 58 magazines, and three late-model vehicles.
MARIN, NUEVO LEÓN
Authorities received an anonymous call on Wednesday 11/9, reporting 2 dead men. The bodies were at a property taken by force by gunmen, and had been burned. Investigators said they could find the remains of more victims.
GALEANA, NUEVO LEÓN
Military forces found 30 pieces of various mutilated persons scattered in the brush, and three industrial drums with ashes, hair and pieces of skin near here. Dozens of shell casings from AK- 47’s were also found.
Spanish Source: [www.milcincuenta.com/]
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D. Mexico Military Personnel Get Long Terms in Civilian Killings (SIN)
4 November 2011 Los Angeles Times
Human rights activists Friday welcomed a rare prison sentence for Mexican military personnel in the killing of civilians but said they continued to mistrust the army to prosecute its own.
The 14 soldiers and army officers were sentenced to long prison terms for the shooting deaths of five women and children at a checkpoint in the state of Sinaloa four years ago.
The Defense Ministry, in a statement on the verdict, described the shootings as "a regrettable error." Nevertheless, a military court handed out punishments ranging from 16 to 40 years in prison plus monetary fines.
This may be the first time such stiff sentences have been imposed on military personnel in a civilian-death case, said Jose Rosario Marroquin, director of Mexico's Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center.
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"Our data indicate there have never been firm sentences," he said. "But this is still not cause to celebrate. We persist in our demand that this type of case be heard in civilian courts."
The number of human rights atrocities blamed on the military — including killings, torture and the forced disappearance of civilians — has soared since the start of President Felipe Calderon's war against drug cartels five years ago. But few cases have been prosecuted.
Most are relegated to military courts where they tend to languish without resolution. Mexico's military has been under intense pressure to show that it can mete out justice when it comes to abuses committed by its personnel.
International human rights groups, as well as the regional Inter-American Court of Human Rights, have long demanded that cases involving abuse by the military of civilians be prosecuted by civilians. In July, the Mexican Supreme Court concurred, ordering all such cases be transferred to civilian courts. But it is a slow process.
In the Sinaloa case, the family of Adan Abel Esparza was traveling in a pickup truck in June 2007 when, according to the army, they failed to stop at a military checkpoint. Soldiers opened fire on the vehicle, killing three children aged 2, 4 and 7 and two women.
It was a period when the army's role in the drug war was still a relatively new phenomenon, and military roadblocks were often established in unexpected places.
The Defense Ministry, in its statement, said a military tribunal sentenced the officer in charge that day to 40 years in prison for homicide and related crimes; another officer received a 38-year term, while 12 soldiers were each sentenced to 16 years.
The statement was made public Thursday night and said the sentences had been handed down last week. It did not identify the military personnel by name or rank.
An estimated 45,000 troops are deployed across the country to combat powerful drug-trafficking cartels.
Source: [www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-soldiers-shooting- 20111105,0,7865498.story]
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E. Mexico’s Los Zetas Cartel Buying Heavy Weapons in Central America (TAMPS/NL/SLP)
11 November 2011 Latin American Herald Tribune
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MONTERREY, Mexico – Los Zetas, Mexico’s most violent criminal organization, is purchasing heavy weapons in Central America for use in clashes with army soldiers, the Defense Secretariat says.
Sources from the 4th Military Region, responsible for security in the northern states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas and San Luis Potosi, told EFE Thursday that Los Zetas and other criminal gangs are purchasing “anti-armored-vehicle rockets and armaments.”
These weapons, believed to be leftovers from the armed conflicts that plagued Central America between the 1960s and 1980s, are being sold on the black market.
According to the same sources, Mexican organized crime gangs still lack the training to use the heavy weapons in clashes with security forces.
Los Zetas, which is led by fugitive Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, alias “El Lazca,” and has its stronghold in northeastern Mexico, has spread its tentacles to Central America.
That band of special forces deserters turned outlaws started out as the armed wing of the Gulf drug cartel, but ended that relationship in March 2010 to go into business for itself and is now at war with its former bosses.
Authorities say Los Zetas have increasingly turned to kidnapping and migrant-trafficking rackets and have a strong presence in Guatemala, where they slaughtered 27 hired hands at a ranch in May.
The 4th Military Region presented a final report Thursday on Operation Scorpion, launched on Aug. 28 to weaken the command, financial, operational and logistical structures of organized crime gangs in Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Tamaulipas states.
During the operation, launched after an arson attack on a casino in the northern industrial city of Monterrey that killed 52 people, the army seized four rockets and seven anti-tank weapons, as well as 28 grenade launchers and 345 grenades.
Security forces also detained 1,093 people and killed 112 suspected criminals in clashes that also left two soldiers dead and 18 others wounded.
They also confiscated 3,099 weapons, 9 boats, 1,355 vehicles, including 62 armored cars, more than 50 tons of marijuana, 11.7 million pesos ($866,666) and $910,000 in cash and more than 735,000 liters (almost 195,000 gallons) of fuel.
Scorpion led to the arrest of Carlos Oliva Castillo, Los Zetas’ purported No. 3 and an alleged mastermind of the arson attack on the Casino Royale, carried out because the gaming establishment’s owner refused to pay protection money in an extortion racket the gang was running.
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Also detained in the operation were Marco Garza de Leon, the purported Los Zetas chief in several Nuevo Leon municipalities, and Jose Garcia Casino, that cartel’s boss in San Luis Potosi.
A total of 1,500 soldiers deployed to Monterrey’s metropolitan area after the casino massacre will be redeployed throughout the four states of the 4th Military Region, the Defense Secretariat said.
Shortly after taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderon gave Mexico’s military the lead role in the struggle with the well-funded drug cartels.
Since his inauguration, drug-war violence has claimed nearly 50,000 lives nationwide. EFE
Source: [www.laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=14091&ArticleId=439507] S Return to Contents
F. Mexican Drug Cartel Tries To Silence Internet (NL)
10 November 2011 El Paso Times
MEXICO CITY—Mexico's hyperviolent Zetas drug cartel appears to be launching what may be one of the first campaigns by an organized crime group to silence commentary on the Internet.
The cartel has already attacked rivals, journalists and other perceived enemies. Now, the target is an online chat room, Nuevo Laredo en Vivo, that allows users to comment on the activities of the Zetas and others in the city on the border with Texas.
Already, three apparent site users have been slain, and a fourth victim may have been discovered Wednesday, when a man's decapitated body was found with what residents said was a banner suggesting he was killed for posting on the site. Chat room users said they could not immediately confirm the victim's identity, because people all post under aliases.
Despite such precautions, users are highly vulnerable, and the Zetas could be tracking them from clues they leave online, experts said Thursday.
A female chat room user was found decapitated in September with a similar message as the one found Wednesday and at the exact same spot, with a message signed with the letter "Z," which refers to the Zetas. Residents could not fully read the latest message, because the dead man's body was laid on top of it, in what appeared to be a more hurried execution.
"I don't know of anything like this having happened anywhere else in the world," said Jorge Chabat, an expert in safety and drug trafficking at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico. "It is certainly new and worrisome ... it is a frontal confrontation against the public; it is not just a confrontation with the government anymore." 26
Drug cartels in Mexico have frequently attacked traditional print newspapers, by tossing explosives at their offices or killing, kidnapping or threatening reporters. Violence against journalists in Tamaulipas state, where Nuevo Laredo is located, has led local media to censor themselves, leaving residents on their own to separate fact from pervasive rumors spread on social networks.
Juan Carlos Romero, who helps lead the press freedom group Article 19, said local newspapers have often stopped publishing crime reports out of fear, leading residents to turn more to the Internet for information like that posted Thursday on Nuevo Laredo en Vivo: where gunshots have been heard, where vehicles suspected of carrying cartel lookouts have been seen, which streets are safe to travel.
"What are people doing in the face of the lack of information, the kind of information you need to make decisions: Where can I drive? Can I leave the house?" said Romero. "People are forging new channels of communication on the Internet, social networks, Twitter, blogs, Facebook."
Drug cartels appear to have learned that such Internet sites reach far more readers than northeastern Mexico's small regional newspapers and have adjusted their attacks accordingly.
"We are witnessing a new behavior of criminal forces in the country," said Erick Fernandez, a communications professor at the IberoAmerican University in Mexico City. "We are in a new phase."
Romero agreed. "It appears to me that organized crime is trying to get common citizens to stop real-time coverage of violence," he said, saying that "the intimidation is having a multiplier effect."
Some of the site users vowed to forge on despite the two decapitations and the September slayings of two other people whose bodies were found hanging from an overpass in Nuevo Laredo with a message threatening: "This is what will happen" to trouble-making Internet users. That message was also signed with a "Z."
"I am ready to lay down my life for the cause, if the soldiers take heed of my reports ... (if) the risk (serves) for something," said one user who posted under the tag "Anon5182."
Despite heightened security awareness among the site's users Thursday, with warnings not to share personal information with anyone, they remain tremendously vulnerable, the chief executive of the San Diego, California-based security firm Critical Assets.
A trail of information like cookies, server addresses, login and account information was easily visible for some users.
"I know enough about (one user) that I'm uncomfortable with how much I know about (him) just from visiting the site," said the security expert. "Just from having looked up information about him, the number of things I know about the guy is pretty staggering." 27
He said it would be relatively easy, with the money the Zetas have from running drugs, to track down posters.
"If you're a Mexican cartel with hundreds of millions of dollars, there certainly are security experts in Mexico or former hackers, or whoever they are, that I'm certain they're for hire," he said.
Source: [www.elpasotimes.com/juarez/ci_19308041] Return to Contents
G. Arrests in 3 Murder Cases: Police Say Victims Were Targets of Cartels (NL)
10 November 2011 Pro 8 News
Ten people have been arrested as a result of a long investigation by police. Authorities say the suspects are all involved in one way or another with three separate murder cases and at least one kidnapping case. Our reporter has the details, including what led to the deaths of the three men.
Laredo Police are saying, today, that all three murders were hits ordered by drug cartels and their suspects had been going back and forth from Nuevo Laredo. Six arrests were made after a raid Wednesday morning adding to four more made in the last few weeks. Police say all 10 suspects are connected in one way or another to three 2010 murders and the kidnapping of a woman that same year. The three men were all murdered within the span of four months last year, ordered hits by cartels.
Police say the investigation was time consuming and frustrating, but information gathered from that kidnapping arrest helped break the cases wide open. Last week, investigators agreed to conduct a raid and caught all suspects they were looking for. A seventh person was arrested for possession of cocaine and marijuana. Police say the cases are not closed and arrests are pending.
The Police Chief says, as long as Mexico continues having a high rate of criminal activity, Laredo may also see cases like these three murders. He says the role of law enforcement is to prevent these crimes and solve cases when they do happen.
Source: [www.pro8news.com/news/local/Ten-Arrested-In--133572708.html] S Return to Contents
H. Sex Offender Caught Entering Country (NM)
9 November 2011 Las Cruces Sun-News 28
LAS CRUCES - A convicted sex offender was caught by U.S. Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection Office of Air and Marine personnel when he allegedly tried to enter the United States illegally on Tuesday.
At approximately 1530 hours agents working near the Ysleta Port of Entry in El Paso were advised by Air Interdiction agents of illegal activity in the area. Border Patrol agents assigned to the station swarmed the area and arrested 24-year old Arturo Alvarez Sanchez and a 16-year old juvenile.
Both allegedly admitted to being citizens of Mexico entering the United States illegally.
When their biographical and biometric information was entered into the Integrated Automated Identification System, it was revealed that Sanchez had been convicted for criminal sexual contact of a juvenile.
Sanchez was processed for prosecution and removal and booked into the El Paso County Detention Facility, while the 16-year old juvenile was formally removed from the United States.
Source: [www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_19303953] Return to Contents
I. Nogales CBP Officers Make Significant Drug Seizure (AZ)
9 November 2011) CBP
Nogales, Ariz. - Customs and Border Protection officers assigned to the Tucson Field Office, a component of CBP’s Joint Field Command-Arizona, seized almost 3,000 pounds of marijuana worth nearly $1.5 million discovered Monday evening hidden in a shipment of watermelons.
Nogales CBP officers referred a 44-year-old Mexican man for a non-intrusive X-ray inspection of his Volvo truck when he attempted to enter the United States at the Mariposa Commercial Port. The X-ray operator noticed an anomaly in the shipment, prompting a physical inspection. Officers then discovered 128 bundles of marijuana weighing 2,981 pounds co-mingled with the produce. The marijuana and tractor-trailer were processed for seizure. The driver was arrested and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations.
Source: [www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/news_releases/local/11092011.xml]
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J. Convicted Child Abuser Banned from US for Life (AZ)
10 November 2011 Arizona Daily Independent
Refugio Alvarez-Olivan, who was previously convicted in 1996 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, for battery to a child and three counts of second-degree sexual assault, was sentenced to 70 months in prison last week for attempting to re-enter the United States illegally after his apprehension on 18 May.
Alvarez-Olivan, a 45-year-old man from Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico, was apprehended by Tucson Station Border Patrol agents in May. During processing at the Tucson Station, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System revealed that Alvarez-Olivan was previously convicted in 1996.
Records also indicated Alvarez-Olivan was previously deported from the United States through Brownsville, Texas, after serving a nine-month sentence. Following initial processing, the Border Patrol submitted the case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for re-entry of a felon. Alvarez- Olivan will be formally removed from the country following his 70-month incarceration.
Source: [www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2011/11/convicted-child-abuser-banned-from- us.html] Return to Contents
K. State Governor’s Nephew Slain in Northern Mexico (COAH)
11 November 2011 Latin American Herald Tribune
MEXICO CITY – A nephew of the interim governor of the northern Mexican state of Coahuila was murdered, authorities said Friday.
Jorge Torres McGregor, the 21-year-old nephew of acting Gov. Jorge Torres Lopez, was fatally shot while driving his pickup truck in Saltillo, Coahuila’s capital, state Attorney General Jesus Torres Charles told Televisa television.
The attack occurred shortly after 2130 hours Thursday near the campus of the University of the Valley of Mexico, where the victim was studying law.
Assailants in another vehicle intercepted Torres McGregor as he was passing a gas station and opened fire on his truck with assault rifles, witnesses said.
Security cameras at a nearby shop did not capture any images of the assault and no one has claimed responsibility for the killing, the attorney general said.
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“We think it’s a murder perpetrated by organized crime. We are carrying out the work to determine which of the groups” was behind the deed, he said, noting the lack of any evidence to indicate that Torres McGregor was killed over a traffic incident or personal grudge.
The attorney general declined to speculate about the possibility the murder was intended as some kind of message to Torres Lopez, who succeeded Gov. Humberto Moreira in January when the latter became the national chairman of the main opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
Torres Lopez will step down 1 December in favor of Ruben Moreira Valdes, Humberto’s brother, who won the 3 July gubernatorial election.
At least one person died this week in three days of clashes between gangland gunmen and army troops in Saltillo and neighboring Ramos Arizpe. EFE
Source: [www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=442717&CategoryId=14091 Return to Contents
L. Bloody Thursday in Culiacan (SIN)
11 November 2011 Borderland Beat
The killings that have rocked the Sinaloa cartel stronghold of Culiacan since the murder of Pancho Arce "El Artista" on 31 October continued into this week with the murders of 9 persons Thursday night, 10 November.
Arce was a high level grupo Antrax criminal, reportedly being fourth in the group's hierarchy (Arce was also known as "El Cuatro"). Grupo Antrax is one of several paramilitary type organizations that are loyal to the Sinaloa Cartel.
The murders and attacks that occurred Thursday may have been reprisals by Antrax gang members, but who the targets of the violence are is uncertain. The people of Culiacan fear that the violence may grow completely out of control in an already violent city.
Thursday night, gunfights were reported in at least five different areas of the city. Local news sources and the authorities reported that a gunfight in the colonia Felipe Angeles resulted in the deaths of four men and the wounding of two others. Some residents of the area stated that the gunfight included grenades and lasted about an hour, and that the number of dead and wounded was higher.
Thursday afternoon three men were executed in the colonia Miguel Hidalgo. The victims were shot at close range with AK-47's. Two of the men died at the scene of the shooting and a third man died shortly after reaching a hospital.
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Thursday morning the decapitated bodies of two youths were found wrapped in plastic bags on a dirt road in the Tres Rios area. Both youths had been abducted a day earlier from an OXXO convenience store.
Source: [www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/11/bloody-thursday-in-culiacan.html]
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M. Culiacan Update (SIN)
13 November 2011 Borderland Beat
As deadly cartel violence is leveling off in Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Guerrero due to ongoing heavily reinforced military operations in those states, Culiacan has become the latest Mexican plaza to explode to levels of extreme violence and insecurity.
This weekend saw at least another 11 execution style murders and multiple armed clashes throughout Culiacan and neighboring communities.
Sunday morning at approximately 0730 hours the bodies of three unidentified men were discovered alongside a reservoir in the community of San Pedro, located on the outskirts of Culiacan on the road to Navolato.
The men were bound and showed evidence of severe torture before being shot and killed with what authorities said was a "matapolicia" high powered FN Herstal firearm due to the presence of seven 5.7x28mm empty cartridge cases at the scene.
A memorial service was held Sunday morning at the headquarters of the Sinaloa State Police (Policia Estatal Preventiva) for Officer Rafael Castillo Segoviano of the PEP's Grupo Elite.
The police officer was murdered Friday night during an attack by unknown gunmen on a Grupo Elite patrol vehicle that had stopped at an Oxxo convenience store in the Pradera Dorada sector of Culiacan. Another police officer, a private security guard and a Universidad del Occidente professor were wounded by gunfire during the attack.
The professor of economics and business administration, Gustavo Oswaldo Lopez Reyes age 44, suffered a head wound and died of his injuries Saturday in a local hospital.
Culiacan's academic community was in shock over the loss of their companion professor.
In the words of Aaron Sanchez, rector of the Universidad del Occidente, "This is a loss that hurts us deeply. This is a difficult, complex situation. Unfortunately we are living at a time when this can happen to any of us at any minute."
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Victor Antonio Corrales, rector at the Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa, added, "What is happening to teachers outside of the university classrooms is lamentable. What we have is a situation where our citizens can no longer travel with any security, without the fear of being killed."
The private security guard, who remains unidentified, is in critical condition and may not survive.
More than 100 rounds of AK-47 AND AR-15 ammunition were fired at the victims of the convenience store attack, according to the crime scene investigation.
In the early predawn hours of Sunday four other men were murdered in Culiacan.
Several men were gathered outside a home in the colonia Lazaro Cardenas when armed attackers arrived and opened fire on the group. Three men died of their wounds including Diego Rivas, a well-known singer of "narco corrido" ballads that specialized in celebrating "narco cultura" and the exploits of Sinaloa cartel personalities such as Mayo Zambada, los Antrax, el Machoprieto and others.
At least four other men were wounded in the Lazaro Cardenas attack.
In addition to Rivas, the other fatalities were identified as Jefrie Olguin Garcia and Alfredo Herrera Gomez.
Another man was executed in the colonia Diaz Ordaz by gunmen who attacked him as he was arriving at his residence. The victim was identified as Francisco Araiza Jimenez.
Saturday morning the bodies of two murder victims were discovered in different areas of Culiacan.
Francisco Javier Quevedo Sánchez was found in the Lomas de San Isidro with a gunshot wound to the head. Another unidentified male body was found in the colonia Las Coloradas in the city's southside.
In the meantime Sinaloa Governor Mario Lopez Valdez vowed in a news conference to send a second Grupo Elite state police tactical team to Culiacan to help regain control of the security situation in the city.
According to the Governor the team will reach the city in two weeks when a group of 40 officers graduates from a police academy in San Luis Potosi.
"This is what the state can offer Mayor Cuen (mayor of Culiacan) and his citizens", said Lopez Valdez.
Lopez Valdez, or Malova as he is commonly known, announced that he does not intend 33
to ask the federal government for any further assistance above and beyond the Army, Marine and Federal Police forces already in the state.
"We are confident with the federal forces already in the state, we have a large deployment. We have no need to ask for further assistance"
Malova may not have been aware that the Sinaloa newspaper "El Noroeste" reported Saturday that a convoy of over 25 Federal Police vehicles, some of them armored cars, had passed through Mazatlan and were leaving the state to redeploy in Guadalajara.
According to one official in the convoy, the unit had left the northern area of the state.
Northern Sinaloa is the site of a continuous war of attrition between Sinaloa cartel cells in Guamuchil led by Orzo Iván Gastélum Cruz, el Cholo Ivan, and the "Limpia Mazatleca" faction of Beltran Leyva loyalists led by Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, el Chapo Isidro, that controls the neighboring municipality of Guasave and the area up to Los Mochis.
Malova also announced that the past few weeks had seen a dramatic decrease in crime in Mazatlan.
Source: [www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/11/culiacan-update.html]
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N. Mexican Norteno Singer Shot Dead by Gunmen in Sinaloa (SIN)
13 November 2011 Borderland Beat
Police in Mexico say three people have been killed in a drive-by shooting in western Sinaloa state.
One of those killed is Diego Rivas, a singer of narco corridos - songs glorifying drug traffickers.
Officials said gunmen opened fire on the singer and his friends in the city of Culiacan in the early hours of Sunday.
Police say musicians who celebrate the lives of drug barons often become targets for rival drug gangs.
One of Mr. Rivas' songs is an ode to Joaquin Shorty Guzman, Mexico's most wanted drug lord.
Born in Culiacan, in Sinaloa state, Mr. Rivas started singing in school contests.
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He later joined the band Arriba Mi Sinaloa, but split from them in 2006. He has since been appearing with his band Los Guaruras.
Among his best known songs are Brindo con Sangre (I Toast with Blood) and El Comander (The Commander).
Prosecutors say Rivas was singing and drinking with friends early Sunday outside a house when gunmen arrived and started shooting with AK-47 or "cuernos de chivo." Rivas and two others died and three people were wounded.
Singers of the Grupero genre of music have in the past been targeted by drug gangs.
Last year, Sergio Vega, better known as El Shaka, was shot dead only hours after he had gone on radio to deny reports he had been murdered.
And in 2007, the singer of K-Paz de la Sierra was kidnapped, tortured and murdered after performing at a concert in the western state of Michoacán.
RIVAS' ODE TO SHORTY GUZMAN “He is short of stature, but his brain is big... He is the hardest among the hard, and those who don't like him are from a rival gang... The orders are clear, says Shorty, you know what to do, and if there are any problems, you answer with goat horns (AK-47 rifles)...Shorty doesn't need to raise his voice, his words carry great power.”
Translated extract from Diego Rivas' Ode to Shorty Guzman.
Source: [www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/11/mexican-norteno-singer-shot-dead-by.html] Return to Contents
O. Mexico's Interior Minister Killed in Helicopter Crash (DF)
11 November 2011 The Telegraph
Interior Secretary Francisco Blake Mora’s helicopter came down on the outskirts of the capital, Mexico City, with at least seven other people on board.
He became the second interior minister to be killed in an aviation crash in just over three years after his predecessor, Juan Camilo Mourino, was killed in a small aeroplane crash in November 2008.
Television images showed the scattered wreckage on a hillside south of the city. There were no survivors.
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Government spokeswoman Alejandra Sota said: “Unfortunately the Interior Secretary, his collaborators and the helicopter crew were found dead.”
Blake Mora, 45, had been travelling from Mexico City to meet prosecutors in Cuernavaca, in the neighboring state of Morelos. Two other government officials were also on board. There was no immediate confirmation of the cause of the crash.
The interior secretary is Mexico’s second most senior official after the president, overseeing internal political affairs and security, making him a key figure in the battle against drugs.
He was regarded by many as an embodiment of the Mexican government’s get-tough attitude on drug dealing, publicly pledging to bring the fight to the traffickers instead of backing down.
Mexico is locked in a brutal conflict against drug cartels that has killed 45,000 people in the last five years and seen a string of high profile massacres, and beheadings and mutilations by rival drug gangs.
Blake Mora acted as President Felipe Calderon’s point man, frequently travelling to the country’s most violent and dangerous places for meetings with besieged state and local security officials.
He was appointed Interior Secretary by Mr. Calderon in July 2010 with a brief that included improving security and cracking down on widespread violence.
In April, Blake Mora pledged to step up the presence of troops and federal police in the northern state of Tamaulipas after 116 bodies were found dumped in pits near the US border.
More than a dozen suspects tied to the ultra-violent Zetas drug gang were detained in relation to the killings and some confessed to abducting passengers from buses and killing them.
At the time Blake Mora said: “Organised 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 blamed the body count on weaknesses in state government, saying there was “evidence, on the one hand, of fragile local institutions’ inability to act promptly and effectively in dealing with crime, and, on the other hand, the involvement of local security agents in crime.”
He also announced a plan to take back Tamaulipas, including the federal monitoring of transport buses.
In January he unveiled Mexico’s first national identity card, with security measures including digitalized fingerprints and iris images, to prevent criminals from using false IDs.
Blake Mora was the fourth man to serve as Interior Minister under Mr Calderon.
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Mourino, died in a plane crash in Mexico City on 4 November 2008. His small aircraft crashed, killing at least eight people and injuring dozens more. It came down next to a major Mexico City boulevard during rush hour.
Investigators concluded that Mourino’s plane had been flying too close to a much bigger jet plane ahead of it on the flight path to land at Mexico City airport, possibly causing a fatal wave of turbulence.
The last tweet on Blake Mora’s Twitter account was a tribute to Mourino on 4 November 2011.
He said: “Today we remember Juan Camilo Mourino three years after his passing, a human being who worked towards the creation of a better Mexico.”
Blake Mora also handled disasters such as flooding and the massive oil pipeline explosion that laid waste to parts of the central city of San Martin Texmelucan last year, killing at least 28 people.
A Mexican government spokesman later said the bodies of Blake Mora and seven others had been recovered. They included Interior Undersecretary Felipe Zamora.
Blake Mora started his political career in the mid-1990s as an official in his native Tijuana and served as a federal congressman through the 2000s.
Source: [www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/8885109/Mexico s-interior-minister-killed-in-helicopter-crash.html] Return to Contents
P. Mexican Soldiers Uncover Drug Bunker in Camargo (TAMPS)
11 November 2011 Valley Central
Editorial note: the original source contains a Slideshow.
The Mexican Army uncovered a drug bunker across the border from Rio Grande City on Wednesday.
Mexico's National Defense Ministry (SEDENA) said soldiers were on patrol in the small town of Guardados de Abajo, located next to Camargo.
While on patrol, they came across an underground bunker with 488 bundles of marijuana.
The drugs weighed in at more than 3000 pounds.
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The marijuana was turned over to authorities. No arrests were made.
Source: [www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=685595#.Tr29f_I2bzg] Return to Contents
Q. Mexican Army Burns More Than 36 Tons of Marijuana (TAMPS)
11 November 2011 Valley Central
Editorial note: the original source contains a Slideshow.
The Mexican Army, in conjunction with the Mexico's Attorney General's Office, incinerated more than 36 tons of marijuana in Reynosa on Thursday.
Soldiers seized the drugs in a series of sweeps over the past few weeks all along the border from Ciudad Mier to Matamoros.
The Mexican Army also incinerated nearly seven pounds of cocaine.
Once the drugs are taken in, soldiers send them to the regional Army headquarters in Reynosa.
Every few weeks, soldiers burn the drugs.
But they are quickly replaced by even more drugs, as the cartels seek to get them across the Tamaulipas border and into the Valley.
Source: [www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=685590#.Tr2-e_I2bzg]
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R. Socorro on High Alert (NM)
12 November 2011 El Defensor Chieftain
Amid an 11-11-11 threat of mass casualties "upon the people of Socorro," parents kept their kids out of school and townspeople were on high alert this Veterans Day.
A hand-printed anonymous letter sent to the Socorro Police Department on Monday stirred unrest in the city of about 9,000 residents and 2,000 students at New Mexico Tech. The letter makes two references to 11-11-11 and warns that schools, government offices and law enforcement facilities are targets of an implied bomb.
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"I will leave this earth that day but plenty of parasites will join me," the letter reads. "Prepare for mass casualties."
The Socorro Police Chief said patrols were stepped up all week and his department was at full force on Friday.
"Everybody's out," he said. "We have officers at all the schools and for the Veterans Day ceremonies at the park and the lunch at the DAV afterward, and we'll be out into the weekend."
He said the FBI is also involved in the investigation and had a presence in Socorro on Friday.
Other local agencies were immediately notified of the threatening letter and ramped up patrols.
"We've got the whole department working in conjunction with the city police," said [the] Sheriff. "We're being vigilant and watching all buildings that were threatened and working on leads."
In addition to city and county law enforcement offices, the New Mexico State Police also has an office in town, and New Mexico Tech has a campus police department.
The county seat, Socorro houses numerous government buildings in addition to the college, which has close ties with the Department of Homeland Security.
There are seven schools in the Socorro Consolidated School District, five of them inside the city limits. The school district disseminated a message to parents on Tuesday that student absences would be excused on Friday due to the threat.
The Socorro Schools Superintendent said school attendance was minimal on Friday.
. . . .
The chief said the list was narrowed to two or three persons of interest, but they were still pursuing leads and awaiting evidence.
Van Winkle said the FBI had tested the letter and envelop for fingerprints and DNA, and that the letter was being examined by a handwriting specialist.
. . . .
Source: [www.dchieftain.com/dc/index.php/news/4161-socorro-on-high-alert.html]
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S. Feds Use More Unmanned Aircraft To Secure US-Mexico Border as Drug War Violence Continues (AZ)
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12 November 2011 Newser
Two Border Patrol agents walked by a patch of brush on a remote ranch and saw nothing. But 19,000 feet overhead in the night sky, a Predator unmanned aircraft kept its heat-sensing eye on the spot. In an operations center about 80 miles away, all eyes were on a suspicious dark cluster on a video screen. Moments later, the drone operators triggered the craft's infrared beam and pointed the agents directly to the undergrowth where two silent figures were hiding.
Last week's mission was just another night out for a Predator program that is playing a larger role in the nation's border security as the U.S. Customs and Border Protection adds to its force of unmanned aircraft. The agency received its second Predator B aircraft in Texas last month and will add its sixth overall on the Southwest border when another is based in Arizona by the end of the year.
The aircraft are credited with apprehending more than 7,500 people since they were deployed six years ago. They bring the latest in military technology to one of the oldest cat-and-mouse pursuits in the country. But on the border, even sophisticated devices struggle with the weather and conditions _ just as humans do.
"I'm trying to mark. I'm looking for a hole in the clouds," said an exasperated operator as he lost his video image of a "hotspot" in a stand of trees. Cloud cover, along with crosswinds and rain, are the drones' enemies.
The aircraft can remain airborne for 30 hours though missions typically run eight or nine hours with the ground crews rotating in the control trailers. Smugglers of humans, drugs and guns are the chief prey.
The Predators, which were being used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, were introduced on the border in 2005, the year before Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on his country's drug gangs and violence along the border exploded. Since then, the aircraft have logged more than 10,000 flight hours and aided in intercepting 46,600 pounds of illegal drugs.
"It's like any other law enforcement platform," said the director of the Office of Air and Marine's Predator operation housed at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. "No different than a helicopter."
A Predator system _ the plane, sensors, control consoles and antennas _ costs $18.5 million. The craft's 66-foot wingspan stretches out from a relatively small body supported by spindly landing gear, making them appear almost insect-like. A single propeller powers them from behind, allowing for relatively quiet flights.
Inside the ground control trailer, a pilot and sensor operator sit side by side at consoles that include four screens each, a joystick, keyboard, several levers and rudder pedals. The pilot does the flying. The sensor operator works the infrared equipment and other technology under the aircraft's nose. 40
Some question whether the remotely-piloted aircrafts' impact justifies the price.
"The big knock on the UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) program ... is that it's so expensive," said T.J. Bonner, former president of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents' union. He said the money would be better spent on more boots on the ground and manned aircraft.
The Predator's touchiest missions are those that take it across the border into Mexico. A 2008 U.S. diplomatic cable posted by Wikileaks described a meeting between then Homeland Security Secretary and several members of Mexico's national security cabinet in which Mexican officials appeared to enthusiastically endorse the idea of surveillance flights. But publicly Mexican officials have been loath to speak about anything that could be perceived as impinging on the nation's sovereignty. In March, Mexican officials defended allowing U.S. surveillance flights and said a Mexican official was always present in the control room.
The Predator program now has one continuous patrolling zone from the Texas-Louisiana line, down the Gulf coast and up the border to El Centro, Calif.
U.S. Representative, D-Laredo, who pushed to add the second unmanned aircraft in Texas and eventually hopes to have six based here, called them an "extremely important" part of the border enforcement mix of agents and technology.
"At that height out there, they can cover so much territory," he said.
Arizona will add its fourth Predator in Sierra Vista to help patrol from California to New Mexico and into West Texas. Eventually, one of the Texas aircraft will receive specialized maritime radar and concentrate on searching for smugglers in the Gulf of Mexico and western Caribbean.
For now, the Predator's greatest focus is along the US-Mexico border, where the drug war has increased concerns about spillover violence. They are especially valuable in night operations.
On that mission in the predawn hours Tuesday, the Predator guided agents tracking a group of six to eight illegal immigrants through thick clusters of oak trees and high grass an hour north of the Rio Grande. Seen through the agents' night-vision goggles the Predator cast a pillar of green light that illuminated two men lying in the undergrowth.
"It's awesome," a Border Patrol agent said. "It's a great asset to have here; something that made my job a little more efficient."
Source: [www.newser.com/article/d9qvbqg81/feds-use-more-unmanned-aircraft-to-secure-us- mexico-border-as-drug-war-violence-continues.html] Return to Contents
T. Money-Laundering Case Speaks to Border Fears (TX)
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12 November 2011 The Texas Tribune
LAREDO — The high walls of Alexander Estates, an affluent development nestled near this border city’s country club and golf course, were supposed to keep the narcotics world at bay. But when federal agents raided the stately home of a downtown perfume salesman in January, it reinforced a notion that is feared by Texas leaders: the drug war spillover from Mexico is much broader than shootouts and kidnappings — it is cloaked in the seemingly routine business transactions of the border economy.
Neighbors stood, mouths agape, as federal agents seized loads of cash from the home of a polite family man who acquaintances said was so concerned with the quality of Laredo schools that he moved his teenage daughters back to their native New York. Federal agents leveled an accusation that shocked other residents: that the man, 51, was a major player in the Black Market Peso Exchange, a decades-old system of laundering drug money and reinvesting it back into the economy.
According to his lawyers, who declined to make him or his family available for interviews, their client is a legitimate businessman who was entrapped by other drug-connected defendants to get lesser sentences for their own money-laundering schemes. But prosecutors contended, and a federal jury agreed in September when it convicted him on two counts of money-laundering conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to violate the travel act, that the man’s sales of millions of dollars’ worth of perfume to corrupt buyers in Mexico were fueled by greed. He knew, they said, that the underground drug economy — involving some of the world’s largest suppliers of narcotics to North America — would make him rich.
Getting Inside
The Black Market Peso Exchange has been on the federal government’s radar for years. The system was perfected by Colombian drug lords and later adopted by Mexican drug cartels: When drugs are sold in the United States, the proceeds, in American dollars, are smuggled back into Mexico or Colombia, where they are exchanged for pesos at a discounted rate.
The peso-exchange businesses then use the dollars to buy products in the United States — in this man’s case, millions of dollars’ worth of perfume — and have them shipped to purchasers in Mexico or Colombia.
The Department of Justice created a task force to infiltrate the American businesses cooperating with these money-laundering schemes, initially targeting Colombian drug dealers buying computer parts in New York, according to prosecutors. On wiretaps, investigators learned of a similar market in Mexico, this time involving American perfume wholesalers.
In Laredo, the man, an immigrant from India, was basking in financial success. He had come to the United States in 1983 and became a naturalized citizen in 1994, according to his lawyers. On a business trip to Laredo in 2000, he discovered that inland port’s gold mine: a downtown merchants sector where millions of dollars in goods and cash exchange hands every week. 42
Just a year after renting his first retail space in Laredo, he had four profitable perfume stores in the city in addition to operations in New York, Arizona and California. He was making $30 million in annual sales, his lawyer said.
Federal prosecutors, however, said that by 2009 he was an experienced money launderer for Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.
‘All Sinaloa Money’
In 2009, the Justice Department task force focused an investigation on a father and son perfume vendors in New Jersey who were accused of playing in the black market and, over a decade, netting millions of dollars. They were known for careless transactions like picking up plastic- wrapped bulk cash in parking lots behind fast-food restaurants. When they were arrested, this suspect’s name surfaced in their records, and his lawyers said they agreed to help implicate some of their business partners in order to shorten potential 20-year sentences.
Their lawyers refused to comment because their clients’ cases have not been closed.
An attorney for the suspect said the father and son tried repeatedly to draw him in, trying to give him large cash payments, which he refused. Finally, prosecutors said, he accepted. At a 2010 trade show in Las Vegas, they introduced him to someone they claimed was a perfume vendor from Baja California Sur, Mexico. The man was actually an undercover federal agent.
Source: [www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/a-money-laundering-case-in-laredo-speaks-to-the- fears-of-texas-leaders.html?_r=1]
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U. Nuevo Leon, Mexico “Commander Chaparro” Los Zetas! Arrested! (NL)
14 November 2011 WordPress
The Navy Secretariat of Mexico (Semar) arrested the alleged deputy chief in charge of the criminal group Los Zetas in the town of Cadereyta, Nuevo Leon, along with four others .
The institution reported that the arrest of Rigoberto Arispe Zamarripa “Commander Chaparro” of 36 years of age, derived from an anonymous tip that warned of armed individuals dedicated to making training in the vicinity of a farm located near the town of Cadereyta.
Naval personnel moved to the place where they found three armed persons who were captured, besides Zamarripa was Arispe along with Juan Luis Martinez and Juan Pérez Pérez Fidencio Saucedo of 54 and 27 years of age, respectively.
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During the inspection of the ranch, bagged and buried they located in various places on the property, eight rifles, four handguns, several magazines, ammunition and trimmings, an armored vest and 11 mobile telephones, as well as a vehicle, 15 communication devices and various effects.
In addition, an address was located in the same town, where he met this criminal group, where they apprehended José Galván Palace “The Dimas’ 43, Ruben Tijerina Nicanor Garcia “The Dumbo” of 31, who were recognized as members of this gang.
The suspects and the goods were made public to the head of the Federal Public Prosecutor of San Nicolas de los Garza, Nuevo Leon.
Source: [pikapvs.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/nuevo-leon-mexico-commander-chaparro-los- zetas-arrested/]
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V. Mexico Helicopter Crash Caused by Foggy Weather, Government Says (MEX)
Editorial note: this is a follow-up on a previously reported story.
14 November 2011 Business Week
Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) -- A Mexican helicopter crash that killed the country’s second-highest official and seven other people was caused by foggy weather and not sabotage, the government said.
The helicopter, which was carrying Interior Minister Francisco Blake Mora from Mexico City to a prosecutors’ meeting in the central city of Cuernavaca on Nov. 11, crashed in one piece, Communications and Transportation Minister Dionisio Perez-Jacome said. Radar readings show the pilot did not lose control of the chopper, he said.
“The helicopter crashed while flying in a straight line and in clouds,” Perez-Jacome said in a televised press conference in Mexico City yesterday. “There is no evidence of damage from explosion or fire.”
Perez-Jacome was making his third public comments since the incident to downplay the theory that Blake Mora, the administration’s second interior minister to die in an aviation accident, may have been the victim of an assassination attempt.
Initial concerns that the official’s death signaled an escalation of drug-cartel violence erased gains in the Mexican peso on Nov. 11, leading the currency to its second weekly decline as it closed little changed on the day.
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A team of 16 experts, including members of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration, are working on the investigation, Perez-Jacome said. The Eurocopter Super Puma, built in 1984 and acquired by the government in 1985, underwent maintenance work on Nov. 4 and 5 and was “airworthy,” he said.
Technical Problems
Helicopter co-pilot Pedro Escobar told his family prior to the crash that the chopper was having technical problems, Mexico City-based daily El Universal reported.
President Felipe Calderon called Blake Mora, 45, “one of my closest collaborators and dearest friends” at the official’s Nov. 12 funeral service in Mexico City.
The Mexican leader praised Blake Mora’s work as coordinator of his security cabinet and said he promoted dialogue between public officials and victims of Mexico’s soaring drug-cartel violence.
Calderon said the nation had been tested by other tragedies and that the death of Blake Mora would not hold up progress in his government.
Blake Mora’s death comes three years after Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino died along with security officials when their Learjet plane crashed in a Mexico City neighborhood in 2008.
Drug War
Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, who served as former President Vicente Fox’s top prosecutor against organized crime, also died in the crash, which killed 15 people. The government blamed the incident on pilot error.
The interior minister coordinates policy between Mexico’s security forces and oversees the administration’s relations with Congress, response to natural disasters and the monitoring of dissident groups.
Forty-five thousand Mexicans have been killed since 2006 and the drug war has cost the economy $120 billion in security expenditures and lost investment, according to Bulltick Capital Markets, a Miami-based investment firm that specializes in Latin America.
Source: [www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-14/mexico-helicopter-crash-caused-by-foggy- weather-government-says.html] Return to Contents
4. CARRIBEAN, CENTRAL, AND SOUTH AMERICA
A. Violence in Nicaragua after Ortega Election Victory (NI)
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9 November 2011 BBC
There have been violent clashes in Nicaragua between supporters and opponents of President Daniel Ortega, following his disputed reelection on Sunday.
At least four people were shot dead in the north of the country, police said.
The main opposition candidate - Fabio Gadea - has denounced the election result as fraud.
Official results gave Mr. Ortega of the governing Sandinista party almost 63% of the vote.
Mr. Gadea of the Liberal Independent Party came second with 31%.
European Union election observers have questioned the transparency of the vote and the independence of the electoral authorities.
"There is no doubt Mr. Ortega and the Sandinistas won the elections," the head of the EU mission Luis Yanez-Barnuevo said.
"But I am not saying that they won cleanly and transparently, because we don't know what would have happened without all these tricks and ruses," he added. Controversial bid
The worst of the post-election violence happened in two northern towns.
Three opposition supporters were shot dead in the town of San Jose de Cusmapa near the border with Honduras, and a Sandinista activist was killed in Siuna on the Atlantic coast.
There were also clashes between government and opposition supporters in the capital, Managua.
Nicaraguan police say 46 officers have been injured, including six with bullet wounds, trying to contain post-election violence across the country.
President Ortega, 65, has urged his opponents to accept the result.
He was able to stand for reelection only after the Sandinista-controlled Supreme Court overturned a ban on serving consecutive terms in the top office.
He previously ruled Nicaragua for 11 years after leading the Sandinista revolution that overthrew Dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
He returned to power in elections in 2006 after three failed attempts.
Source: [www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15668408] Return to Contents 46
B. Bolivia Restores Ties with US, But Rejects DEA (BO)
9 November 2011 Stop the Drug War
The US and Bolivian governments announced Monday that they were restoring diplomatic relations after three years, but Bolivian President Evo Morales Tuesday made it clear that DEA agents would not be welcome back in his country.
Relations between the two countries went into the deep freeze after Bolivia threw out the US Ambassador and the DEA in September 2008, charging they were interfering in domestic Bolivian political affairs. Now, in an accord signed Monday, the two countries agreed to exchange ambassadors and to undertake close cooperation in anti-drug efforts, trade and development.
That anti-drug cooperation will not include DEA agents in Bolivia, Morales told reporters at a regional conference in Bogota. It was a matter of national "dignity and sovereignty," he said, adding that he was "personally a victim" because Bolivian anti-drug police worked closely with the DEA. Those same police had clashed with coca growers and once beat him unconscious, he has said. Morales was a coca grower union leader before he was elected president.
"They repressed us in Bolivia. That has ended," Morales said. "For the first time since Bolivia was founded, the United States will now respect Bolivia's rules" and laws under the new diplomatic agreement, he added.
Coca has been grown for centuries, if not millennia, in Bolivia. The country is currently the world's third largest coca producer, behind Peru and Colombia. While much of the crop is destined for traditional or industrial uses, some is diverted to the illicit cocaine market.
US officials have said they believe cocaine trafficking is on the increase since Bolivia expelled the DEA, but that is not reflected in an expansion of the coca fields. According to the United Nations, the amount of land under coca cultivation increased only 0.3% last year.
Source: [stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2011/nov/09/bolivia_restores_ties_us_rejects] Return to Contents
C. Washington Nationals Catcher Wilson Ramos Rescued after 2 Days Kidnapped in Venezuela (VE)
Editorial note: this original source contains a video.
12 November 2011 Latin American Herald Tribune 47
CARACAS -- Wilson Ramos, a Venezuelan catcher who plays in the US major league with the Washington Nationals, was freed Friday night after being kidnapped in Venezuela's Carabobo state for two days.
Venezuelan Interior and Justice minister Tareck El Aissami hailed "the happy ending" of Ramos' ordeal.
Three men were arrested, one of them a Colombian national, during an operation that involved aircraft, the National Guard, Venezuela's CICPC (a law-enforcement agency similar to the FBI) and local police in an unprecedented show of force. Ramos never left Carabobo state and was rescued not far from where he was originally kidnapped.
This is the first time in Venezuelan history that a professional baseball player was kidnapped -- although the family of US major leaguers have been kidnapped -- and it is a harrowing reminder of the increasing crime rate. Real Madrid soccer legend Alfredo Di Stefano was kidnapped in the 1960's in Venezuela by left-wing guerrillas.
Jose Ramirez, the head of CICPC, a police agency similar to the FBI in the US, told Radio Nacional de Venezuela state radio that Ramos was taken from his mother's house in Santa Ines, Carabobo state, Wednesday night.
Ramos plays baseball in Venezuela during the US off-season, and was working out with the Aragua Tigers.
The 24 year old played his first full Major League Baseball season in 2011 and hit .267 with 15 home runs and 58 runs batted in. Ramos made a major-league minimum $414,500 with the Nationals last season.
Source: [www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=443061&CategoryId=10717] Return to Contents
D. Nicaragua Forces Seize 1½ Tons of Drug, Slay 4 Traffickers (NI)
12 November 2011 Latin American Herald Tribune
MANAGUA – Naval forces of the Nicaraguan army seized 1½ tons of cocaine and killed four drug traffickers, two of them Colombians, during an operation in the country’s northern Caribbean region, military officials said on Saturday.
A spokesman for the Nicaraguan army, Juan Ramon Morales, said that the troops carried out the operation Friday at 45.3 kilometers (28 miles) from Bilwi in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region, or RAAN.
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He said that troops of the naval force pursued and killed four drug traffickers including two unidentified Colombians and the Nicaraguans Kyrf Fernandez Evans and Johnny Chow Kingsman, who were identified by their wives.
Also impounded in the anti-drug operation besides the 1½ tons of cocaine, Morales said, were a speedboat, 8 barrels of fuel, 2 AK-47 assault rifles with ammunition clips and the magazine for an Uzi submachine gun.
The military spokesman said that the cocaine would be burned on Saturday.
According to the naval force, up to last October almost 3½ tons of drugs had been confiscated, most of it cocaine, and 43 people linked to the illegal drug trade had been arrested.
Nicaragua is geographically square in middle of the “traffic zone” for drugs produced in South America and then transported to North America where the trade is mostly handled by Mexican cartels and where the vast market of U.S. consumers is located, according to military and police forces.
Source: [www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=443159&CategoryId=23558 Return to Contents
E. Lynchings Up 500% in Guatemala Since 2004 (GT)
11 November 2011 Latin American Herald Tribune
GUATEMALA CITY – The number of reported lynchings of suspected criminals in Guatemala has increased from 25 in 2004 to 147 in the first 10 months of this year, the national ombud’s office said Friday.
The 651 instances of “people’s justice” during the last seven years resulted in 216 deaths – 47 of them in 2011 – and left another 911 victims seriously injured, according to the report.
Huehuetenango, a province of mainly indigenous people located on Guatemala’s northwestern border with Mexico, has seen 36 lynchings this year, followed by Quetzaltenango, 34; Quiche, 26; and San Marcos, with 23 reported cases.
The Guatemala bureau of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights recently expressed concern about the “alarming” increase in lynchings in the Central American country.
Lynchings are “an atrocious practice that profoundly question the ethical foundations of the society,” U.N. officials said.
Vigilante justice as a widespread phenomenon in Guatemala dates from the 1996 signing of peace accords that ended the country’s 36-year civil war. 49
The absence of police in isolated communities and pervasive distrust of the judicial system are the main reasons for the rising number of lynchings in the Central American nation, analysts say. EFE
Source: [www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=442748&CategoryId=23558
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F. Trinidad and Tobago Drug War Crackdown Just a Reprieve (TT)
10 November 2011 InSight Crime
More than 70 days after Trinidad and Tobago declared a "state of emergency" due to crime concerns, the prime minister has revoked an unpopular nighttime curfew. But the more dramatic emergency measures will remain in place, raising questions about the government's long-term strategy against crime.
Trinidad and Tobago approved the state of emergency in late August, granting police special powers to make arrests without charges and conduct searches without warrants. In parts of Trinidad deemed crime hotspots, civilians had to obey a curfew between 2300 hours and 0400 hours or risk being arrested and fined.
The government announced on7 November that the curfew is now abolished. This is one sign authorities decided to take complaints from the tourism and nightlife industry into account. If tourism, rather than the oil and gas industry, accounted for the biggest sector in the island's economy, it is doubtful the government would have been as willing to extend the night curfew for so long.
According to government figures, the crime crackdown saw the arrests of over 6,000 people, the majority held for breaking curfew hours. With just 35 murders registered between August and November, homicide rates dropped 60 percent compared to the same period last year. Other crimes like house robberies and car-jackings also saw reductions.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar added that during the state of emergency period, the government seized more marijuana and ammunition than in all of 2010.
If the aim behind the move was to increase drug seizures and prompt a temporary cessation in criminal activity, these statistics certainly prove that took place. If the other goal was to prevent a suspected battle between a Colombian and Trinidadian gang, as one government spokesman claimed, this was also apparently achieved.
But the government's decision to extend police special powers for an unstated amount of time raises questions about what are the ultimate long-term goals of the state of emergency, or if there 50
even are any. In September, Congress voted to extend the declaration for an additional three months, meaning police should lose the power to conduct warrantless searches in December. Persad-Bissessar did not say if this timetable still holds.
The costs of giving police such broad powers to carry out searches and arrests arguably outweigh the short-term benefits. Making it easier for police to round up suspects has not broken the back of the island's street gangs, but instead prompted widespread accusations of police misconduct. During the emergency period, many of those arrested for gang-related activity were later released due to lack of evidence. By making large-scale arrests a key component of the state of emergency, the government risks further alienating people from the police and filling the prison system with youths who then deepen their involvement in criminal activity.
The current crime wave is a phenomenon building up over the past decade. Trinidad and Tobago have seen rising homicide rates since 2001, when a then-record 151 murders were recorded. Most involve street gangs whose main income stems from robberies and local drug dealing. For such a long-gestating problem, it is unclear how the state of emergency will provide anything except short-term relief.
Source: [insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/1816-trinidad-and-tobago-drug-war- crackdown-just-a-reprieve] Return to Contents
G. Lobo May Grant Policing Powers to Military (HN)
12 November 2011 Honduras Weekly
A special legislative committee of the Honduran Congress has recommended to President Porfirio Lobo that he declare a state of emergency in Honduras due to the current wave of crime and violence in the country and that he interpret Article 274 of the Constitution in a way that authorizes the Armed Forces to serve in a policing capacity. The recommendations were submitted to the Public Ministry. Up to now, Honduran troops have been allowed to work jointly with police officers, providing support. A broader interpretation of the Article 274 would give soldiers the right to issue and carry out arrest orders, undertake search and seizure activities, and direct street operations. According to Congressman German Leitzelar, if the President decides to emit an emergency decree to give full policing powers to the military, the Congress would need to meet in an emergency session to ratify the decree.
The Supreme Court of Justice is expected to offer a judicial opinion later today on the constitutionality of the recommendations of the special committee. If the opinion finds in favor of the recommendations, then President Lobo would meet with members of his Cabinet tomorrow to proceed with the emergency declaration and Congress would convene on Tuesday to pass the appropriate implementation legislation.
Article 274 of the Constitution stipulates: 51
The Armed Forces shall be subject to the provisions of its Constituting Law and other Laws and regulations regulating its operation. They shall cooperate with the ministries of the State and other institutions, when requested, to work in areas of literacy, education, agriculture, environmental protection, transportation, communications, sanitation, and agrarian reform.
They shall participate in international peacekeeping Missions of peace, in accordance with international, and shall provide logistical support in the areas of technical assessment, communications, and transportation; in the fight against narco-trafficking; shall collaborate with personnel and efforts to respond to natural disasters and emergency situations affecting people and property; as well as with environmental protection and conservation programs, academic education programs, and technical formation programs for its members and others of national interest.
In addition, they shall cooperate with public security institutions of the Ministry of State in the Office of security in order to combat terrorism, arms trafficking, and organized crime, as well as to protect the Powers of the State and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, at their request, in their installation and operation.
Source: [hondurasweekly.com/lobo-may-grant-policing-powers-to-military-201111124441/] Return to Contents
H. Colombian President Calls for Global Rethink on Drugs (CO)
12 November 2011 Guardian
Colombia's president has called for governments around the world, including the UK, to debate legalizing certain drugs – even cocaine.
Juan Manuel Santos's call for an international rethink on drugs represents a significant raising of the ante in the debate on the merits of prohibition. He is the highest-profile incumbent politician to openly question whether there needs to be a comprehensive overhaul of global drugs laws.
In an interview in the Observer, Santos calls for a new approach to "take away the violent profit that comes with drug trafficking... If that means legalizing, and the world thinks that is the solution, I will welcome it. I'm not against it."
He stressed that the initiative would work only if it was co-ordinated internationally and emphasized the vital role that the UK, the US and the European Union would have to play in shaping the debate. "What I won't do is become the vanguard of that movement because then I will be crucified," he says. "But I would gladly participate in those discussions because we are the country that's still suffering most and have suffered most historically with the high consumption of the UK, the US and Europe in general."
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Significantly, Santos signaled he was prepared to go much further than many others advocating the reform of global drug laws by opening up a debate about legalizing marijuana and even cocaine: "I would talk about legalizing marijuana, and more than just marijuana." He highlighted the contradictory problems that would come with legalizing certain drugs in particular jurisdictions.
"I ask myself how would you explain marijuana being legalized in California [for medicinal purposes] and cocaine consumption being penalized in Idaho? It's a contradiction. So it's a difficult problem where you set the limits.
"For example, I would never legalize very hard drugs like morphine or heroin because they are suicidal drugs. I might consider legalizing cocaine if there is a world consensus, because it has affected us most here in Colombia. I don't know what is more harmful, cocaine or marijuana. That's a health discussion. But again, only if there is a consensus."
Danny Kushlick, head of external affairs at Transform, the think tank that advocates drugs policy reform, welcomed Santos's comments. "President Santos has shown visionary leadership, and deserves our utmost respect for consistently calling for an examination of legal regulation of drugs as a viable policy option," he said. "The ongoing tragedies in Mexico and Colombia, and the billions wasted by the US and UK, are not caused by the demand for drugs, but by the absence of regulation and control of one of the largest commodity trades on Earth."
Santos was at pains to make British consumers understand the consequences of their cocaine use "besides the blood that every sniff of cocaine produces". He said: "It's creating havoc to the environment. Cocaine is probably the worst enemy of tropical forest. Much of the deforestation that you see in Colombia, in Peru, in Brazil is because of cocaine production, coca production. So not only the blood that it creates, the violence it creates, it's destroying the world."
Santos's comments come before a high-profile Drugs Policy Reform event this week at the House of Lords.
The joint initiative between the All Party Group on Drugs, chaired by Baroness Meacher, and the Beckley Foundation, which advocates reform of drugs laws, will issue an open letter signed by leading international politicians, campaigners, economists and musicians calling for a new approach to tackling the issue. Among the signatories to the letter are former presidents of Columbia and Brazil, six Nobel Prize winners, the ex-UK Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth, the former US Secretary of State, Sting, Richard Branson and others.
The event will explore whether reforms of drug laws in countries such as Portugal could offer a credible model for the UK and other nations. It will also hear independent evidence that the legalization – and taxation –of cannabis in the UK would bring in hundreds of millions of pounds to the exchequer.
Amanda Feilding, of the Beckley foundation, said: "Improving our drugs policy is one of the key policy challenges of our time. It is time for a new approach. The war on drugs has failed. We need to break the taboo on debate." 53
Source: [www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/13/colombia-juan-santos-call-to-legalise- drugs?newsfeed=true] Return to Contents
I. Police Wrest Control of Rio's Largest Slum (BR)
13 November 2011 The Sydney Morning Herald
Crack police forces were Sunday in full control of Rio's largest favela after launching a dawn assault to eject narco-traffickers who had been ruling the area for 30 years.
"I have the pleasure to inform you that Rocinha and Vidigal (a neighboring favela) are under our control. There were no incidents and no shots were fired. We don't have any information on arrests or weapons seized," Alberto Pinheiro Neto, chief of the military police, told a news conference.
"The communities have been under our control since (1900 AEDT) and we are withdrawing our armor and, in 45 minutes, we will reopen the streets," which had been closed since 0400 GMT ahead of the operation.
Built on a steep hillside overlooking the city and located between two wealthy neighborhoods, Rocinha is home to 120,000 people.
The long-anticipated operation in a city that has one of the highest murder rates in the country is part of an official campaign since 2008 to restore security in Rio before the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, which Brazil will host.
Backed by navy troops and commandos and with two helicopters flying low overhead, hundreds of special forces police and 200 navy commandos punched their way into Rocinha and Vidigal at dawn.
"The arrival of the UPP (a police unit set up to pacify the favelas) will be positive for the new generations to put an end to narco-trafficking. I want my sons to stay away from trafficking," said 51-year-old Carlos Alberto, who was one of the few Rocinha residents willing to speak to the press.
But not everyone supported the police operation. A few women were seen crying.
All access to the two favelas has been blocked since 0230 hours (1102 AEDT).
Earlier three vehicles blocked one of the avenues in the upper part of Rocinha. Dozens of policemen in the perimeter asked journalists present in the area to remain behind as they fanned out in the narrow alleys. 54
Streets were deserted, with only a few residents watching from their windows as the troops made their advance.
"We hope the pacification will not be just about ejecting the drug traffickers but also to bring sanitation, education, health," said community leader Raimundo Benicio de Souda, known as Lima.
"There are people living (here) among cockroaches, urinating and defecating in a can," Lima told AFP, adding that for this reason "the pacification must have these people as a priority".
William de Oliveira, president of the Favelas People's Movement, wearing a shirt with the inscription "I love Rocinha, said: "We want the people to be treated with dignity, respect, that those who have been involved in crimes be jailed but not assassinated by police."
Authorities estimate that about 200 criminals remained inside Rocinha following last week's capture of local drug kingpin Antonio Francisco Bonfim Lopes, also known as Nem.
Nem was caught hidden in the trunk of a car, along with several accomplices and a few corrupt policemen who were protecting them.
Nem was a model employee of a telecom company who "stumbled" into organized crime after getting a loan from a former Rocinha drug baron to pay for medical care for one of his daughters.
To pay back his debts, he reportedly began dealing drugs and later took over as chief of the gang which controls Rocinha.
The capture of Rocinha, the 19th favela to be pacified by police, recalled the huge operation launched by joint police and military forces to seize control of Rio's Alemao favela, home to 400,000 people in November 2010.
Alemao was retaken after three days of clashes that left 37 people dead.
Since Friday, heavily armed police had been besieging Rocinha, checking all cars going or leaving the area.
Endemic and chronic urban violence has long tarnished the image of Rio, where more than 1.5 million people live in 1,000 slums spread throughout the city.
Source: [news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/police-wrest-control-of-rios-largest-slum- 20111113-1ndlm.html]
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J. Ex-Ruling Party Wins Violence-Scarred Mexican Race (MICH)
14 November 2011 AJC
With vote-counting almost complete, Fausto Vallejo Figueroa of the Institutional Revolutionary Party was nearly 3 percentage points ahead of Luisa Maria Calderon in the western state of Michoacán. The president's sister complained that drug gangs had threatened voters and poll watchers for her party, known as the PAN.
The PAN was seeking a symbolic victory in Calderon's home state, where he launched the assault against cartels in late 2006. The drug war has killed more than 40,000 people according to many estimates, although no official figures have been released in nearly a year.
The National Action mayor of the city of La Piedad was gunned down as he handed out campaign literature for Calderon and other candidates less than two weeks before Sunday's election. On the day of the vote, a newspaper in the city published an unsigned note threatening supporters of the party known as the PAN and blaming it for deaths in the wake of its military- led offensive against drug cartels.
"Don't wear T-shirts or PAN advertising because we don't want to confuse you and have innocent people die," read the note, which was also circulated by email. News reports said the newspaper had been forced to publish the warning.
Yet the city's voters shook off the threat and backed the PAN there. Its candidate got 53 percent of the vote.
The win for Vallejo's party, known as the PRI, is a major step toward regaining the presidency it lost in 2000 after governing Mexico for 71 years. Most polls show the PRI's Enrique Pena Nieto, former governor of Mexico State, leading the presidential race.
Vallejo had been mayor of Morelia, the state capital.
Michoacán has been a stronghold of the country's other major political force, the leftist Democratic Revolution Party. But its candidate, Silvano Aureoles Conejo, trailed with 29 percent and the party lost control of the state legislature, where the PRI won 11 seats, Democratic Revolution eight and PAN five.
The state has suffered dozens of drug cartel-related attacks on local officials over the past two years and Luisa Maria Calderon told the Televisa television network on Monday that drug threats and violence had influenced the election.
She campaigned on a promise to advance her brother's anti-drug campaign and led in most opinion polls going into the vote. The PAN has been hurt by a tepid economy and by voter fatigue over drug violence, a factor that weakened the PRD in its bid to hold on to Michoacán’s governorship. 56
Such violence has been a main concern in Michoacán.
Jesus Zambrano Grijalvo, president of Democratic Revolution, said organized crime gangs were pressuring sympathizers of his party not to vote in a mountainous zone plagued by drug violence. Zambrano did not go into details at a news conference Sunday.
Residents of the rural city of Cheran refused to let poll workers into their town, demanding an election they said would respect their customs and traditions. The indigenous Purepecha people who live in Cheran have in recent months wielded rifles and mounted roadblocks to keep out illegal loggers and drug traffickers.
The Michoacán Electoral Institute said in a news release Sunday that officials were still unable to carry out elections in Cheran and were determining how the 16,000 residents there will elect their leaders.
Twitter users claiming to belong to the "Anonymous" hackers movement said they were behind an attack on the website of a party backing Luisa Maria Calderon. The tweets also said hackers attacked the Michoacán Electoral Institute's website.
The PAN has yet to win a governorship in Michoacán, where Democratic Revolution has dominated since 2000.
As Michoacán’s governing party for a decade, the leftist party drew criticism for the state's drug violence, and some of its legislative candidates were accused of having close ties to drug cartels.
Source: [www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/ex-ruling-party-wins-1225440.html] Return to Contents
5. OPINION AND ANALYSIS
A. US Predicts Return to Caribbean Drug Trafficking Routes
9 November 2011 InSight Crime
A State Department official predicts that over the next few years traffickers will increasingly return to using the Caribbean to smuggle drugs into the U.S.
The assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement was in Miami for a meeting of Latin American and U.S. diplomats to discuss regional security initiatives and multilateral cooperation against organized crime.
Over the last few years increased law enforcement presence and higher interdictions along the U.S.-Mexico border have caused drug traffickers to look for alternative routes. According to the 57
secretary, a return to the Caribbean routes, which have close proximity to supply, transit and consuming countries, would be the most logical decision for these organizations.
The Caribbean was used to ship the majority of cocaine consumed in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. As authorities cracked down on smuggling along this maritime passageway, however, drug traffickers shifted operations to overland routes via Mexico.
He also warned that technological innovations -- like the increasingly sophisticated submersibles and semi-submersibles used to traffic drugs out of South America -- make interdiction more difficult and demonstrate the need for more comprehensive anti-narcotics policies.
Source: [insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/1817-us-predicts-return-to-caribbean-drug- trafficking-routes#.TrsSwV9UewY.facebook] Return to Contents
B. Mexican TCO Members Quietly Living among Us - for Now (TX/TAMPS)
Editorial note: this is contributed by a retired Air Force captain and former Special Agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations--the Homeland Security Today correspondent worked as the Latin America desk officer analyzing issues in the US Southern Command area of responsibility that might affect the security of deployed Air Force personnel. From Dec. 2005 through July 2009, she worked as an intelligence analyst for the California state fusion center and the California Emergency Management Agency's situational awareness Unit, where she focused almost exclusively on Mexican drug trafficking organizations and southwest border violence issues. Her first book, "Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars," was published in Sept.
8 November 2011 Homeland Security Today.
Brownsville, Texas is what most people would call a working-class town. It has an industrial feel and there are areas of the community that have seen better days. One of the city’s mainstays is its large port and its connection via three international bridges to Matamoros in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Driving around town, you find plenty of taquerias along with typical chain restaurants, warehouses, car dealerships, schools and other places typical for a south Texas town or Gulf Coast port city.
But there is something else that makes Brownsville - as well as the neighboring cities of Harlingen and McAllen - different from the average, small port community. And that is it is located a few hundred yards from the US-Mexico border and one of the most violent areas in Mexico.
As a result, many members of Mexico’s transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) spend a considerable amount of time in south Texas. Some even own homes, property and small businesses here. Indeed, pulling up to a stoplight at around midnight on one of Brownsville’s 58 more isolated roads you are more likely than not to have a brand-new Cadillac Escalade with expensive rims and detailing pull up next to you. It is not difficult to make assumptions about who is driving it. After all, the median annual income for Brownsville households is just under $25,000.
Several recent incidents have brought to light the fact that TCO members—some very high- ranking and some violent—are living among us in the United States, and definitely in much higher numbers along the southwest border.
In late October 2011, police officers in Port Isabel (which is just a few miles east of Brownsville) pulled over a vehicle during a routine traffic stop. To the officers’ surprise, one of the vehicle’s occupants was Rafael Cárdenas Vela, the nephew of Osiel Cárdenas Guillen, the jailed über-drug lord who headed the infamous and brutal Gulf Cartel. Cárdenas Vela also reportedly directed a faction of the Gulf Cartel called “Los Rojos.”
The officers discovered Cárdenas Vela was traveling with an authentic Mexican passport and US visa, but under a false name. He also was in the United States illegally and was accompanied by three bodyguards who were escorting him to his reputed palatial home on South Padre Island.
According to media reports, Cárdenas Vela apparently had avoided scrutiny in the Rio Grande Valley by not owning any property or assets under his name, including multiple vehicles, his South Padre Island condominium, a house in Brownsville and a 3,100-square-foot house outside Rio Hondo.
Fortunately, the routine traffic stop did not erupt into a hail of lead-slinging and Cárdenas Vela went peacefully with the officers.
[Editor’s note: Homeland Security Today recently reported that the Gulf Cartel had ordered its minions to engage US law enforcement when they are confronted]
Cárdenas Vela has received considerable criticism from fellow TCO members in Mexico who have claimed he runs his business – which is estimated to be a multimillion dollar and multi-ton marijuana and cocaine smuggling operation - from safe havens in south Texas. Someone high up in the rival Gulf Cartel faction, “Los Metros,” reportedly sold him out by providing his location in Texas to US authorities.
Cárdenas Vela is just one high profile example of TCO members who reside in the US and manage their criminal operations from here. The same week that Cárdenas Vela was pulled over by police, US Border Patrol agents near the small town of Santa Maria, Texas arrested the Gulf Cartel’s Matamoros plaza boss, José Luis Zuniga Hernández.
In a separate incident, Eudoxio Ramos García, the purported Gulf Cartel boss of the northern Mexican town of Miguel Alemán, was arrested in Rio Grande City.
There are indications that both men were in Texas to avoid being killed by rivals in Mexico.
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Also in late October, a TCO member shot a Hidalgo County Sheriff’s deputy in the chest while the deputy was investigating a possible kidnapping and drug deal. The Hidalgo Sheriff said the reported kidnapping was a bid to recover marijuana that was stolen when the Gulf Cartel's reputed second-in-command, Samuel Flores Borrego, was killed in September. One suspect was gunned down and two were wounded in the exchange of lead. Afterwards, the sheriff said, “now, there are more [TCO] members living in Texas, in the Valley, in the United States. I'll guarantee you there's a ton of them.”
The question is this: should we worry about the expanding and continuous presence of TCO members in our border communities? Authorities say it depends on what they are doing while they are here and how much US officials are willing to overlook.
A retired DEA supervisor told KRGV News in October that TCOs and their operatives are investing drug money in south Texas restaurants, meat markets and hotels.
Last year, for example, a real estate developer bought 77 pieces of property in McAllen and made an estimated $4 million from these investments. But it turned out that he was in charge of money laundering for the Gulf Cartel and had used drug money to buy the properties. He’d laundered the $4 million through two of his companies.
It is hard to deny that in today’s economic climate the infusion of millions of dollars - even if they are narco dollars - into a hard-hit local economy comes at an opportune time.
Under normal circumstances, TCO members living in the United States are typically difficult to identify because they are very good at keeping a low profile. Shootouts like the one that occurred between two members of the Gulf Cartel on a McAllen highway in mid-October are almost unheard of, as are confrontations with law enforcement like the one that happened in Hidalgo County.
But the concern is that as TCOs get squeezed more tightly by authorities on both sides of the border, the more willing they will be to engage in risky violent behavior in the United States [as Homeland Security Today reported in June].
The fact that members from rival TCOs could be living in close proximity to each other in border cities and communities makes the situation that much more tenuous. The best that law enforcement officials can hope for is to focus on intelligence-driven operations and investigations that help identify TCO members who are engaged in trafficking and money laundering in the United States before their behavior escalates into public violence.
Source: [www.hstoday.us/focused-topics/customs-immigration/single-article-page/mexican-tco- members-quietly-living-among-us-for-now.html] Return to Contents
C. Documents Reveal Confirmation Prosecutors Knew Abuse 'Victim' Lied (TX)
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Editorial Note: Although this source is considered extremely right wing and anti-amnesty, other sources have carried similar information. This article is included because it cites the official "Report of Investigation," filed by the DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Professional Responsibility, which is available publicly.
9 November 2011 World Net Daily
WND has obtained an exclusive copy of the Department of Homeland Security Office of Professional Responsibility investigative report from April 2009 that documents the U.S. Attorney's Office in Del Rio, Texas, made a decision not to prosecute the Border Patrol agent for a situation that developed on Oct. 16, 2008, when he detained a Mexican teenage drug smuggler on the South Texas border.
The report confirmed that the federal agents knew the drug suspect had lied about the situation, yet it was his testimony that prosecutors later insisted on using in the trial for the agent, which resulted in his conviction and two-year prison sentence.
The "Report of Investigation," filed by the DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Professional Responsibility on April 20, 2009, recommended that the agent should instead be transferred for administrative action.
U.S. Attorney declines to prosecute Agent
On page three, a key paragraph of the four-page report, available in its entirety here, documented that the unnamed teenage drug smuggler had lied on the scene about any knowledge of marijuana, thereby compromising his credibility:
On April 16, 2009, the AUSA (Assistant U.S. Attorney) contacted the SSA (Senior Special Agent) and advised that he had conferred with the U.S. Department of Justice, Prosecutor, the USAO (U.S. Attorney's Office)/San Antonio and the USAO/Del Rio. The AUSA stated that based on the information that [Name Redacted] was apprehended in what appeared to be illegal activity of smuggling marihuana into the U.S., and that he lied to BPAs (Border Patrol Agents) on the scene about any knowledge of marijuana; [Name Redacted] credibility was questionable at best. Further, based on the fact that [Name Redacted] was not available to testify about the alleged use of excessive force applied to him by the BPA, and there did not appear to be any chance of locating him in the near future, the USAO/Del Rio declined to prosecute the BPA.
The name redacted in the paragraph appears to be the name of the Mexican teenage drug smuggler apprehended by the agent in the incident.
The memo further states that on April 16, 2009, the Resident Agent in Charge (RAIC) of the Customs and Border Protection, Office of Internal Affairs in Del Rio had been officially briefed on the status of the investigation and the declination of prosecution by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Del Rio.
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"the RAIC stated that the CPA-IA/Del Rio (Customs and Border Protection, Office of Internal Affairs in Del Rio) would accept the case for administrative action," the DHS report continued.
"This case meets the criteria to be transferred to CBP-IA for administrative action," the DHS report concluded in the final sentence of the report.
How hurt was the teenage drug smuggler released to Mexico
The DHS investigative report obtained by WND also cast doubt on the extent to which the agent had treated the teenage drug smuggler abusively.
The third paragraph of the report noted:
Information developed during the investigation revealed that on October 16, 2009, Special Agent (SA), Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General, Del Rio, TX (DHS- OIG/Del Rio), responded to the BP/Eagle Pass (Border Patrol in Eagle Pass, Texas) and interviewed [Name Redacted] regarding the allegations. The SA obtained a sworn statement from [Name Redacted] in which [Name Redacted] described that after he had been handcuffed by "el official" (the official), his arms were twisted and "heavy pressure" was applied to him when the official placed his knees on [Name Redacted] body. [Name Redacted] did not identify the official by name, and only provided a brief description saying the official was tall, with a heavy build, and dark complexion. In his statement [Name Redacted] did not complain that he was injured, hurt, or in pain when the official twisted his arms and applied the "heavy pressure." [Name redacted] was processed for voluntary return to Mexico by another BPA, and subsequently returned to Mexico on the same date.
Again, the name redacted appears to be the name of the Mexican teenage drug smuggler.
The memo further documents the Mexican teenage drug smuggler could not be located in Mexico after he was released by the Border Patrol and allowed to return across the border without being held for prosecution on drug smuggling charges.
The memo suggests that "several of the BPAs on the scene observed what they believed to be the use of excessive force applied to [Name Redacted] by the BPA," though the exact nature of that excessive force was not specified in the report.
Moreover, the report gives no indication that the apprehended Mexican drug smuggler was so badly injured in the incident that he could not return immediately to Mexico, once he was released by U.S. authorities and allowed to return home voluntarily.
Instead, the report suggests that once U.S. authorities indicated the teenage drug smuggler was not going to be held on drug charges and released him, he slipped back into Mexico and disappeared.
So, why was the agent prosecuted?
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"It looks to me like the Justice Department wanted a scalp to give to Mexico," the President of the Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council, told WND.
"If we look at the time frame, a month after the DHS OPR investigative report was filed in April 2009, the Mexican Consulate told Border Patrol Internal Affairs that the Mexican teenager had been found," he said. "The prosecution was done in order to satisfy the Mexican government."
A complaint filed by the Mexican government on October 16, 2008, the day of the incident, includes a hand-written account of the incident that appears to have been written by the Mexican teenage drug-smuggler in the presence of Mexican authorities.
What remains undocumented is where the youth went after the Mexican consulate filed the statement made on Oct. 16, 2008, with the U.S. government.
Also unknown is how the Mexican government subsequently found the youth and made him available to U.S. government authorities to testify at trial against the agent.
On October 20, the U.S. District Judge sentenced Diaz to 24-months in prison after he was found guilty in a federal criminal trial of denying the Mexican teenager of his constitutional rights by applying excessive force during the incident.
The agent was accused of having handcuffed the youth behind his back and pressing the suspect to the ground with his knee.
He is currently serving his sentence in federal prison in solitary confinement.
A U.S. Representative, R-Calif., already has asked for a congressional investigation and he has suggested to the Attorney General that a fine of $6,870, which the government already is trying to collect from the agent’s family, either be waived or delayed.
The Congressman has warned, "The prosecution of the Agent sets a dangerous precedent and creates unnecessary confusion among law enforcement on the border. We must not send a message to the men and woman of the U.S. Border Patrol, as well as the smugglers and criminals that they are committed to apprehending, that they could face jail time or such disproportionate sentencing for doing their jobs, regardless of the facts."
Source: [www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=366005] Return to Contents
D. 'Twitter Manifesto' Confronts Gang Threats to Mexico Bloggers (NL)
11 November 2011 InSight Crime
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A team of social media users in Mexico have written a "Twitter Manifesto" in reaction to the latest killing of an alleged online chat forum administrator. Some of their demands are untenable, raising questions about what actions bloggers can really take to protect themselves.
Speaking in the name of bloggers and Twitter users in violence-ridden states like Tamaulipas, the manifesto (read full pdf version here; Spanish pdf version here) gives voice to the apprehension and anger circulating through some online media networks in Mexico:
The criminal groups attempt to restrain our voice... to kidnap us and carry out criminal atrocities or to make direct threats against our companions. This constitutes a flagrant threat against the only freedom left to us, now that the local, state and federal governments are indifferent to our demands, and without even bothering to verify they ignore the facts that we report on our social networks. In summary, we have been abandoned to our fate in this unequal fight of free citizens against the drug traffickers.
The declaration comes a day after a decapitated man was found alongside a sign identifying him with the online alias "Rascatripas." It was the fourth such killing this year in Nuevo Laredo.
"This is what happened to me for failing to understand I should not report things on social media websites," the sign read, before making reference to the woman killed last September for activity on the Internet forum Nuevo Laredo En Vivo.
Since then there has been no official confirmation on the body's identity, although, according to Vanguardia, users of the chat forum have confirmed a user known as "Rascatripas" was killed. His last comment, registered two days before the decapitated body was found, described a local highway as unsafe "all the time," according to the report.
As happened with the September killing of the forum administrator "La Nena de Laredo," users at Nuevo Laredo En Vivo pledged to continue their online activity following Rascatripas' apparent death. On Wednesday, one user warned against using cell phones on the street: "These ZZZZ's think you are talking to the army and will pick you up. Be careful."
The ZZZZ is a reference to the Zetas criminal gang. The Zetas have been blamed for all the violence against social media anti-crime forum administrators and users.
The Zetas also squared off in recent weeks with members of the online hack-activist group Anonymous. Anonymous members posted a video threatening the Zetas with retribution if they did not release a kidnapped member of their group. The member was reportedly released and Anonymous backed away from its threat.
Within the buzzing community of social media users along the Mexico-U.S. border, comes the "Twitter Manifesto." But when the document asks the government to better garantee "cybersecurity" and "freedom of speech" online, it only highlights the difficulty of enforcing these requests.
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Each new killing like "Rascatripas" reinforces the fear that Mexico may enter a period of heightened confrontation between online media users and criminal gangs. And considering that Mexican security forces are still struggling to consolidate security on the ground, there appears to be little that formal institutions can or are willing to do to protect citizens who act in cyber space.
As previously explained by an analyst, the Zetas' apparent persecution of social media commentators is parallel to the persecution faced by traditional media reporters. It is the same war over who controls the flow of information in Mexico. If this war continues to eliminate non- traditional media users like forum commentators and Twitter devotees, it may only contribute to the siege mentality already prevalent in border towns in Mexico.
Recognizing the futility of asking Mexican authorities for more protection from the threat, some have turned to issuing best practices. On another forum -- the Frontera listserve – a security consultant shared suggestions on how social media users can better protect themselves from the threat of criminal gangs.
"To these valiant social media commentators, know that your weapons are primarily defensive in nature, and of those the best is building and maintaining your anonymity," he writes.
He goes on to list some of these weapons:
Add new handle (online name) unrelated to your current handle/online name. Consider adding that new handle on a different network. (Moving location is the first rule of breaking hostile surveillance.) Use that new handle only, only, for your own public safety monitoring/alert sharing. Do not share that handle, do not advertise that you have another handle. (Someone can earn money by turning you.) Continue your usual posting on your old handle. (When an old handle drops and a new one appears handling the same traffic, it is not hard to connect dots.) Be terse in the new handle, or at least do not use idiomatic language that you use on the old handle, i.e., try to remove identifiable language. Remember to be thoughtful about what and how you report or discuss criminal matters, i.e., if you say, "I saw X" then someone knows that you were in range to see X at that time. Consider using services outside Mexico such as twitter. Avoid creating identifiable patterns.
What happens next will depend on collective action, individual savvy and tremendous courage. But it is not clear who will muster it.
Hacker groups like Anonymous have proved they have the political will and the ability to go after local governments and big business in Mexico, but have backed away from openly confronting criminal groups like the Zetas. And despite its name, the Twitter Manifesto is more a cry for help than a call for action.
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Source: [insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/1835-twitter-manifesto-confronts-gang- threats-to-mexico-bloggers] Return to Contents
E. Mexico Drug-War Deaths May Have Peaked (BC/CHIH)
13 November 2011 Borderland Beat
Drug-related homicides in Mexico could conceivably hit another record high this year but the murder count has likely leveled off and is expected to start declining, the University of San Diego said in a report, which also cited an increase in the number of Mexicans seeking asylum in the United States.
“The figures for this year are still quite bad, with more than 10,000 people killed, but not significantly worse than in 2010, when there were at least 20 percent more homicides than in 2009,” the director of USD’s Trans-Border Institute told EFE.
The report was presented Wednesday at a conference in San Diego titled “The Effects of Violence in Mexico on Migration and Immigration Policy.”
The director said there had been a sharp slowdown in the “spiral of violence” due to a decrease in homicides in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, which in 2009 accounted for as many as a third of all murders and kidnappings in Mexico, and to new dynamics in cities such as Tijuana.
“Violence in Tijuana peaked in 2008 and 2009. Now presumably, after drug traffickers realized that violence was bad for business, there’s a pact between the Sinaloa cartel and the remnants of the Tijuana (mob), with the former gaining influence, and that’s pushed the violence to the east of the city,” he said.
According to the expert, the “Tijuana model” of not interfering with the traffickers’ operations could be adopted in other Mexican cities, a move that would mean returning to the policy that existed before President Felipe Calderon launched a nationwide crackdown on the cartels upon taking office in December 2006.
The strategy has led to headline-grabbing captures of cartel kingpins, but drug war-related violence has claimed nearly 50,000 lives nationwide over the five-year period.
“That would mean all the death and violence has served no purpose, which is an unfortunate and cynical vision and a great tragedy if they’re unable to interrupt the way the cartels conduct their business,” he said.
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A total of 10,933 drug-related deaths were registered through Nov. 4, 2011, the expert said, citing figures compiled by the Mexican media. That compares with 15,273 homicides for all of 2010.
Most of these slayings are concentrated in four states while at least 230,000 Mexicans were internally displaced last year as a result of the war on drugs, which also has led to an increase in the number of asylum requests in the United States.
Those asylum seekers, however, have a difficult time winning their cases in part due to political reasons, immigration attorney and conference participant Ginger Jacobs said, noting that in granting their requests the U.S. government would be acknowledging that Mexico cannot protect its own citizens.
According to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, 3,231 Mexicans requested asylum last year but only 49 of those petitions were granted. That amounts to a 1.5 percent success rate, compared to 35.6 percent and 41.6 percent for Chinese and Colombian applicants, respectively.
The expert said Mexico’s plight is due in part to high drug consumption in the United States and the north-to-south flow of weapons and therefore a change in Washington’s current supply-side oriented anti-drug strategy is essential.
Mexico must transform its justice system to give prosecutors autonomy at the local level, but in the United States marijuana must be legalized because most prosecution and policing expenditures there are focused on that drug even though it represents only between 15-20 percent of cartels’ revenues, he said.
Legalization would free up scarce resources that would be better spent tackling much more profitable drugs like cocaine and heroin, which together with expenditures on witness-protection programs and judicial reforms in Mexico could make a difference, the expert said.
Source: [www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/11/mexico-drug-war-deaths-may-have-peaked.html] Return to Contents
F. Mexico under Siege
11 November 2011 Investors
Border: The helicopter crash Friday that killed Mexico's top Cabinet official, Jose Francisco Blake, could not have come at a worse time. Cartels are acquiring heavy arms to challenge the state and to move their war to the U.S.
In Mexico, Blake, the Interior Secretary, was the best hope of winning the war against the vicious cartels, who have killed as many as 86,000 people. 67
Blake, 45, had managed to crush the cartels and cut crime in his native Tijuana before he was asked to do the same for the country in the top Cabinet job in 2010.
He had some success — five of the top seven cartel capos were knocked off by the end of his watch.
But he was the second interior secretary killed in a helicopter crash since 2008, and that leaves a great sense of uneasiness. Mexico's currency fell on news of his death, the cause of which is still undetermined.
One thing is known: As Mexico fights, the cartels have been bulking up. They have expanded their firepower and extended their reach into the U.S. Addressing this issue should be a top U.S. policy priority. But as Mexico mourns, this war is going largely unnoticed in the U.S.
Increased firepower is just one element in this difficult war, but it is a sign of potentially worse to come.
It does not help that the administration has allowed thousands of small arms to "walk" from the U.S. to cartel buyers in Mexico in the "Fast and Furious" operation, which seems to have been keyed to raising support for gun control in the U.S.
But the problem is way worse than just small arms.
Earlier this year, the Mexican press reported that cartels are moving to arm themselves with "monstruos," or homemade monster trucks. These armored assault vehicles are capable of carrying 20 cartel gunmen at 60 mph and hurling oil slicks or nails to evade pursuers. Last May, a monstruo battled police in Jalisco state.
Mexico's defense secretariat reported last week that the "Los Zetas" cartel is buying heavy armaments left over from the Central American wars of the 1980s, including "anti-armored- vehicle rockets," according to the reports. The Mexican cartels' other heavy firepower includes submarines, most of which are being built by their FARC allies hiding out from the Colombian army in safe havens like Ecuador. The subs are nominally for smuggling drugs, but convertible to combat purposes.
All of these are weapons of war. Their use goes well beyond criminal and moves toward the aim of actually challenging the state. If they succeed, Mexico's state apparatus will be unable to govern. That is the definition of a failed state, which the U.S. Department of Defense warned was possible in Mexico in its 2008 Joint Operating Environment report.
Source: [news.investors.com/Article/591496/201111111854/Mexico-Under-Siege.htm] Return to Contents
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G. Buses Becoming Preferred Medium of Terror Attacks: US Intelligence (US)
12 November 2011 DNA India
A new US intelligence bulletin has warned that terrorists are increasingly targeting bus networks more than any other mode of surface transport.
“Bus systems are considered attractive terrorist targets because they are relatively soft targets,” Fox News quoted a two-page report, as saying.
According to US Homeland Security Department, there is no credible intelligence indicating that terrorist groups have immediate plans to target the bus network, but law enforcement bulletins warn that terror groups are trying to recruit bus, train and airline industry employees.
The US Transportation Security Administration Director had earlier highlighted the threat.
“It's something that we've seen in reporting over time that terrorists around the world clearly are interested -- because of the accessibility, the open architecture -- both of buses and rail,” he had said.
The bulletin titled “Terrorist Concerns Regarding Mass Transit Bus Systems,” was sent to law enforcement in Washington on November 3.
The report points out that the bus attacks are more common than air attacks.
The assessment found that over 725 bus attacks have been documented from 2004 through 2009.
The report also noted that the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, through its online magazine Inspire, “advocates the use of vehicle ramming attacks against crowds, buildings and other vehicles."
Intelligence obtained from slain Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden's compound showed that he preferred using buses to attack Americans.
“He always felt that he wanted to leverage his targets. Both to use a soft target, one that he had access to, and one that was spectacular because you know terrorism it has to resonate within the world of ideas. It is political theatre, and he had a really good grasp of that,” ‘Seal Target Geronimo’s author said.
Source: [www.dnaindia.com/world/report_buses-becoming-preferred-medium-of-terror-attacks- us-intelligence_1611504] Return to Contents
H. Never- Ending Drug War Moves to Central America (CR)
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12 November 2011 Miami Herald
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- While Mexico’s bloody war against the drug cartels is making headlines worldwide, there is a little-known fact that is sounding alarm bells among U.S. and Latin American officials: Central America’s drug-related violence is far worse than Mexico’s.
Even Costa Rica, a country known as “the Switzerland of Latin America” for being an island of peace and prosperity in its region, is feeling anxious about the rising tide of drug-related murders.
I was surprised to learn during my visit here that crime has suddenly become the No. 1 concern among Costa Ricans. Despite the fact that Costa Rica was proclaimed by a recent global poll as the country with the happiest people on earth —something that almost everyone here reminds visitors with a mixture of pride and self-depreciating humor — there is nervousness in paradise.
The average homicide rate of the five Central American countries is 43 people per 100,000 inhabitants a year, more than twice that of Mexico. Honduras and El Salvador have the highest murder rates in the world, according to a new United Nations Global Study on Homicide.
Last year, the homicide rate in Honduras was of 82 people per 100,000 inhabitants, in El Salvador 66, in Guatemala 41, and in Costa Rica 11. By comparison, the homicide rate in Mexico was of 18, and five in the United States, the U.N. study said.
In an interview at the presidential palace, Costa Rica President Laura Chinchilla made no effort to hide Costa Rica’s worries. While stressing that her country is still an exception when compared with the rest of Central America’s crime rates, she said that homicide rates have doubled in Costa Rica over the past 10 years.
Much of the rise in Costa Rica’s murder rate is due to fights among drug traffickers, she told me. But if what happened in Colombia and Mexico is any indication of what may happen next in Costa Rica, drug traffickers will soon start trying to extort government officials, and murdering those who don’t accept their money, she said.
“Of course I’m concerned,” Chinchilla said. “If I project some of the trends we are seeing in Costa Rica into the future, I can’t help seeing ourselves in the mirror of what has happened in other societies in Central America, and in the rest of Latin America.”
She added, “I’m trying to be ahead of the curve, because this is a problem that once it takes root in society, it creates enormous social traumas and social costs.”
U.S. officials say Costa Rica, like other drug transit countries, has good reasons to be alarmed. Ninety-five percent of all cocaine reaching the United States is currently passing through Central America, they say.
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The U.S. State Department chief of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, says Central America has already surpassed Mexico as the greatest drug-related security threat to the United States. And no country that is used as a transit point can escape an escalation of the drug cartel’s operations, he said.
“History shows us that it’s physically impossible for a country to remain exclusively as a transit point,” he told me earlier in the week.
Drug transit countries become drug consuming countries for the simple reason that drug traffickers pay their contacts with cocaine or heroin, rather than with cash. And their local contacts later sell these drugs at home, he said.
My opinion: Despite Washington’s claims to the contrary, the drug cartels’ move from Mexico to Central America is evidence that despite some successes, the decades-old U.S. anti-drug strategy is not working.
First, after the U.S.-backed plan Colombia, the drug cartels fled to Mexico. Now, after the U.S.- backed Plan Merida, they are moving into Central America. Next, if there is a serious offensive against them in Central America, they will move into the Caribbean, or somewhere else.
It is time to start a serious discussion on whether to legalize marijuana, and use the proceeds for education and drug prevention in the United States, Europe, Brazil and other big drug consuming nations, as well as to help drug producing and transit countries fight their most violent cartels.
Otherwise, we’ll be continuing to spend billions of dollars and engaging in bloody wars, only to keep pushing the drug cartels from one place to the next.
Source: [www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/12/2498119/never-ending-drug-war-moves-to.html] Return to Contents
I. Facing Attacks by Cartel Hit Men, Twitter Users Refuse To Go Silent (NL)
10 November 2011 The Monitor
REYNOSA — The scene in Nuevo Laredo is one that has become all too common in recent months. A headless body was left in public with the same message from the Zetas: Shut up or face a similar fate.
The killing of an apparent Twittero — a social media user who shares information about drug violence — was the fourth in two months in Tamaulipas’ second-largest border city.
Facing the assassinations, social media users across Tamaulipas released Thursday a statement of their outrage at their local media and authorities for turning their backs on the citizens, who have turned to networks like Twitter as a safety measure. 71
“With the horror that this has caused, we reject this criminal act, we condemn it and we demand justice before the national silence that already surrounds it,” the statement reads.
Wednesday’s grisly discovery shared similarities with the three previous slayings of bloggers and Twitter users, with the Zeta attackers attempting to silence the Web to not interfere with their operations. The latest decapitated body included a message identifying the man by the username Rascatripas on the blog Nuevo Laredo en Vivo.
But a Tamaulipas-based journalist, who requested anonymity as a safety measure, said the actual blog user who goes by that handle remains alive and well at an undisclosed location. State authorities have not identified the body publicly.
Experts say the Zetas may be tracking Internet users from clues they leave in their posts online.
“I don’t know of anything like this having happened anywhere else in the world,” Jorge Chabat, an expert in safety and drug trafficking at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “It is certainly new and worrisome … it is a frontal confrontation against the public; it is not just a confrontation with the government anymore.”
Mexican drug cartels have traditionally carried out attacks on newspapers and television stations to silence reports on their activities.
Two grenades hit the Televisa TV station offices in Matamoros in August 2010. And just on Sunday, CNN reported gunmen attacked a newspaper in Veracruz state, another Zeta hotbed.
But with the changing face of the media from newspapers, radio and television, the attacks at citizen bloggers online could be following the changing face of where people pick up current events.
The first attack against an online poster occurred Sept. 13, when two people were hung from a Nuevo Laredo bridge, warning social media users to back away. Twelve days later, Maria Elizabeth Macias, 39, was found headless with her remains accompanied by another message from the Zetas.
Authorities have only acknowledged Macias’ slaying. She had worked as an editor for Primera Hora newspaper and is the only confirmed social media user found assassinated.
Calls to the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office in Ciudad Victoria regarding the other killings were not returned Thursday.
Despite the continued bloodshed in Mexico’s drug war seemingly spreading toward contributors to online networks, many active users vowed not to let their voices — or their smart phones, where many posts originate — go silent.
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Many Twitter users in northern Tamaulipas have expressed their concerns that they can be tracked via their cellphones, questioning whether the cartels have paid cellphone companies to disclose users’ locations. Some have turned to entering their posts via outside servers that mask their true location.
Social media has become a “citizen controlled form of protection to disseminate and denounce criminal acts and clashes from rival criminal groups as well as the clashes with authorities,” according to the statement issued by users in Matamoros, Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo and Ciudad Mier.
“Criminal groups intend to restrict the voice that we have raised through our intervening accounts and servers, to kidnap and carry out heinous crimes or give direct threats to our fellow users. That is a blatant threat to the only freedom we still keep, as the local, state and federal government is indifferent to our demands and does not bother to check or even believe in the truth of the facts reported through the networks.”
For their part, the Tamaulipas-based journalist confirmed the stranglehold that drug traffickers maintain on the media. He said reporters will still attempt to cover stories, only to have their editors or cartel bosses kill the story.
“The situation is disheartening,” he said.
Above all, social media users along the Tamaulipas border are hopeful the Mexican government will provide safety to preserve the freedom of expression already lost among traditional media outlets.
“Do not leave us alone,” the statement reads. “We need you now more than ever.”
Source: [www.themonitor.com/news/users-56496-hit-refuse.html] Return to Contents
J. Cuba's Spy Apparatus, a Conduit of Latin America Insurgency (CU)
14 November 2011 MexiData
To effectively monitor aggression, interference and other forms of insurgency within their homelands, democracies throughout the Americas must immediately address their governments' counterintelligence missions.
Cuba's Intelligence Directorate (DI), formerly known as the Dirección General de Inteligencia, or DGI, has been and remains a contingency of very well-trained, organized and financed agents of covert and hostile espionage throughout the Americas and elsewhere.
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The Cuban DI is responsible for all foreign intelligence collection. The 40-year history of the nefarious operations of the DI has included active involvement in aiding leftist and dictatorial movements in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
With Castro's recent subterfuge of renaissance into quasi-capitalism and a modicum of professed freedoms - one for the decades, many people are demanding that the U.S. trade embargo, in place since 1960, be lifted.
The truth is that Cuban espionage has been linked to villainous associations with the Chinese and Iranians, as well as with Venezuela. As well, a report from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency indicates that Cuba has been expanding intelligence operations with others in the Middle East and South Asia.
Cuba has trained thousands of communist guerrillas and terrorists, and has sponsored violent acts of aggression and subversion in most democratic nations of the southwestern hemisphere. U.S. government studies within the intelligence community documented a total of 3,043 international terrorist incidents in the decade of 1968 to 1978. Within that study, "over 25 percent occurred in Latin America."
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has adopted the previous Soviet-styled Cuban intelligence service as his model for Venezuela's security service, while utilizing Cuban intelligence counterparts and advisors as his primary sources on security and intelligence. Moreover, resisting U.S. drug and terrorism interdiction throughout South America has been a busy agenda of Chavez.
Chavez is perceived to be the mentor of Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, a former coca grower's union leader who recently, while seeking to normalize diplomatic relations with Washington, stated that the DEA is not welcome in his country.
In 2009 Ecuador refused to renew the ten-year lease to the United States at Manta airbase, an action that was dismissed simply with language describing a revision of the nation's Constitution under President Rafael Correa's leadership. The Constitution "bans foreign military bases" on Ecuadorian soil.
Still, the successes of the U.S. Southern Command and drug enforcement operators in Latin America are well-documented.
As well, Panama, Colombia and Peru recognized the critical need to fight narcotrafficking and terrorism, and quickly expressed interest in alliances with U.S. efforts. The success of Colombia against the FARC guerrillas, as well as Mexico's valiant fight against its narcoterrorist organized crime insurgents, represent either one becoming part of the solution or a part of the problem.
Getting back to Chavez, reports link his government with radical terrorist organizations and other state sponsors of terrorism. Hezbollah fundraising activities, in the form of "financial transactions," on Margarita Island in Venezuela have been widely reported.
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According to General Marcos Ferreira, a former Venezuelan Intelligence Director, Chavez gave instructions to "destroy records" on ten suspected Hezbollah fundraisers conducting suspicious financial transactions on the islands of Margarita, Aruba and Curaçao, and in the cities of Maracaibo and Valencia.
Margarita Island appears to be the center of an extensive terrorist financial network stretching throughout the Caribbean to Panama, and the Cayman Islands, where three Afghanis traveling on false Pakistani passports were caught entering from Cuba with $200,000 in cash in August of 2001. According to British colonial authorities, efforts to launder the money through Cayman banks also involved a group of Arab businessmen.
The deployment of the Cuban Intelligence Service in Venezuela is so deep that its agents enjoy "direct access" to President Chávez, and often provide information not shared with local intelligence services, as indicated by cables sent from the U.S. Embassy in Caracas to the State Department,
Chávez has tried to indoctrinate the Venezuelan military, bringing in thousands of advisers to replicate Cuban military doctrine, and to deal with security and intelligence issues. Cuban officers are deeply involved in intelligence and security matters in Venezuela, from the acquisition of military equipment to overall military strategy. The number of Cuban intelligence experts working in Venezuela is reported to be around 3,000.
Too, reports place FARC and ELN guerrillas from Colombia in safe havens in Cuba.
And, prior to Vicente Fox becoming president of Mexico, there was a reported "gentleman's agreement" between Mexico and Cuba - that "Havana intelligence could operate in Mexico, largely against U.S. targets, as long as Havana did not meddle in Mexico's internal affairs." Cuba continues to maintain a large intelligence-gathering hub in Mexico City.
Source: [www.mexidata.info/id3188.html] Return to Contents
K. Colombia: America’s Other Border (CO)
13 November 2011 National Security Zone
WASHINGTON – In 1999 Colombia became the biggest benefactor of US military aid in the world. It was the biggest supplier of cocaine with the worst human rights record in South America.
Today, Colombia remains one of the biggest world suppliers of cocaine—95 percent of the drug seized in the U.S. originates in Colombia—and human rights are still an issue. Plan Colombia, which started off as a two-year program, became an institution of the last decade.
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If it is a losing war, why is the U.S. still there? Colombia, the top recipient of U.S. aid in 2010 after Haiti (since the Haitian earthquake in January 2010), is only one step on the journey of cocaine trafficking.
U.S.
“We have terrorists in our backyard that operate with impunity each and every day,” a Representative, R – Iowa, said, with chilling affects in our country as a whole.
He spoke with a group of representatives from the National Sheriffs Association in September about their plight with criminal aliens inside U.S. borders. They asked for support, both the authorization and funding, to combat a rise in the influence of Mexican cartels in communities far from the border.
The Sheriff of Alamance County, N.C., drew a connection between criminal illegal immigrants and narcotics crimes in his county. Of 35 individuals arrested in the last several months in his county, nine were illegal criminal immigrants connected with the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico.
Central America
In 2008 Congress approved $400 million in aid to Mexico and $65 million to Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti to train local law enforcement to combat organized crime. This resulted in increased information sharing and training programs with Mexico.
But Mexican policy against organized crime is not working. The Mexican Government is attempting to take out major cartel leaders and it is creating a vacuum, said an expert in counter- narcotics at the Brookings Institution. Many more, smaller cartels are eager to step up, creating territory disputes over trafficking routes arriving into Central America by plane, boat and now submersibles.
One such port feeding into Mexico is Honduras. In 2010 there were 18 murders per 100,000 people in Mexico, compared to 77 murders in Honduras, according to a Senate report on Central American violence published in September.
“Like Mexico, Central America’s location between the world’s largest producers of illicit drugs in South America and the world’s largest drug consuming nation in the U.S. makes it particularly vulnerable to drug traffickers,” the report said. This is partly due to a crackdown by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, squeezing drug trafficking organizations into neighboring states.
It is a similar story in the Andes region.
South America
Chairman Senator, D-Calif., of the Senate Caucus on International Drug Control called Colombia a success story at a recent hearing. She said cooperation with U.S counter-narcotics 76
strategy received mixed messages from Peru and Ecuador, while Bolivia was disappointing, and Venezuela showed only sporadic support.
The idea is to stabilize the region and put Colombia in a position to train neighbors in South and Central America in a position to stabilize not only the Andes, but Central America and the U.S. border as well. Colombia has been groomed into a strong ally since 2000.
But problems remain. The country struggles to wean poor farmers from quick-return coca crops without the roads and infrastructure to support a market for alternative crops, said an expert in drug policy at the non-governmental organization Institute for Policy Studies. Not to mention the many groups still involved in drug trafficking.
For now, the U.S. is still distracted by the 2012 budget. Should the federal government offer more support to local sheriffs? How about invest it in Mexico and the Merida Initiative? Or Honduras, where human rights issues are pressing? How about the root of the problem in Colombia and the Andes?
Source: [nationalsecurityzone.org/site/colombia-americas-other-border/] Return to Contents
L. Nation’s Spies to Help in Fight against Narco Cartels & Other Illegal Marijuana Growers in States (CA)
13 November 2011 Hispanically Speaking News
Lawmakers soon may enlist the nation’s spymaster to help fight Mexican drug traffickers and others who use federal land in California and elsewhere to grow marijuana.
A provision of the 2012 intelligence authorization bill calls on the director of national intelligence to assess and report on how federal intelligence agencies can help park rangers, fish and wildlife wardens, and other U.S. land managers weed out pot gardens and other activities operated by foreign drug traffickers.
The bill, now before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also directs the top spy to consult with federal public land managers to identify intelligence and information-sharing gaps related to drug trafficking. The House passed its version of the bill, HR 1892, in September.
A U.S. Representative, D-Calif., who wrote the provision, said the nation’s intelligence apparatus needs to address marijuana grown on public land because of the presence of foreign drug traffickers and the accompanying threat of violence.
“We don’t know what they’re doing with the money, where the money goes, whose bank account it ends up in,” he said of foreign drug traffickers who operate on public land. “They’re 77
here ruining our national resources, and they’re putting our citizens at risk. Hikers can’t go into the field for fear they’ll be harmed. Wildlife doesn’t have a chance.”
U.S. law enforcement believes that hundreds of millions of dollars generated from public-land gardens flows to Mexico, said the assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in San Francisco.
While federal officials suspect that Mexican organized crime bosses might be involved, authorities say they have not proven a direct link between marijuana gardens on U.S. public lands and the major Mexico-based drug cartels.
Source: [www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/nations-spys-to-help- in-fight-against-narco-cartels-other-illegal-mari/11672/] Return to Contents