De War on Drugs in Mexico #4 - Hoe lossen we de oorlog op?

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Op maandag 23 januari 2012 15:35 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Inderdaad, het dumpen van een berg lijken of schietpartijen met meerdere doden zijn dan ook aan de orde van de dag.
Veracruz was tot mei vorig jaar echter erg rustig en toen is het ineens zeer geweldadig geworden. Nu is het weer rustig gelukkig.
Zolang de cartels elkaar afmaken is er niet zo veel aan de hand.

Zielig incident in Veracruz van de zomer was wel een granaat die op straat werd gegooit voor het Aquarium (een toeristenattractie van de stad) een vader van een familie die op bezoek was in de stad gooide zich op de granaat om zijn familie te beschermen.

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Op maandag 23 januari 2012 20:43 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Door de huidige onveilige situatie in Veracruz heeft onze gouverneur noodzakelijke maatregelen getroffen tegen deze crisissituatie.
Hij heeft namelijk bevolen de verkeersborden te laten veranderen. Een good moment voor alle

Zona de descarga > laad en los zone

topes pelligrosos > gevaarlijke drempels

precausion ejecutados > let op! lijken op de weg

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The war on the truth about drugs

So sentencing for some offences will be reduced – but we're still left with an unscientific drug policy obsessed with 'the message'

What's the smallest unit of celebration? A whooplet? I need one to mark the news that sentencing for drug offences, in some cases, will be shortened. Following new guidelines from the sentencing council from the end of February those found to have bought drugs to share with friends rather than to profit from them, and those found to have imported drugs under duress, can expect to be locked up slightly less often, and for slightly less long. One whooplet, certainly, is the council's to share.

I do hope the grudging tone comes across however: giving a year and a half of prison time to a clubber who bought 20 ecstasy pills and split them with a friend (the guideline "starting point" the council recommends) remains an act of stupidity. In all but the most minuscule number of cases, those pills would have done nothing more harmful than inflict some loss of sleep.

What is welcome, though, is that the new guidelines go some way to recognising the variety of behaviour that constitutes "dealing" or "trafficking". Those words have grim associations they often don't deserve. For instance, it's rather difficult for six friends to buy the exact amount of cocaine, in advance, that each of them wants to take that evening. So they usually split some, which means that at least one of them ends up being a "supplier". I don't know if it's ever been tested in court, but wouldn't even passing a joint around a room constitute a series of acts of "supply"?

Drug "mules", who carry small-to-medium-sized quantities of something through an airport in their luggage (or sometimes in their stomach), have often been coerced into doing so, and this is now rightly being seen as a mitigating factor too. So is low purity – a very knotty problem. Which is the greater crime? Selling a large quantity of diluted cocaine powder, or a small quantity of pure cocaine? And if it's been diluted, what was it diluted with? And did whoever sold it know? Mephedrone became so popular at one time that – even while it was still legal – quantities of it were being cut with other illegal substances. Some people were dealing drugs, in other words, without realising it.

"Drug offending has to be taken seriously," Lord Justice Hughes, the council's deputy chairman explains. "Drug abuse underlies a huge volume of acquisitive and violent crime and dealing can blight communities." But people don't commit crimes because they're on drugs – they commit them because they want money to buy drugs. You might as well say that nice houses blight communities just because some people commit crimes to pay for them.

Britain is not a police state. For the most part, it's a fair and decently run country. Yet our drug policy is like some import from a totalitarian regime. The risks associated with drug use remind me of that trusty threat of "foreign terrorists" dictators use to consolidate their power.

The Conservative MP Priti Patel told the Daily Mail: "These people are not just dealing drugs – they are destroying people's lives." Patel should have a word with some of her colleagues. Louise Mensch admits that it is "highly probable" she took drugs in the 1990s, and she's done all right. Or perhaps it is the tragic case of Barack Obama that Patel has in mind? As a teenager, he made the fatal error of experimenting with marijuana, which led on to cocaine and then – with sad inevitability – to a legal career, and the presidency of his nation.

To be fair to Patel, if you don't take this "destroying lives" line, you'll be forever labelled "soft on drugs" (as even the sentencing council are in the Mail). "Drugs are illegal because they are harmful – they destroy lives and cause untold misery," said a Home Office statement in response to demands for decriminalisation from a group including three chief constables and a former drugs minister last year.

Poor Ed Miliband could only agree, using another favourite formulation. "I worry about the effects on young people," he said, "the message that we would be sending out." When a politician says their policy is based on "sending out a message" you can be sure that what they really mean is that it's wrong, but politically necessary.

Which, of course, has always been the problem with drugs. There are risks associated with their use; but there are very serious risks associated with alcohol, serving in the army or eating badly that we accept. And when the former government adviser Professor David Nutt, pointed out – accurately, in a scientific paper – that alcohol and tobacco were in many ways more harmful than LSD or ecstasy, he was sacked by Alan Johnson because his comments might "damage efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs".

As a country, we look back in horror now at the delusions of other eras – when it was illegal to be gay, for instance, or when women could not vote. Yet we do not stop and see that we are living through another one. Decriminalisation would end the violent illegal drug trade; drug treatment and prescription for addicts would prevent them from committing crime. Both measures would make gigantic savings on the cost of policing and imprisoning offenders, and on clearing up the consequences of their actions. They would also end the outrage of people being locked up for the crime of seeking mostly harmless fun. It's our laws that are destroying lives.

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Cocaine seized at UN in New York

Drugs placed in a white bag in apparent attempt to disguise shipment as an official diplomatic pouch posted from Mexico

A shipment containing 16 kilograms of cocaine was seized last week at the United Nations's mail intake centre, a New York Police Department spokesman said on Thursday.

Paul Browne, NYPD's chief spokesman, said the drugs were in a white bag evidently masquerading as a diplomatic pouch that raised suspicions when it was being scanned because it was stamped with what looked like a poorly copied version of the UN logo.

Browne said here was no name or address on the shipment sent from Mexico City through Cincinnati.

UN security officials called the NYPD and Drug Enforcement Administration, which confirmed the substance inside the shipment intercepted on 16 January was cocaine, the police spokesman said.

The UN undersecretary general for safety and security, Gregory B Starr, told reporters on Thursday evening that "there is nothing to indicate that this had anything to do with anybody at the United Nations."

Starr said the drugs were actually stashed in two bags that were stamped with the sky-blue UN logo of a world map in an apparent effort to disguise them as diplomatic pouches, which are not supposed to be inspected. Inside the bag, the drugs were hidden in hollowed-out notebooks, he added.

The UN official showed journalists a photograph of the bags that were seized, and compared them with a real diplomatic pouch used by the UN, which is larger and made of a different material.

"This did not come from a United Nations facility," Starr said of the shipment.

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Police increasingly targeted in Mexican city

Drug gangs in Ciudad Juarez vow to kill an officer per day in response to crackdown in nation's most violent city.

Police in Mexico's most violent city are finding themselves increasingly under target.

After a renewed crackdown on violence began having an effect in Ciudad Juarez, located on the border with the US, drug cartels have struck back, promising to kill a police officer each day.

Colin Harding, a specialist in Latin American politics, told Al Jazeera the police in Ciudad Juarez "are under tremendous pressure".

"Far from limiting and restricting the violence, if anything, the highly militarised policy that President Calderon has been following has spread it and the body count is going up all the time," he said.

Al Jazeera's Rachel Levin reports from Ciudad Juarez on the steps police are now taking to protect themselves.

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Mexicanen vermoorden musici tijdens optreden

Een bende gewapende mannen heeft zaterdag in Mexico minstens negen mensen gedood, onder wie vijf leden van een muziekband die net aan het optreden was.

De bendeleden waren de bar in Chihuahua binnengestapt en schoten eerst in de lucht. Daarna mikten ze op de groep, genaamd La 5a banda.
De musici speelden nortena, een muzieksoort die het drugsgeweld in het noorden van Mexico verheerlijkt.

Naast de musici zijn ook een politieagente en drie gasten omgekomen, aldus de aanklager van Chihuahua zaterdag. De politie telde circa 100 kogelhulzen in de bar Far West.

In Mexico zijn sinds 2006 naar schatting 50.000 mensen vermoord door drugsbendes.

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Op zondag 5 februari 2012 00:19 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op zondag 5 februari 2012 19:06 schreef dikkebroekzak het volgende:
Dodental drugsoorlog Mexico nadert de 50.000

Agenten bewaken in de plaats Zitacuaro enkele lijken voordat ze worden vervoerd naar het mortuarium. Dertien mensen kwamen daar enkele dagen geleden om bij een moordpartij. © EPA
Het aantal doden als gevolg van de drugsoorlog in Mexico nadert de 50.000, of is dat aantal al gepasseerd. Dat hebben de Mexicaanse autoriteiten gemeld.

In de eerste negen maanden van 2011 registreerde het Openbaar Ministerie 12.903 moorden die te maken zouden hebben met de bendeoorlogen. Cijfers over het laatste kwartaal van vorig jaar worden op een later moment bekendgemaakt.

Sinds eind 2006 is het drugsgerelateerde geweld in Mexico explosief toegenomen. Criminele netwerken leveren een strijd op leven en dood om de beste smokkelroutes richting afzetmarkten in de Verenigde Staten. Tot september vorig jaar zouden 47.515 mensen om het leven zijn gebracht.

In het verkiezingsjaar 2012, waarin president Felipe Calderon een tweede ambtstermijn in de wacht wil slepen, zal het geweld volgens misdaaddeskundigen nog erger worden. Nabij de grens met de Verenigde Staten is het aantal moorden weliswaar iets afgenomen, maar deze trend wordt tenietgedaan door een toenemend aantal levensdelicten in andere delen van Mexico.

http://www.volkskrant.nl/(...)dert-de-50-000.dhtml

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Police attack journalists in Mexico

The breakdown of law and order in certain Mexican cities means that journalists can not only not count on police protection but are also coming under attack from police officers.

The latest example of police assaults on reporters happened last Friday, 3 February, in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.

Joel González, a reporter with El Diario, was arrested and beaten by officers while attempting to report on the arbitrary arrest of a citizen in front of the newspaper's offices.

He has since filed a complaint with the attorney general for abuse by the authorities.

El Diario also reported that on 31 January, police threatened and attacked reporters trying to photograph and film a police search of a home where three people were arrested and drugs and arms were seized.

The day before, police pointed their rifles at two journalists from the newspaper Norte, forcing them to delete photos they had taken.

The Association of Journalists of Ciudad Juarez urged the state governor to institute controls over the city's police.

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Mexico authorities seize $4bn of methamphetamine – video

Methamphetamine worth $4bn (£2.5bn) was discovered on Wednesday by authorities in Guadalajara, the largest seizure of its kind in Mexico. Some 15 tonnes of the drug were found on a ranch. No arrests have been made, and police have yet to establish the owner of the property

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President Guatemala wil drugs legaliseren

De president van Guatemala, Otto Perez Molina, heeft vandaag gezegd dat hij de regeringsleiders van Centraal-Amerika binnenkort zal voorstellen collectief drugs te gaan legaliseren.

Perez Molina wil zijn voorstel presenteren tijdens de volgende politieke top in de regio. Hij zei volgens persbureau AP in een radio-interview dat legalisering ook de decriminalisering van drugssmokkel inhoudt. Zijn opmerkingen zijn extra opvallend, omdat hij tijdens de verkiezingen vorig jaar juist nog een keiharde aanpak van drugsbendes bepleitte.

Centraal-Amerika (en niet in de laatste plaats Guatemala) gaat zwaar gebukt onder de criminaliteit van rivaliserende drugskartels. Die smokkelen cocaïne vanuit Zuid-Amerika naar de Verenigde Staten en produceren daarnaast op grote schaal drugs als methamphetamine (een versterkte vorm van speed) in de regio zelf. Ook deze drugs is bedoeld voor de export naar de VS.


Perez Molina: al het geld voor war on drugs heeft niets uitgericht

Perez Molina zei in het radio-interview dat al het geld dat in de war on drugs is gestopt niets heeft kunnen doen om de drugssmokkel te verminderen. Net zo min als de meest geavanceerde technologie die hierbij wordt gebruikt. Hij pleit daarom nu voor een radicaal andere aanpak.

Het soort wanhoopsplan dat Perez Molina nu voorstelt, is een reactie op het enorme moordcijfer in zijn land. Per 100.000 inwoners zouden in Guatemala volgens cijfers van persbureau AP jaarlijks maar liefst 45 mensen worden vermoord. Dat is meer dan tijdens de burgeroorlog in de tweede helft van de vorige eeuw die in totaal aan zon 200.000 mensen het leven kostte.

Bijna nergens ter wereld worden relatief zo veel mensen omgebracht. Slechts in zes landen ligt het moordcijfer nog hoger. Dat zijn bovendien allemaal landen in Centraal-Amerika en de Cariben.


Perez Molina wil plannen maandag al bespreken met leider El Salvador

President Perez Molina wijt dat hoge moordcijfer aan de strijd tussen verschillende drugskartels in zijn land, die elkaar met veel geld en wapens naar het leven staan. In heel Centraal-Amerika zorgt de strijd tussen drugsbendes voor grote problemen en steeds moorddadiger samenlevingen.

De president van Guatemala wil zijn plan maandag direct al bespreken met zijn collega Mauricio Funes, de president van El Salvador. Dat land heeft traditioneel ook te kampen met veel drugscriminaliteit en een extreem hoog moordcijfer het op één na hoogste ter wereld momenteel.

Of het plan van Perez Molina kans van slagen heeft, is echter maar zeer de vraag. De kans dat de Verenigde Staten een legalisering van drugs in Centraal-Amerika zal toestaan is nihil.

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Op zaterdag 11 februari 2012 20:47 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
En dat is ééééééén:

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Op zaterdag 11 februari 2012 20:50 schreef Tism het volgende:

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'No More Weapons' billboard placed on US-Mexican border

Billboard with letters made from crushed weapons unveiled as President Felipe Calderón urges US to stop flow of weapons

The Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, has unveiled a "No More Weapons" advertising board, made using crushed firearms, near the US border and urged the US to stop the flow of weapons into Mexico.

The board, which is in English and weighs three tonnes, stands near an international bridge in Ciudad Juarez and can be seen from the US.

Calderón said its letters were made with weapons seized by local, state and federal authorities.

"Dear friends of the United States, Mexico needs your help to stop this terrible violence that we're suffering," he said in English during the unveiling ceremony. "The best way to do this is to stop the flow of automatic weapons into Mexico."

Before unveiling the billboard, the president supervised the destruction of more than 7,500 automatic rifles and handguns at a military base in Ciudad Juarez.

He said more than 140,000 weapons had been seized since December 2006, when he launched a crackdown against drug traffickers. More than 47,500 people have been killed since then.

Ciudad Juarez, where more than 9,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2008, is one of the cities most affected by the violence.

The Mexican government said a federal prosecutor assigned to a northern state had been detained on suspicion of protecting the brutal Zetas drug cartel. The attorney general, Marisela Morales, said the federal prosecutor, Claudia Gonzalez, had been sent to prison. She did not say when Gonzalez was detained or give any further details.

Gonzalez was based in the city of Saltillo, the capital of the border state of Coahuila. The state, which borders Texas, has seen a spike of violence as the Zetas and Sinaloa drug cartels fight for control of smuggling routes into the US.

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Mexico drug gang warfare leaves 44 dead in prison near Monterrey

Inmates from Gulf and Zeta rival cartels were stabbed, stoned and beaten to death with bars, state spokesman says

A fight between prison inmates associated with rival drug gangs killed 44 inside a jail near the city of Monterrey in the state of Nuevo León, local authorities said on Sunday.

Jorge Domene, the state public security spokesman, told reporters that the victims were stabbed, stoned and beaten to death with bars.

The prison, in the municipality of Apodaca about 140 miles from the border with Texas, houses inmates associated with both the Gulf cartel and their bitter enemies in the Zetas cartel. The two groups have been involved in bitter turf wars in north-east Mexico for the past two years.

Domene said the prison fight broke out around 2am on Sunday morning after prisoners from C block attacked those in D block and that most if not all the victims were from the latter. He did not specify to which group they belonged.

"We hope that once the bodies are identified, we'll be able to say who was responsible for the attack," the official said.

Domene added that all the prison officers on duty at the time of the violence have been detained to aid an investigation into the possibility that some colluded in the attack. Prisoners from rival gangs are supposed to be kept apart.

Already escalating violence between Mexico's different drug cartels exploded after Felipe Calderon, the country's president, launched an all out offensive against organized crime in December 2006. At least 50,000 people have been killed since then, and the prisons are now filled with drug war related detainees.

With the gangs taking their rivalry behind bars – aided by pervasive corruption – deadly prison riots and massacres have become a regular feature of the drug wars. They are often accompanied by mass breakouts. Occasionally, the prison violence has involved firearms smuggled into the jails.

According to the national newspaper El Universal, there have been 267 deaths behind bars in 19 separate events since the government offensive began. Last month a riot in a prison in the north-east state of Tamaulipas left 31 dead. The paper said that the latest violence in Nuevo León was the worst prison bloodbath so far.

Relatives of the approximately 3,000 prisoners in the jail gathered outside the facility on Sunday morning demanding information. At one point some attempted to break down the a gate into the jail.

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Op maandag 20 februari 2012 02:04 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Laat ze binnen de muren maar vechten heeft de rest van het land er in ieder geval geen land van.

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Mexican jail chiefs sacked after deadly riot

Dismissal follows violence at Apodaca prison where one drug cartel killed 44 members of its rival gang before escaping.

Mexican authorities have sacked the director of Apodaca prison in the northeast after jailed members of the Zetas drug cartel stabbed and bludgeoned 44 members of the rival Gulf cartel to death before escaping en masse.

The escape on Sunday was apparently aided by prison authorities, Mexican officials said.

Rodrigo Medina, governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon, said on Monday that the prison director and three other officials were being investigated after their dismissal.

The same was done with 18 prison guards, he said.

"Unfortunately, a group of traitors has set back the work of a lot of good police," Medina said.

"The most important thing is to make sure that the people working on the inside are on the side of the law, and that they not be corrupted and collaborate with the criminals, as the investigations indicate they presumably did."

Deadly fights happen periodically in Mexico's prisons as gangs and drug cartels stage jail breaks and battle for control of prisons, often with the involvement of officials. Sunday's riot was one of the deadliest so far.

Up to 31 prisoners died in January during a prison riot in the Gulf coast city of Altamira in Tamaulipas state, which borders Texas.

Another fight in a Tamaulipas prison in the border city of Matamoros in October killed 20 inmates and injured 12.

Blunt instruments and knives

Medina did not say how the escape was carried out, but he noted that no members of any gang had broken into the prison to help their colleagues escape, as has happened at other Mexican prisons.

Nor were any firearms smuggled into the facility; all of the deaths apparently occurred with blunt instruments or improvised knives.

Medina confirmed that all 30 escaped inmates were linked to the Zetas cartel, a brutal gang founded by deserters from an elite Mexican military unit.

He did not say what crimes the escaped inmates had been convicted of, but said 25 of the 30 were in the prison on federal charges, which often involve drug trafficking or illegal weapons possession.

Medina offered a reward of 10 million pesos (almost $800,000) for information leading the arrest of those involved in the mass escape.

The Zetas and Gulf cartels were allies before splitting in 2010 and they have been fighting turf battles in Monterrey and elsewhere in northeastern Mexico.

A riot at a prison in the border city of Juarez in July last year killed 17 inmates. Mexican authorities detained the director and four guards over that clash.

Surveillance video showed two inmates opening doors to let armed prisoners into a room where the slain victims were reportedly holding a party.

In 2010, 23 people were killed in a prison riot in Durango city while a riot in Gomez Palacio, another city in the northern Mexican state of Durango, killed 19 people in 2009.

More than 47,500 people have been killed in drug-related violence since 2006, when President Felipe Calderon intensified Mexico's crackdown on organised crime.