De War on Drugs in Mexico - hier verder

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Op woensdag 2 maart 2011 11:38 schreef StormWarning het volgende:

[..]

Ok, en what's the point dan precies?

Investigation: US ATF Secretly Arming Mexican Drug Cartels (Mar 3, 2011 - CBS)

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ATF memo after CBS report: We need positive press

As CBS News investigates "gun walking" allegations -- that ATF let thousands assault rifles and other weapons get into the hands of criminal suspects -- ATF bosses have remained largely silent.

We've had ongoing requests for information and on camera interviews with both ATF and the Department of Justice since prior to our first report which aired Feb. 22.

A similar lack of response has been reported by Senator Charles Grassley, who has asked for documents and briefings from ATF

Now, we learn that after our Feb. 22 report, ATF's Chief Public Affairs officer sent an all-call internal memo to ATF Public Information Officers in an effort to "lessen the coverage of such stories in the news cycle by replacing them with good stories about ATF."

The memo asks ATF PIO's to "Please make every effort in the next two weeks to maximize coverage of ATF operations/enforcement actions/arrests at the local and regional level" in hopes it would drown out the "negative coverage by CBS News."

At the time, the memo noted "Fortunately, the CBS story has not sparked any follow up coverage by mainstream media and seems to have fizzled."

However, last night, CBS News continued reporting on this issue and will be staying on the story.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/04/mexico-usa

The young mother hailed as the bravest woman in Mexico when she became a small-town police chief in one of the bloodiest fronts of the country's drug wars has reportedly fled to the United States.

Marisol Valles attracted global attention last October when she took command of the municipal force in Praxedis G Guerrero on the Rio Grande border with Texas.

An unnamed relative told France-Presse agency Valles had gone to the US with two relatives to seek asylum after receiving death threats from a gang trying to force her to work for them. The municipal spokesman, Andres Morales, however, said Valles had merely asked for a few days off to tend to her sick baby and given no indication she was under pressure. "We are expecting her to come back to work on Monday," he said.

Praxedis has suffered acutely from the kidnappings, arson attacks and assassinations that plague Juárez valley, which stretches south-east from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico's most violent city.

Valles's predecessor's head was dumped outside the police station a few days after he was abducted in August 2009. Of the 17 officers he commanded, 15 were killed in separate attacks.

Valles, a criminology student, had always stressed she would leave the job of addressing organised criminal violence to the state and federal authorities. Instead, she instructed her unarmed force of 10 officers to make house-to-house calls aimed at encouraging residents to do such things as send their children to play sports in the town square to rebuild a sense of community. Morales said since then serious crime in the town had reduced.

Valles is not the only Mexican woman to take on law enforcement duties in a dangerous community. In the neighbouring town of Guadalupe, Erika Gandara was the sole officer until she was kidnapped before Christmas. She has not been seen since.

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Op zaterdag 5 maart 2011 13:26 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Ze was onze laatste hoop op het oplossen van het drugs-probleem

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http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)attles-leave-18-dead
Gunbattles between rival gangs have killed 18 people in a northeastern Mexican town, a day after seven police officers and an inmate died in an ambush of a convoy transporting prisoners in western Mexico.

The fighting in the town of Abasolo erupted on Monday morning and left at least 18 people dead, the Tamaulipas state government said. The shooting came a month after shootings in the nearby town of Padilla also killed 18 people, several of them innocent bystanders.

Tamaulipas has been wracked by a turf war between the Zetas and Gulf cartels, and information on violence in some of the smaller towns is notoriously scarce. Often official confirmation does not come for hours or days, leaving residents to cower in their homes and communicate through social media.

Tamaulipas residents sent Twitter messages about Monday's shootings hours before the government confirmed the bloodshed. Some tweets warned people to stay indoors and others demanded official information. Under constant threat from drug gangs, the Tamaulipas state media often ignore drug-gang violence completely.

In northwestern Sinaloa state, meanwhile, gunmen swarmed a convoy transporting two prisoners, shredding three police vehicles with bullets and killing seven officers and one inmate, Sinaloa state Attorney General Marco Antonio Higuera said. Six officers and the second inmate were wounded.

Attackers travel

ling in about 20 vehicles caught the police convoy in a crossfire on Sunday near the city of Guasave, Sinaloa state Attorney General Marco Antonio Higuera said.

"The patrol vehicles were destroyed. It was practically a massacre," Higuera said. "Initial reports indicate there were 1,200 shell casings at the scene."

The three state police patrol vehicles were travelling to the state capital of Culiacan when they came under fire from attackers who apparently lay in wait on a highway. Higuera said the officers fought off a first attack but were later caught in concentrated fire from a larger number of vehicles.

The government of President Felipe Calderon has brought down an unprecedented number of cartel bosses since launching a military offensive against drug traffickers in December 2006.

However, violence has soared as Mexico's drug cartels have become increasingly splintered and aggressive. More than 35,000 people have been killed nationwide in the past four years.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)lles-seeks-us-asylum
A young woman who received death threats after recently becoming police chief of a violence-plagued Mexican town is in the US and seeking asylum, Mexican and US officials said.

Marisol Valles Garcia, 20, made international headlines when she accepted the top law enforcement job in Praxedis G. Guerrero, a township near the Texas border that has been overcome by drug violence. Her predecessor was shot to death in July 2009.

Garcia is now in the US and will be allowed to present her case to an immigration judge, according to a statement from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The town is in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, where ombudsman Gustavo de la Rosa confirmed that Garcia was in the US and said she has initiated a formal asylum petition.

Neither ICE nor De la Rosa would say where Garcia was staying, citing privacy and security concerns.

Drug violence has transformed the township of about 8,500 people from a string of quiet farming communities into a lawless no man's land only about a mile from the Texas border. Two rival gangs the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels are battling over control of its single highway, a lucrative drug-trafficking route along the Texas border.

Residents have said Garcia had received death threats, and the ombudsman said there may have been at least one attempt to kidnap her. Local officials said they had given her a leave of absence from March 2 through March 7 to travel to the US to tend to personal matters, but she never returned.

Garcia was officially fired on Monday for apparently abandoning her post. Police will answer to the mayor until a new chief is appointed, the city government's statement said.

Garcia was still a criminology student when she accepted the job in October to oversee 12 police officers. At the time, she said she wanted them to go door-to-door looking for criminals and teaching values to the families.

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Nearly 1700 special forces troops desert Mexican army
Mexico City Some 1,680 Mexican army special forces soldiers have deserted in the past decade, the Milenio newspaper reported, citing Defense Secretariat figures.

The army does not know where the deserters are or whether some of them went to work for organized crime groups as happened in the past, documents obtained by the newspaper from the Federal Institute for Access to Information, or IFAI, show.

The best known case of special forces soldiers who went to work for criminals is Los Zetas, a group of elite troops who signed on as hired guns for the Gulf cartel in the late 1990s.

Defense officials have "lost track" of 125 special ops soldiers in the past two years, a period marked by a wave of drug-related violence that left thousands of people dead, the secretariat said.
Some 50,000 soldiers have been providing security and fighting drug traffickers across Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon militarized the conflict with the country's cartels.

Human rights activists have filed numerous complaints against soldiers allegedly involved in abuses.

The desertions have continued even though the government has increased soldiers' pay by 115 percent since the end of 2006, Milenio said.

The deserters include snipers, paratroopers, survival experts, intelligence analysts and rapid reaction specialists, the newspaper said.

The Mexican press has reported previously about U.S. concerns that deserters who went to work for the cartels may have possessed security information obtained from U.S.-Mexican cooperation programs.

U.S. specialists have trained police and military personnel in Mexico as part of the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative, a security cooperation pact aimed at fighting drug trafficking and other forms of transnational organized crime.

Information about Mexico's special forces units is classified, and the army currently lacks a program to track deserters, Milenio said.

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Juarez, Mexico, the murder capital of the world; the Congo, where mutilation and rape are used as weapons of war; Chicago, the heroin capital of the United States; Haiti, a country no stranger to disaster, natural or man-made; and finally the UK, where, more than two hundred years since it was abolished, he discovers that slavery is thriving.

Extreme World has tackled these issues head-on and everything the viewer witnesses is happening right now.

His chosen destinations are Mexico, Congo, Chicago, Haiti and even the UK. In each episode, Ross confronts criminals responsible for drug dealing, human trafficking, murder and rape. He also sees the human cost of these crimes and meets those who risk their lives in the pursuit of justice.

Ross Kemp Overlooking BorderRoss travels to Juarez in Northern Mexico, the murder capital of the world. More than 3000 people were gunned down in the city last year, victims of a bloody drug war being played out on Americas doorstep. Ross investigates the ruthless cartels fighting for control of the drug trade between Mexico and the US-a business worth more than $40 billion a year. Cartels rule and run the city through a policy known as silver or lead. Anyone who stands in their way is offered huge bribes-those who refuse are shot.

Ross also visits the Democratic Republic of Congo, scene of the deadliest yet least reported conflict since WWII. The war has claimed over six million lives over the past ten years. Those fighting in the Congo use rape and mutilation as a weapon of war. At a remote hospital Ross meets some of the thousands of innocent women who are gang raped, tortured and unspeakably disfigured in the region every year, and travels to some of the most hostile areas in Africa to confront the men responsible for these atrocities. He discovers this is not only the rape of the people but of an entire nation.

Ross KempRoss travels to Chicago-scene of Americas biggest heroin problem- to investigate an epidemic that is destroying lives, families and entire communities and is now moving from the citys ghettos to its most affluent suburbs. Granted rare access into the citys secretive and highly lucrative underworld, Ross visits shooting galleries and witnesses gang members preparing wholesale consignments of heroin in underground stash houses. He joins dealers on street corners, meets women addicts who walk the streets selling sex for drugs and men forced to beg for change, shoplift and rob to get their fix.

Ross then goes to Haiti , scene of possibly the worst natural disaster of modern times. The quake claimed almost a quarter of a million lives and made over a million Haitians homeless.

The international community pledged more than ten billion dollars-$37,000 for each Haitian affected by the quake- to help rebuild Haiti, yet today the countrys plight is as desperate as ever. One year on, Ross Kemp travels to Port au Prince to meet Haitis lost generation, the end product of Haitis long history of violence, corruption, exploitation and natural disaster, a generation that symbolises the failure of one of the biggest relief efforts in modern history.

Ross Kemp At A Border CrossingOn returning to British shores Ross reveals the trafficking of men, women and children from around the world to the UK, an international crime that generates staggering profits by turning millions of people around the world into modern day slaves.

The UN estimates that traffickers earn in excess of $32 billion every year and that 2.5 million people around the world are victims of the traffickers. Unbelievably, 125 years after abolition, slavery is flourishing here in the UK and Ross investigates the silent tragedy occurring on our own doorstep.

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Op woensdag 9 maart 2011 13:21 schreef StormWarning het volgende:
Zelfs de meest verstokte war-on-drugs-dogmaticus kan er ondertussen toch echt niet meer omheen dat het in Mexico met epische proporties faalt?

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http://www.volkskrant.nl/(...)ndes-in-Mexico.dhtml

WASHINGTON De Verenigde Staten zetten sinds kort onbemande vliegtuigjes in om informatie te verzamelen over Mexicaanse drugsbendes en hun smokkel­routes.

Vorige maand voerden de onbemande en onbewapende drones voor het eerst vluchten uit boven Mexicaans grondgebied. Dankzij de toestellen zouden de Mexicaanse autoriteiten enkele verdachten op het spoor zijn gekomen die verantwoordelijk worden gehouden voor de moord op Jaime Zapata, een Amerikaanse douanebeambte die vorige maand werd vermoord.

Ligt gevoelig
President Obama kwam onlangs met zijn Mexicaanse ambtgenoot Felipe Calderón overeen dat de observatievluchten zouden worden voortgezet. Tot nog toe werd er geen ruchtbaarheid aan de samenwerking gegeven, omdat iedere Amerikaanse assistentie gevoelig ligt in Mexico.

Een dergelijke samenwerking zou enkele jaren geleden nog ondenkbaar zijn geweest, maar het drugsgeweld heeft de laatste vier jaar zoveel slachtoffers geëist dat de Mexicaanse autoriteiten er anders over zijn gaan denken. In die periode zijn ruim 43 duizend personen omgekomen als gevolg van het drugsgeweld.

Veiligheidseenheden
De VS helpen de Mexicaanse autoriteiten ook met het trainen van grenswachten en politiemensen. Verder werken ze samen met speciaal geselecteerde Mexicaanse veiligheidseenheden.
De Mexicaanse grondwet verbiedt het inzetten van buitenlandse militairen of politieagenten op Mexicaans grondgebied, behalve in extreme situaties.

Volgens een Amerikaanse functionaris worden alle gezamenlijke antidrugsoperaties op verzoek van de Mexicaanse autoriteiten gehouden en hebben zij er ook de leiding over.
Volgens Mexicaanse zegslieden hebben de autoriteiten zeker 20 kopstukken uit de drugswereld kunnen oppakken dankzij informatie van Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)as-mass-grave-bodies

Forensic workers indentify the first of 59 bodies in a mass grave discovered in one of the states worst affected by cartel violence

Forensic workers have begun identifying 59 corpses from mass graves in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas in the latest atrocity to be uncovered in Mexico's drug wars.

Security forces found the graves on Wednesday while investigating reports that cartel hitmen in the area had been pulling people off buses, possibly in a forced recruitment drive.

The discovery came as tens of thousands of people marched in simultaneous protests held in cities across Mexico demanding an end to the violence. The marches were prompted by the torture and murder of Juan Francisco Sicilia, the son of a well-loved poet, along with six other people with no links to the cartels.

"This is a national emergency," Sicilia's father Javier said during the biggest of the marches held in the city of Cuernavaca, just outside the capital, where the murders took place. "Mexico doesn't want to labour under this stupid war any more."

More than 35,000 people have died in violence related to the drug war since President Felipe Calderón launched a military-led offensive against the cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006.

The government blames the death toll on a series of turf battles raging on different fronts across the country and involving at least six different cartels. It insists that the vast majority of the victims are associated with the gangs, and that the federal forces are having significant success in weakening them. Although Calderón accepts that civilians uninvolved in the drug war are also dying, he rejects growing demands for a change of strategy that formed one of the main themes of this week's protests.

"We should all join the condemnation of the violence generated by the criminals and the absolute conviction of the federal government to continue to confront criminality," he said in a statement released in response to the discovery of the graves in Tamaulipas.

The eight pits, one of which contained 43 corpses, were found not far from the ranch were 72 Central and South American migrants were massacred eight months ago.

The state authorities said the first three to be identified from the latest grisly discovery were Mexicans, and that two were women. Social media buzzed with rumours that there were more bodies yet to be officially accounted for.

"Tamaulipas has become a narcograve," @algomendez tweeted on Thursday. The phrase was retweeted throughout the day, as residents described their sense of impotence in a state terrorised by a war between the Gulf and Zeta cartels which federal forces seems powerless to stop.

The killings in Cuernavaca, meanwhile, have had a profound impact on the middle classes and the intelligentsia in and around the capital, who previously felt themselves somewhat immune from the violence. One banner in the Mexico City march read: "Today a student, tomorrow a corpse."

The six were killed on 28 March after leaving a bar in Cuernavaca. They had been reportedly talking about the violence that has shaken the area since last year, though it is still much more sporadic than in Tamaulipas.

Local authorities said they had issued warrants for the arrest of two suspects who are former members of the security forces.

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Members of the Colombian Navy stand guard on top of a seized submarine built by drug smugglers in a makeshift shipyard in Timbiqui, Colombia February 14.

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Op maandag 11 april 2011 02:48 schreef epicbeardman het volgende:
Er is een documentaire over die subs die ze gebruiken, Heet volgens mij Inside Cocaine Submarines.
Laten ze ook een "basis" zien waar ze de subs maken, er worden zelfs russische ontwerpers/sub bouwers ingevlogen,

Inside Cocaine Submarines 1 of 4

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Op maandag 11 april 2011 10:32 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:
Ga met drugshonden Amsterdam in op een vrijdagavond en stop iedereen die sporen van cocainegebruik vertoont 3 maanden de cel in.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9591590

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A suspect in the kidnapping and killing of bus passengers near the U.S. border led Mexican soldiers to another set of clandestine graves containing 16 bodies, bringing to 88 the number of corpses found in mass pits in the northern state of Tamaulipas.

The latest batch of bodies was found in four pits in the township of San Fernando, where prosecutors had previously found 72 corpses in 10 pits, the Defense Department said in a statement Sunday.

When detained, Armando Morales Uscanga had a rifle and almost $3,000 in cash, the statement said, adding that he told soldiers he had participated in kidnapping passengers on March 24 and 29 in the township of San Fernando, Tamaulipas.

He also said he had helped kill and bury 43 people found in pits April 6.

San Fernando is a town about 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of Brownsville, Texas, on a well-traveled stretch of highway that runs near the Gulf Coast. It is an area regularly patrolled by the Mexican military.

It was the second-such gruesome find in less than a year: In August, investigators found the bodies of 72 migrants in San Fernando.

The federal Attorney General's Office said there was evidence that most of the suspects belonged to the Zetas drug gang, the same group blamed for the August massacre. Some were detained with military-style uniforms, and others were found driving a pickup truck displaying false Mexican navy insignia.

Fourteen men and two women, including local leaders of the gang, have been detained as suspects in the latest cases, the federal Attorney General's Office said in a statement. The Zetas and rival Gulf Cartel are fighting in Tamaulipas over lucrative drug transit routes to the U.S. The state shares three major border cities with Brownsville, Laredo, and McAllen, Texas. Prosecutors say the kidnappings may have been part of a forced-recruitment effort by the Zetas gang.

Dozens of families and passengers complained of gunmen pulling people, mostly young men, off intercity travel buses starting in late March, leading investigators to last week's grisly discovery.

Authorities are working to identify the bodies, one of which may belong to a U.S. citizen, through DNA samples and other techniques.

A warden's message posted on the website of the U.S. Consulate in the Tamaulipas city of Matamoros on Sunday said that a U.S. citizen was among dozens of men who witnesses said were pulled off passenger buses by armed attackers in Tamaulipas. The statement did not say exactly when or where the man went missing.

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De lokale leider van het Mexicaanse drugskartel Los Zetas die wordt verdacht van de moord op 145 mensen is aangehouden. Dat heeft het Mexicaanse leger zaterdag bekendgemaakt.

Martin Omar Estrada Luna, alias El Kilo, is de leider van de cel van Los Zetas in San Fernando in de noordelijke staat Tamaulipas. Ook de dood van 72 migranten in augustus vorig jaar wordt hem aangerekend. De lichamen van de 145 mensen werden de afgelopen tijd in 26 massagraven aangetroffen.

De Mexicaanse regering loofde vorige week een beloning van vijftien miljoen peso (ruim 890.000 euro) uit voor informatie die zou leiden tot zijn arrestatie.

Mexico wordt al jaren geteisterd door drugsgeweld. Kartels bestrijden elkaar op leven en dood en vermoorden mensen, veelal immigranten, die geen drugskoerier willen worden. Sinds de regering van president Felipe Calderon vier jaar geleden een offensief tegen de kartels lanceerde zijn al ruim 34 duizend mensen bij drugsgeweld om het leven gekomen.

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Op zondag 17 april 2011 20:17 schreef El_Matador het volgende:
De hele boel platgooien. Is het nou zo moeilijk om die mansions van die drugsbarons te volgen op de satelliet en wat bommen op te planten?

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Op zondag 17 april 2011 20:30 schreef waht het volgende:

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Dat kunnen ze zeker doen, maar de volgende dag staan dan nieuwe barons op die de zaken overnemen.

Vraag en aanbod zullen elkaar vinden, tegen de natuur van de mens kan geen enkele overtuiging op.

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Op zondag 17 april 2011 20:36 schreef El_Matador het volgende:

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Dat zijn leuke filosofische discussies, maar praktisch gezien moet dit probleem ook opgelost worden.