Mexican suspect in US consulate killings in Texas court (AFP)

NF Reporter · 09-04-2010, 11:36 PM

AFP - A Mexican suspect in the March drive-by shooting of a US consulate worker in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez appeared at a closed-door hearing in a Texas court, the San Antonio News said Saturday.

Mexican suspect in US consulate killings in Texas court (AFP)

waltky · 10-03-2010, 08:49 PM

Now dey throwin' grenades at us...

Grenade blasts rock US Consulate in Mexico
Sunday 3rd October, 2010 - Blasts near the US consulate in Monterrey, Mexico have been caused by grenades.

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Three explosions occurred near the Consulate gates, approximately 40 metres from the main entrance.

The series of explosions, which occurred over the course of an hour, started on Saturday night.

A few cars in the area of the Consulate building were damaged and shrapnel from a grenade hit a man in a nearby office building.

Grenade blasts rock US Consulate in Mexico

waltky · 10-03-2010, 10:31 PM

Grenades at the mall too...

Explosion at Plaza Injures 15 in Northern Mexico
(Oct. 3,`10) -- An explosion at a plaza in northeastern Mexico injured 15 people, an attack authorities blamed Sunday on drug cartels targeting the civilian population to cause chaos.

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Police believe the attackers threw a grenade Saturday night at the main square in the town of Guadalupe, but were still trying to confirm the type of explosive, said Adrian de la Garza, the director of the investigations agency of Nuevo Leon, where the town is located. Six children, the youngest 3 years old, were among the injured, said Francisco Gonzalez, the state deputy health director. He said the injuries were not life-threatening, and most of the victims had returned home from the hospital. It was the fourth such attack in two days in the area around the city of Monterrey, which has been reeling from a turf war between the Gulf and Zetas drug gangs.

On Friday night, three separate grenade attacks happened: near the federal courts, outside a prison and near the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey. A security guard was injured in the attack at the courts. Nuevo Leon Attorney General Alejandro Garza y Garza said they may be revenge for recent operations against drug traffickers. He did not specify which ones, but 22 suspected drug gang members were killed in a Sept. 15 shootout with soldiers in Ciudad Mier, another town in Nuevo Leon. Last week, marines captured 30 suspected Gulf cartel members in Tamaulipas state, which borders Nuevo Leon.

"We believe this might have been an attack against the civilian population. They are trying to create chaos and anxiety in the population," Garza y Garza said. Soldiers arrested eight suspected Zetas members in Guadalupe early Sunday, although the operation appeared unrelated to the attack on the plaza. The soldiers were patrolling the town when they saw three cars brake suddenly and try to reverse and flee, according to the Defense Department statement. Soldiers arrested eight people and found 8 rifles and ammunition in the cars.

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waltky · 10-13-2010, 08:56 PM

Monterrey a no-go for kids of US gov't. employees...

Monterrey, Mexico Now Off Limits to Children of U.S.-Government Employees
Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - The U.S. State Department has declared that Monterrey, Mexico is now off limits to the minor children of U.S. government workers because of a recent shooting near an American school in that city and the “high incidence of kidnapping” there.

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Monterrey is Mexico’s second largest city and is located about 150 miles south of the Texas-Mexico border in the state of Nuevo Leon. This is the first time the State Department has ever prohibited U.S. government workers from having their dependent children with them when they serve in an official capacity in a Mexican city, Brian Quigley, a spokesman for the U.S. Consulate General in Monterrey, Mexico, told CNSNews.com.

"That's correct, it is," he said. "The official term as of Sept. 10, the U.S. Consulate General in Monterrey has become a partially unaccompanied post. That's the official term for it. What that means is that no minor family member of a U.S. government worker is allowed to be here at post." The travel warning, posted on the State Department’s Web site on Sept. 10, cites as one reason for the ban on allowing U.S. government employees to bring their minor children to the city an Aug. 20 incident that took place in front of the American Foundation School there.

In this incident, according to the office of the attorney general of Nuevo Leon, members of the Los Zetas criminal gang attacked security personnel from the Mexican bottling company FEMSA. Two of the security personnel were shot to death and four others were kidnapped. A statement from FEMSA, released in Spanish, said its four kidnapped security officers were later released after the kidnappers realized they were not members of a rival gang. The FEMSA security officers routinely patrolled the American Foundation School because it is attended by the children of FEMSA employees and shareholders. The U.S. Consulate in Monterrey responded to the shooting by saying Americans were not targets of the attack.

More Monterrey, Mexico Now Off Limits to Children of U.S.-Government Employees | CNSnews.com

waltky · 12-15-2010, 05:00 PM

Ciudad Juarez death toll at 3,000...

Ciudad Juarez's drug war death toll hits 3,000
15 December 2010 - A total of 7,386 people have been killed in Ciudad Juarez in the past three years

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This year's death toll from drug-related violence in the north Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez has reached 3,000 - 10 times the figure recorded in 2007. The grim milestone was reached after two murders on Tuesday, the Chihuahua state attorney-general's office said. Last year, 2,763 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez, 1,140 more than in 2008. More than 30,000 people have died across Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the drug cartels in 2006. Northern states have seen much of the violence, with cartels fighting each other for control of the lucrative drug smuggling routes to the US.

Exodus

Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for Chihuahua's attorney-general, announced on Tuesday that, with two weeks left in 2010, 3,000 murders had been recorded in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million people. The latest deaths were the result of two separate incidents, he said. One of the victims was a 35-year-old man found shot dead in a car, while the other murder saw a 46-year-old killed in front of his family. A total of 7,386 people had been killed in Ciudad Juarez in the past three years, he added. In 2007, about 300 people were murdered there.

Most of the victims were members of rival drug gangs, but civilians and members of the security forces were frequently targeted or caught in the crossfire, officials said. In one incident in October, at least 14 people were killed when masked gunmen stormed a garden party and then shot indiscriminately at dozens of youths. Thousands of people have fled the city in the wake of the violence.

More BBC News - Ciudad Juarez's drug war death toll hits 3,000

waltky · 12-30-2010, 10:36 PM

More murdering mayhem in Monterrey, Mexico...

Police officers, doctor killed in Mexico shootings
Dec 30,`10 -- Gunmen believed to be linked to drug cartels killed four police officers and a doctor in apparently coordinated attacks in and around the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, authorities said Thursday.

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Three officers were wounded in Wednesday's attacks, said Jorge Domene, a spokesman for the security council in northern Nuevo Leon state, where Monterrey is located. In one of the attacks, gunmen opened fire on a Monterrey police station, killing a medical doctor who was administering tests to employees at the station and wounding three officers, Domene said. In two additional, separate attacks carried out within minutes of each other in the Monterrey suburb of Guadalupe, gunmen killed two police officers, a man and a woman.

"Yesterday's events clearly represent acts by organized crime trying to intimidate or reverse the actions that authorities have taken ... to counter the violence that has been unleashed in our state," Domene told a news conference. Monterrey, Mexico's third-largest city, has been rocked by drug-cartel turf battles. Six people were found dead Thursday in the southern state of Guerrero, another disputed drug trafficking hot spot, according to a state police statement. Two of the men were found in the resort city of Acapulco, one of them buried in a clandestine grave. He had been blindfolded and his hands and feet were bound.

Also Thursday, the navy said in a statement that it had captured four suspects linked to drug-cartel activities, including two females under the age of 18. Marines detained the four Tuesday in the city of Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, in two vehicles that had been reported stolen. Four assault rifles were found in the vehicles, and one of the male suspects claimed to be a hit man for the Gulf drug cartel.

Mexican authorities have arrested astonishingly young suspects accused of working for cartels in recent months. Early this month, soldiers and police detained an American-born 14-year-old boy who allegedly worked as a drug-cartel enforcer. The boy told reporters he helped a drug gang behead four people. Under Mexican law, minors cannot be tried as adults and are handled under a separate juvenile-offenders system. The military, meanwhile, announced it seized a ton of marijuana per day in Baja California state this year, a record daily average. On Oct. 18, soldiers and police confiscated 148 tons (134 metric tons) of marijuana in Tijuana, Mexico's biggest pot haul on record.

Source

See also:

Mexican drug traffickers set up new cells in Central America
December 30, 2010 - Los Zetas, one of the most violent drug gangs in Mexico, has recruited local former military agents, terrorized migrants, and lured poor farmers and youths to work as hired hands.

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Mexico’s drug traffickers may be selling hard drugs to their northern neighbors, but they’re exporting a far more dangerous product south of the Mexican border: their very own franchise. One of the most violent drug gangs in Mexico, Los Zetas, has set up cells in several Central American countries. They’ve recruited local former military agents to their training camps, terrorized undocumented migrants, and lured poor farmers and youth to work as hired hands, just like they’ve done in Mexico, experts say.

The latest sign of how entrenched Los Zetas have become: Alleged members of the group forced radio stations in a Guatemalan province earlier this week to broadcast a threat of “war” against civilians. Their conditions were unclear, but they appeared to be calling on law enforcement to cease targeting traffickers. The radio message accuses Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom of accepting $11 million in drug money and warns of a war at malls, schools, and police stations. “Many people will die at meeting centers in coming days,” the message says.

If the threats are indeed carried out, it could escalate drug violence in the region in a way not seen before. The threat followed President Colom’s declaration of a siege Dec. 19 in the northern Alta Verapaz province, a smuggling route where Los Zetas have a significant presence. The declaration allows police to conduct warrantless arrests and searches. The president reportedly said he would not let threats shake his resolve against Los Zetas.

How Los Zetas operates

Related:

Mexico army's failures hamper drug war; The shortcomings alarm U.S. officials
December 29, 2010 : The army often relies on numbers over intelligence and falls back on time-worn tactics, such as highway checkpoints, of limited use against drug traffickers. The shortcomings alarm U.S. officials.

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Four years and 50,000 troops into President Felipe Calderon's drug war, the fighting has exposed severe limitations in the Mexican army's ability to wage unconventional warfare, tarnished its proud reputation and left the U.S. pointedly criticizing the force as "virtually blind" on the ground. The army's shortcomings have complicated the government's struggle against the narcotics cartels, as the deadliest year of the war by far comes to a close.

Though long employed to destroy marijuana and poppy fields in the countryside, the army hadn't been trained for the type of operations needed to fight groups trafficking cocaine through border cities. "The army has never worked in urban operations against drug trafficking, in urban cells," said Raul Benitez, a national security specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "It's the first time it is engaged in urban warfare. It has to learn."

Instead, the army often relies on numerical superiority over intelligence and has frequently fallen back on time-worn tactics, such as highway checkpoints, that are of limited use against drug traffickers, especially in cities. Checkpoints have also been the scene of serious human rights violations, including deadly shootings of civilians. Allegations of abuse at the hands of the army, one of the most respected institutions in the country, have soared. Mexico's human rights commission this year received nearly double the number of complaints it had gotten in the previous three years combined.

MORE

waltky · 08-28-2011, 05:12 AM

Granny says hang him from the nearest tree...

Mexican Charged in US Consulate Murders Extradited to US
August 27, 2011 - The U.S. Justice Department says one of the accused killers in the March 2010 killings of three people with ties to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico has been extradited to the United States.

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U.S. authorities say Miguel Angel Nevarez appeared before a U.S. judge Friday in El Paso, in the southwestern U.S. state of Texas - just across the border from Juarez.

Nevarez, a member of the Barrio Azteca gang, is accused of taking part in the killings of a consular officer, Leslie Enriquez Catton, and her husband, Arthur Redelfs, and Jorge Alberto Salcido, the husband of a consulate worker.

Nevarez also faces drug and money laundering charges, as well as conspiracy to commit racketeering and federal firearm charges. In 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched an army-led crackdown on the country's drug gangs. Since then, more than 41,000 people have died in violence linked to the drug cartels.

Source