Hitmen Massacre 18 In Border Drug Rehab – Juarez Mexico

About a dozen hooded gunmen burst into a Mexican rehabilitation clinic near the U.S. border on Wednesday, lining up patients before killing 17 of them. Drug gangs have targeted rehab clinics in the manufacturing city of Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas, accusing them of protecting dealers from rival gangs.

The attack was one of the deadliest in President Felipe Calderon’s three-year war against drug cartels, despite the presence of 10,000 troops and federal police in Ciudad Juarez who constantly patrol the city’s streets.

The suspected hitmen stormed their way into the drug and alcohol rehab clinic in Ciudad Juarez and forced patients into a line in a corridor before shooting them, the army and the El Diario newspaper said.

“Armed men shot at about 20 people, killing 17 of them and injuring three,” said army spokesman Enrique Torres.

In a separate attack on Wednesday, gunmen killed the deputy police chief in Calderon’s home state of Michoacan in western Mexico.

Jose Manuel Revueltas, appointed just two weeks ago, was intercepted by heavily armed men in two vehicles as he drove down a busy avenue in the state capital, Morelia, a few blocks from police headquarters, police said.

Revueltas, 38, and his two bodyguards died in the intense gunfire that also killed a man traveling on a bus.

via Hitmen kill 17 in Mexico clinic on U.S. border | Reuters.

State Department Warns About Mexico Travel

Citing rising violence, the U.S. State Department’s latest Mexico alert urges travelers to delay trips to parts of Michoacan and Chihuahua states. The alert, issued Thursday, advises U.S. citizens to delay unnecessary travel to those areas and to exercise “extreme caution” if a visit is necessary.

From The State Department Travel Alert

Throughout Mexico, the State Department said, travelers should try to travel on main roads during daylight hours, especially toll roads, which are typically more secure. Officials also recommend that Americans avoid traveling alone, put away fancy jewelry, stay in well-known tourist areas and leave itineraries with friends or family.

Mexican drug cartels are engaged in violent conflict – both among themselves and with Mexican security services – for control of narcotics trafficking routes along the U.S.-Mexico border.  In order to combat violence, the government of Mexico has deployed military troops in various parts of the country.  U.S. citizens should cooperate fully with official checkpoints when traveling on Mexican highways.

Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades.  Large firefights have taken place in towns and cities across Mexico, but occur mostly in northern Mexico, including Tijuana, Chihuahua City, Monterrey and Ciudad Juarez.  During some of these incidents, U.S. citizens have been trapped and temporarily prevented from leaving the area.  The U.S. Mission in Mexico currently restricts non-essential travel within the state of Durango, the northwest quadrant of Chihuahua and an area southeast of Ciudad Juarez, and all parts of the state of Coahuila south of Mexican Highways 25 and 22 and the Alamos River for US Government employees assigned to Mexico.  This restriction was implemented in light of the recent increase in assaults, murders, and kidnappings in those three states.  The situation in northern Mexico remains fluid; the location and timing of future armed engagements cannot be predicted.

A number of areas along the border are experiencing rapid growth in the rates of many types of crime.  Robberies, homicides, petty thefts, and carjackings have all increased over the last year across Mexico generally, with notable spikes in Tijuana and northern Baja California.  Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and Nogales are among the cities which have experienced public shootouts during daylight hours in shopping centers and other public venues.  Criminals have followed and harassed U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles in border areas including Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, and Tijuana.

The situation in the state of Chihuahua including Ciudad Juarez is of special concern.   The U.S. Consulate General recommends that American citizens defer non-essential travel to the Guadalupe Bravo area southeast of Ciudad Juarez and to the northwest quarter of the state of  Chihuahua including the city of Nuevo Casas Grandes and surrounding communities.  From the United States, these areas are often reached through the Columbus, NM and Fabens and Fort Hancock, TX ports-of-entry.  In both areas, American citizens have been victims of drug related violence.

Mexican authorities report that more than 1,000 people have been killed in Ciudad Juarez in the first six-months of 2009.  Additionally, this city of 1.6 million people experienced more than 17,000 car thefts and 1,650 carjackings in 2008.  U.S. citizens should pay close attention to their surroundings while traveling in Ciudad Juarez, avoid isolated locations during late night and early morning hours, and remain alert to news reports.  Visa and other service seekers visiting the Consulate are encouraged to make arrangements to pay for those services using a non-cash method.

U.S. citizens are urged to be alert to safety and security concerns when visiting the border region.  Criminals are armed with a wide array of sophisticated weapons.  In some cases, assailants have worn full or partial police or military uniforms and have used vehicles that resemble police vehicles.  While most crime victims are Mexican citizens, the uncertain security situation poses serious risks for U.S. citizens as well.  U.S. citizen victims of crime in Mexico are urged to contact the consular section of the nearest U.S. consulate or Embassy for advice and assistance.

See Full Travel Alert

Ciudad Juarez – 43 Murders In 72 Hours

There has been a surge of violence in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, with 43 people murdered in and around it in the last three days. About 1,300 people have been murdered in the border city since the start of the year. Most of the killings are believed to be drug related. Earlier this year the government sent thousands of troops to the city in an effort to contain the violence.

The move had appeared to be working; it is not clear what prompted this rise.

Bar attack

A family of three were the latest victims of the rash of killings that is currently taking place in Ciudad Juarez.

A man was driving his wife and their four-year-old son along a highway near the city when their car was sprayed with automatic gunfire. The father and child were killed instantly, the mother is in hospital.

The previous day a popular bar in the centre of town was attacked.

The owner and his wife were shot at close range by gunmen who then opened fire on customers, killing six of them.

A few hours earlier a group of heavily-armed masked men attacked a house outside the city, close to the border with Texas. A further six people were killed.

Mexican prosecutors are offering no explanation for the surge in violence.

via BBC NEWS | Americas | Violence surges in Mexican city.

Cartel Member Killed In El Paso Feared For His Life

A Mexican man who was allegedly killed on orders from his own cartel believed they were hunting for him after he began working as an informant and was fearful for his life, according to court documents. Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana began to worry after he began working as an informant for immigration officials in the United States.

“The victim was concerned for his own well-being and the safety of his family,” the documents said, referencing statements the victim made to a witness.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials gave Gonzalez a visa so he could live in El Paso, Texas, his fellow Juarez cartel members began to get suspicious, El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said at a press conference.

Allen said Gonzalez’s exit from Mexico, combined with a raid on a cartel warehouse and the arrest of cartel lieutenant Pedro “El Tigre” Aranas Sanchez led cartel members to believe he might be working as an informant, Allen said.

Then, a Mexican newspaper named Gonzalez as an informant in the arrest of the high-ranking cartel member, according to court documents. Police say Gonzales quickly became the target of his own cartel.

Police said Gonzalez knew if his fellow cartel members found him, he would likely be killed, police said.

On May 15, the cartel found him.

Read Full Article.

12 Mexican Intelligence Officers Found Tortured, Killed

Mexican officials have identified 12 tortured bodies found dumped in Michoacan state as off-duty military intelligence officers who were ambushed by a drug cartel they were investigating.

The bound, blindfolded and tortured bodies of the 11 men and one woman were found late last night. National security spokesman Monte Alejandro Rubido said they were ambushed and executed by the La Familia cartel. Earlier reports said the bodies were those of soldiers.

Death Threats Targets Top Tijuana Cop

The first attack came at 7 p.m. Monday. Gerónimo Calderón Jiménez was getting off guard duty in southern Tijuana, when heavily armed gunmen shot him repeatedly and left behind a hand-written sign: Five officers will die each week, unless police chief Julián Leyzaola resigns.

The next 15 hours saw four more assaults in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach that left two officers dead, one injured and fifth unhurt but badly shaken. In the brutal showdown between drug cartels and Mexican law enforcement, these victims were shot at random, authorities said – officers who found themselves in harm’s way as a brutal drug lord named Teodoro García Simental sent a deadly message.

A half-hour after Calderón was killed, miles away in the seaside city of Rosarito Beach, gunmen fired at a 20-year-old Rosarito Beach officer, a member of the city’s tourist police unit, as she stopped at a food stand in a neighborhood west of the toll road. She escaped injury, but blocks away and moments later, they killed fellow officer Rubén Villegas Bartolini, 42, behind the wheel of a patrol vehicle.

Another half-hour later, this time on Bulevar Insurgentes in eastern Tijuana, gunmen attacked an unarmed auxiliary police officer outside a Smart & Final store. When he was taken to the Red Cross Hospital for treatment, officers were assigned to stand guard outside. At 10 a.m. the next day, gunmen sprayed gunfire on their pickups, killing officer Eva González Cruz on her 38th birthday.

“The fight to recover Tijuana’s tranquillity will continue,” Tijuana Mayor Jorge Ramos vowed Thursday following a City Hall ceremony honoring Calderón and González. “It is not with little anonymous messages that they are going to make the Mexican state back down.”

Authorities believe the attacks were carried on the orders of García – commonly known as El Teo – who is said to control trafficking routes and the domestic drug market in much of eastern Tijuana and Rosarito Beach. In recent weeks, García’s group has suffered serious losses, as the military and civilian law enforcement forces have arrested some of his top deputies, best known by their nicknames: El Rambo, El Chuletas, La Perra, El Cande.

Garcia has wielded power in the region by building a network of corrupt police officers, but in recent months authorities say many of his allies in Tijuana’s 2,200-member have been arrested, dropped from the force or voluntarily resigned.

via Threat targets top Tijuana cop.

4 U.S. Citizens Found Strangled in Tijuana Mexico

The bodies of four U.S. citizens were found strangled, beaten and stabbed in a van in this border city, two days after they reportedly left their Southern California homes for a night at the Mexican clubs, U.S. officials said Thursday. The bodies were described as having been tortured; bludgeoned, beaten and with their skulls crushed. They were found wrapped in blankets early Saturday morning, according to a news release from the Tijuana State Attorney’s Office.

The victims were found Saturday, but their deaths were not reported earlier because they were under investigation, said Fermin Gomez, an assistant state prosecutor in Baja California.

U.S. consular officials in Tijuana said the victims  two men and two women from the San Diego and Chula Vista areas — were U.S. citizens. The state attorney general’s office in Baja, Calif., said one of the women was Mexican.

A spokesman for the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana confirmed the identities of the dead as Luis Games Chavez, 21; Oscar J. Garcia III, 23; Brianna Hernandez Aguilera, 19; and Carmen Ramos Chavez, 20. All were U.S. citizens and Southern California residents, the consulate spokesman said. He declined to give specific hometowns or say how long the four had been in Tijuana.

Their deaths are the latest in a string of violence in Tijuana that authorities blame on a bloody turf war between drug cartels.

“I just don’t think kids should be going to Tijuana right now,” Chula Vista police Lt. Scott Arsenault told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “They ran into the wrong people, obviously.”

Bernard Gonzales, a spokesman for the Chula Vista Police Department, said a friend told the women’s parents they were headed to nightclubs in Tijuana on Thursday night. They were reported missing the next day when they did not answer their cell phones.

Source

7 Police Officers Murdered In Tijuana Attacks

Heavily armed gunmen staged a series of surprise attacks against municipal police forces in this tense border city, killing seven and wounding three in brazen assaults that shattered a four-month period of relative calm.

Six police officers and an auxiliary officer died within a 45-minute span late Monday in ambushes at a hillside substation, on busy streets and outside an OXXO mini-mart, where four were killed in a hail of bullets, including one who tried to fight back.

“He took out his gun and tried to fire at them, but they shot him and he fell backward, and his eyes rolled up in his head,” said a teenager who witnessed the shooting in the tough Los Arenales neighborhood.

With authorities placing the blame on organized crime gunmen, municipal police Tuesday retreated to substations and headquarters and patrolled mostly in groups or with army escorts. The tension was palpable outside the 8th Street headquarters downtown, where motorcycle cops were being held back from patrol until further notice.

[...]

Authorities said the attacks, by men firing AK-47 rifles from late model cars and SUVs, were preceded by a spate of threats over police radio frequencies. Such threats are so common, Leyzaola said, that authorities didn’t feel a need to take precautionary measures.

The first act of violence against police Monday occurred about 9:15 a.m., when a female officer was wounded, shot in the back while on patrol in her vehicle near the airport. But the frenzy of attacks erupted at 8 p.m. in the ramshackle Los Arenales neighborhood of east Tijuana, where residents say police rarely venture. The four police officers arrived at the mini-mart to take a report of an assault and were ambushed as they left.

Witnesses said two or three cars pulled up and that several masked men opened fire with high-caliber automatic weapons. The officers didn’t stand a chance, even though they were wearing bulletproof vests, the witnesses said.

Two were shot in the back and fell near the door. A female officer was struck in the face and died while trying to take cover under a car. The fourth was shot in the neck and died with his gun still in his right hand.

The teenager who witnessed the attack said he placed his sisters on the floor and then peeked outside and saw the last officer go down.

Read Full Article

TSA Warns Truckers Of Violence In Mexico

Drivers in cross-border operations to Mexico and along the U.S. Southwest border are being advised to take precautions to avoid being caught in the drug violence in the region, a Transportation Security Administration contractor said.

According to Total Security Services, Inc., which operates TSA’s Highway Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the violence among Mexican drug cartels has killed more than 200 Americans since 2004, and truckers may be victims of crimes ranging from hijacking and kidnapping to murder.

The Highway ISAC is recommending that drivers with deliveries in Mexico keep in scheduled contact with dispatchers and report in at every scheduled and non-scheduled stop. Drivers also should avoid unsafe highways, and establish a verbal “duress code” to use on the phone when they in the presence of people who may have criminal intent.

Interested parties may receive a copy of the report “Border Violence” by calling the ISAC at 1-703-563-3275

via Source

Mexico Offered U.S. Help In Battle With Drug Cartels

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the United States could help with equipment and intelligence techniques after returning from a six-day trip to Latin America punctuated by news of beheadings and intimidation by Mexican drug cartels.

Mexico could borrow from U.S. tactics in the fight against terrorism as it battles a crisis of drug-related violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, the top U.S. military officer said Friday.

Returning from a six-day trip to Latin America punctuated by news of beheadings and intimidation by Mexican drug cartels, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the United States could help with equipment and intelligence techniques.

Adm. Mike Mullen would not be specific about what kind of intelligence or surveillance help the United States might offer, but said he saw ways to employ experience the United States has gained in the ongoing hunt for extremists and terrorists.

He would not say whether there may already be U.S. drones flying over bloodstained cities such as Ciudad Juarez, where 17 bodies came into the morgue on one day recently, including the city police force’s second-in-command and three other officers.

“Obviously it affects us because of the relationship between the two countries,” Mullen said during a telephone news conference as he flew to Washington following meetings in Mexico, his last stop.

Source

Kidnapping Capital of the U.S.A. – Phoenix Arizona

Brian Ross and ABC News report what officials caution is now a dangerous and even deadly crime wave. Phoenix, Arizona has become the kidnapping capital of America, with more incidents than any other city in the world outside of Mexico City and over 370 cases last year alone. But local authorities say Washington, DC is too obsessed with al Qaeda terrorists to care about what is happening in their own backyard right now.

“We’re in the eye of the storm,” Phoenix Police Chief Andy Anderson told ABC News of the violent crimes and ruthless tactics spurred by Mexico’s drug cartels that have expanded business across the border. “If it doesn’t stop here, if we’re not able to fix it here and get it turned around, it will go across the nation,” he said. Read more

Mexico Army Nabs Cartel Suspect – Claims To Have Dissolved 300 Bodies In Acid

A suspect in police custody calls himself a “stewmaker” for a Mexican drug lord, saying he disposed of about 300 bodies by dissolving them in acid.

A suspected hit man who allegedly dumped more than 300 bodies in vats of lye at the behest of a top Tijuana crime boss has been arrested near Ensenada, according to the Mexican military.

Alleged crime boss Teodoro Garcia Simental, nicknamed El Teo, narrowly escaped after soldiers on Thursday raided an upscale resort outside the Baja California port city 70 miles south of San Diego, according to one Mexican news report.

The military said Santiago Meza Lopez, a 45-year-old from the state of Sinaloa, was arrested after allegedly trying to flee from soldiers and federal agents on the Ensenada- Tijuana coastal highway. Soldiers also arrested Garcia’s cook and seized four automatic weapons and two grenades.

Military authorities said Meza admitted being Garcia’s body disposal expert, nicknamed “El Pozolero del Teo” — roughly translated: Teo’s soup maker.

Garcia, said to be in his mid-30s, is believed to be battling the Arellano Felix drug cartel for control of the Tijuana area in a turf war that has claimed more than 500 lives since late September. Many of the disintegrated remains left in barrels on busy streets have been attributed to El Teo, and have included messages addressed to reputed rivals threatening to make their henchmen into pozole, a Mexican soup.

Source – Read Full Article

Vigilantes Appear To Be Fighting Back In Mexico Drug War

Shadowy vigilante groups are threatening Mexico’s drug gangs near the U.S. border in retaliation for a wave of murders and kidnappings that killed 1,600 people in this city alone last year.

One group in the border city of Ciudad Juarez pledged last week to “clean our city of these criminals” and said their mission was to “end the life of a criminal every 24 hours.”

The emergence of vigilantes would be a new twist to a vicious drug war that killed 5,700 people in Mexico last year and forced the United States to give hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Mexican government.

Ciudad Juarez, a manufacturing center in the desert across from El Paso, Texas, was the scene of the worst violence in 2008 as drug cartels fought each other as well as staging kidnappings for ransom and extorting businessmen.

In an e-mail to news organizations, the “Juarez Citizen Command” said it was funded by local businessmen sick of abductions and extortion in the city, home to factories that export goods to the United States.

While none of the city’s 1,600 in the last year were undoubtedly the work of vigilantes, a body was found on January 7 with a message next to it that read: “This is for those who continue extorting.”

And six men in their 20s and 30s were shot dead and dumped together in Ciudad Juarez in October with a cardboard sign reading: “Message for all the rats: This will continue.”

Drug gangs often leave threatening messages with the bodies of their victims, but security officials said those two incidents might have been the work of vigilantes.

Another group, “Businessmen United, The Death Squad” put a video on Internet site YouTube last June threatening to go after kidnappers and criminals in Ciudad Juarez, the biggest city in Mexico’s Chihuahua state. The video is no longer on YouTube.

via Shadow of vigilantes appears in Mexico drug war – Yahoo! News.

Border Terror – Violence and Brutality Spreads In Mexico

Violence in Mexico continues to grow in both brutality and the  number of dead.  Here’s just a few of the many stories to come from the border cities over the past week.

Mystery Man Blamed As Body Count Grows

He is said to love the ladies, fast horses and dissolving enemies in lye.

Teodoro Garcia Simental is among the best known but least identifiable villains in Mexico’s drug war, blamed for a trail of terror across Baja California.

His heavily armed hit men, authorities say, have been leaving the gruesome displays of charred and decapitated bodies across the city, signed with the moniker “Tres Letras,” for the three letters in “Teo.” And authorities believe he runs a network of hide-outs where kidnap victims are held in cages.

Yet thousands of police officers, soldiers, state and federal agents can’t seem to find him.

Billboards showing Tijuana’s most wanted kidnappers don’t include Garcia’s image, even though he is believed to be behind most of the gang war that has claimed more than 400 lives here since late September.

“That tells you that you don’t want to be the one responsible for putting Teo’s picture in public,” said one U.S. law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There’s no future in it.”

[...]

Garcia is said to be in his mid-30s — even his date of birth is not known. He reportedly bets big on clandestine horse races at isolated ranches outside Ensenada. He hires people at $400 per week to guard kidnapping victims and to weld together the barrels of caustic chemicals used to dispose of some of his victims, according to documents and interviews. One Mexican law enforcement official said Garcia has killed people at parties, laughing at their stunned reactions.

Read More

A Week In Tijuana

The teenage nephew of the army general leading the local fight against drug traffickers was killed this weekend in Baja California’s continuing violence.

A municipal police department spokesman said gunmen shot the boy, Carlos Alfonso Ortiz Davila, 16, about 8:30 p.m. Friday while he was in front of a high school known as CECYTE on the southside of Tijuana, the spokesman said.

He said the teen was the nephew of Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mujica, commander of the Second Military Zone and a leading figure in the fight against drug cartels in northwest Mexico.

A state police officer also was killed during the weekend. Around 6 p.m. Sunday, a battle broke out on city streets between gunmen and state police officers. The officer was wounded and died soon after the fight, said the Baja California State Attorney General’s Office.

The boy and the officer were among seven people killed this weekend in the state.

In Tijuana, police around 2 a.m. Saturday found the body of man who had been burned to death on the the east side of the city, the Attorney General’s Ofice said.

About 3:30 that afternoon, two men were shot, also in eastern Tijuana. One of them died three hours later, the Attorney General’s Office said.

About 8 p.m., municipal police found two decapitated bodies in an empty lot in in far eastern Tijuana near the Tecate city limits. The bodies had a message signed by “La Maña,” a nickname used by a drug trafficking leader, the state agency said.

The violence extended to Rosarito Beach, when a man was shot to death around 11 a.m. Sunday as he drove his car, the state agency reported.

About 800 have been killed in Tijuana this year. Most of the deaths have been blamed on rival drug gangs battling for supremacy.

Source – Read More

Four Police Officers Killed in Ciudad Juarez

Gunmen staged four attacks on police within a half-hour period, killing four officers in a Mexican border city overrun by drug violence, an official said Monday.

Authorities are investigating whether the attacks Sunday night were coordinated, municipal police spokesman Jaime Torres said.

Dozens of Ciudad Juarez police have been killed this year in attacks blamed on drug gangs trying to consolidate territory. Many officers have quit out of fear for their lives, often after their names have appeared on hit lists left in public.

Another such list naming 26 officers was found early Monday at a dog racing track above the bodies of four civilian men gunned down at the track, Torres said. One of the four had been decapitated, and a Santa Claus hat had been placed on his head. A fifth man who survived was left bound and gagged next to the bodies.

At Least 9 Soldiers Found Decapitated

Mexican police on Sunday found nine decapitated bodies and the army identified eight soldiers who had died fighting powerful drug gangs and whose murders were seen as a brazen challenge to the government.

The bodies showed signs of torture. They were left on the side of a highway about an hour north of the tourist resort of Acapulco in the southern state of Guerrero, state police said.

Their heads were stuffed in a plastic bag and left outside a shopping center.

Mexico’s President Feline Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of troops and police since 2006 to take on drug cartels. The defense ministry vowed not to back down despite its latest losses.

“They are trying to scare the military. Regardless, the ministry promises to continue fighting,” it said in a statement.

The ministry released the names of eight decapitated soldiers but said one of them was recovered on December 9.

Drug killings throughout Mexico have more than doubled to over 5,300 this year, scaring off investment and tourists. The United States has sent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to help its southern neighbor fight the cartels.

The Mexican army has made some prominent captures, but the cartels seem able to quickly replace their losses. Meanwhile, a growing number of police have been gruesomely murdered.

A note left with the severed heads warned of more decapitations, the state police said.

Source

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