11 Bodies, Some Mutilated Found In Car Near US Border

Mexican police found 11 bodies in an abandoned vehicle near the U.S. border on Thursday, some with their hands and legs cut off and left with threatening messages scrawled by suspected drug hit men.

The bodies of the men, who were shot to death, were found in the northwestern state of Sonora in a stolen SUV with Arizona plates, the state attorney general’s office said.

A state attorney general’s office spokesman said drug cartels were likely behind the attack, although he declined to give details about the messages left on the bodies.

The killings came a day after drug gangs shot up a police station in a nearby town as violence flared in the state dominated by Mexico’s top trafficker, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman.

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Drug Cartels New Weapons Pushes Mexico Towards Edge

It was a brazen assault, not just because it targeted the city’s police station, but for the choice of weapon: grenades.

The Feb. 21 attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico’s drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.

Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiauto- matic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government’s 2-year-old war against drug organizations, which are evolving into a more militarized force prepared to take on Mexican army troops, deployed by the thousands, as well as to attack each other.

These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America, U.S. officials said.

“There is an arms race between the cartels,” said Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government.

“One group gets rocket-propelled grenades, the other has to have them.”

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Homeland Security Plans For Violence On US Border

Tighter gun control and stronger law enforcement in Southwestern states were recommended Thursday by lawmakers concerned about drug violence in Mexico possibly spilling across the border.

The escalating violence — which has killed thousands, mostly south of the border — has been blamed on Mexican drug cartels which one Homeland Security official described as the biggest organized crime threat facing the United States.

Roger Rufe, Homeland Security’s head of operations, outlined the agency’s plans for protecting the border, a response that includes — as a last resort — deploying military personnel and equipment to the region if other agencies are overwhelmed.

Echoing comments a day earlier from President Barack Obama, Rufe said there currently was no need to militarize the Southwestern border with Mexico, despite violence that threatens to migrate into the United States.

“We would take all resources short of DoD (Defense Department) and National Guard troops before we reach that tipping point,” Rufe told lawmakers on a House homeland security subcommittee. “We very much do not want to militarize our border.”

Rufe did not specify what circumstances would trigger a call for troops.

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General: Drug Cartels Are Linked To Terrorism

The head of the U.S. National Guard Bureau,  Gen. Craig McKinley said the link between terrorism and drug cartels along the United States’ border with Mexico is increasingly clear.

He went on to say the National Guard will be critical in helping protect the United States in the event of a terrorist attack and the growing threat of violent drug cartels operating along the Southwestern border with Mexico.

McKinley said the drug cartels in Latin America are clearly connected to organized criminal groups who support and funnel money to terrorist organizations.

“The Southwest border is one of the most critical areas in the nation right now,” McKinley said.

“The nature of the drug cartels along the Southwest border is becoming increasingly menacing, and the linkages between drug cartels through organized crime back to terrorist organizations cannot be disputed.”

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Threat of Mexican Drug Cartels Near Crisis

Two of Mexico’s deadliest drug cartels have reached a combined force of 100,000 foot soldiers, wreaking havoc across the country and threatening U.S. border states, the U.S. Defense Department told The Washington Times.

The cartels rival the Mexican army in size and have both Mexico and the U.S. in crisis mode as they deal with what they fear is a coming insurgency along the border.

“It’s moving to crisis proportions,” an unidentified defense official told The Times. The official also said the cartels have reached a size where they are on par with Mexico’s army of 130,000.

About 7,000 people have died in the last year — more than 1,000 in January alone — at the hands of Mexico’s increasingly violent drug cartels. Murders often involve beheadings or bodies dissolved in vats of acid.

The two most dangerous cartels are the Sinaloa cartel, nicknamed the “Federation” or “Golden Triangle” by law enforcement agencies, and “Los Zetas” (the Gulf Cartel). They have been growing and are reportedly discussing a truce or merger to better withstand government forces, The Times reported.

Mexico is now only behind Pakistan and Iran as a U.S. national security concern, coming in ahead of Afghanistan and Iraq, the defense official told The Times.

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Mexico Send In Military To Restore Order

The Mexican government will deploy 1,000 more federal police officers as part of a wider effort to restore order in Ciudad Juarez, the nation’s most violent city, officials said Monday.

Some of those uniformed federal officers began arriving in the border city Monday, two days after about 2,000 soldiers landed there in a related military buildup. Those soldiers were the first of an expected 5,000 additional troops who will be sent to help perform basic police functions.

The military reinforcements will bring to more than 7,000 the number of soldiers in Ciudad Juarez.

The nation’s public safety chief, Genaro Garcia Luna, said that along with the soldiers, he planned to dispatch the additional 1,000 federal police officers, Notimex news agency reported.

About 425 federal officers already had been posted in Ciudad Juarez, where the death toll last year exceeded 1,600, the highest in a country racked by drug-related violence.

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Drug Gangs Threaten Tijuana Cops On Radio, Then Kill Them

The situation along the border continues to deteriorate.

Mexican drug gangs are breaking into Tijuana police radio frequencies to issue chilling death threats to cops which they then carry out, demoralizing security forces in a worsening drug war.

“You’re next, bastard … We’re going to get you,” an unidentified drug gang member said over the police radio in the city of Tijuana after naming a policeman.

The man also threatened a second cop by name and played foot-stomping “narcocorrido” music, popular with drug cartels, over the airwaves.

“No one can help them,” an officer named Jorge said of his threatened colleagues as he heard the threats in his patrol car.

Sure enough, two hours later the dead bodies of the two named policemen were found dumped on the edge of the city, their hands tied and bullet wounds in their heads.

Cartels killed some 530 police in Mexico last year, some of them corrupt officers who were working for rival gangs. Others were killed in shoot-outs or murdered for working against the gangs or refusing to turn a blind eye to drug shipments.

Violence has hit shocking levels in Tijuana, over the border from San Diego, since President Felipe Calderon launched an army crackdown on traffickers in late 2006, stirring up new wars between rival cartels over smuggling routes.

The drug war is scaring tourists and investors away from northern Mexico, forcing some businesses to shutter just as the country heads into recession this year.

Badly-paid Tijuana municipal police, often accused of collaborating with rival wings of the local Arellano Felix cartel, are badly demoralized, senior officers say.

“These death threats are part of the psychological warfare that organized crime is using against officers,” said Tijuana police chief Gustavo Huerta.

“Before, the gangs began infiltrating the radio after a police execution, which was bad enough, but now they are doing it beforehand and the force feels terrorized,” he said.

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Obama Faces Drug War At Mexican Border

Cartels’ turf fights escalate and threaten to spread into U.S.

Add another pressing challenge to President-elect Barack Obama’s growing to-do list – tamping down a dramatic rise in violence and corruption that has overwhelmed the U.S.-Mexico border and spread an escalating turf fight between warring drug cartels into the United States.

Near-daily shootouts and ambushes along the southwestern border pose a serious threat, according to separate government reports, which predict a rise in “deadly force” against law enforcement officers, first responders and U.S. border residents.

Even President Bush, during a Dec. 21 interview with The Washington Times, warned that Mr. Obama faced a looming war with drug cartels where “the front line of the fight will be Mexico.” He said the new president will need to deal “with these drug cartels in our own neighborhoods.”

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the agency has begun to make progress against “the criminals and thugs” operating along the U.S.-Mexico border, but “we are beginning to see more violence in some border communities and against our Border Patrol agents as these traffickers … seek to protect their turf.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the investigative arm of Homeland Security, said in a recent report that border gangs were becoming increasingly ruthless, targeting rivals, along with federal, state and local police. ICE said border violence has risen dramatically over the past three years as part of “an unprecedented surge.”
Source -Washington Times

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Terror At The Border – Mexico Drug Cartels Send Message of Torture and Death

The death squads of the drug cartels are killing in spectacularly gruesome ways, using the violence as a language to deliver a message to society.

Increasingly, bodies show unmistakable signs of torture. Videos of executions are posted on the Internet, as taunts, as warnings. Corpses are dumped on playgrounds, with neatly printed notes beside them. And very often, the heads have been removed.

When someone rolled five heads onto the dance floor in a cantina in Michoacan state two years ago, even the most hardened Mexicans were shocked. Now ritual mutilations are routine. In the border city of Tijuana, 37 people were slain over the weekend, including four children. Nine of the adults were decapitated, including three police officers whose badges were stuffed in their mouths.

“There is a new and different violence in this war,” said Victor Clark Alfaro, the founder of the Binational Center for Human Rights, who moves around Tijuana accompanied by bodyguards. “Each method is now more brutal, more extreme than the last. To cut off the heads? That is now what they like. They are going to the edge of what is possible for a human being to do.”

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Over 38 Murders In Tijuana Over The Weekend

At least 38 people have been killed in Tijuana since Saturday, nine of them decapitated, in escalating drug-related violence that appears to have left in tatters a Mexican military offensive launched two weeks ago.

The killing spree marked the end of the tenure of the city’s top law enforcement official. Secretary of Public Security Alberto Capella Ibarra was removed from his post Monday evening after a year marked by upheaval in the police ranks and increasing violence.

Dozens of soldiers and federal agents patrolling the eastern part of the city have failed to stop the killings between rival drug cartels, which continue brazen and brutal attacks across Tijuana.

Three of the nine decapitated bodies discovered in an empty lot Sunday were those of police officers, according to the Baja California attorney general’s office. On Saturday night, two brothers, 4 and 13 years old, were gunned down along with their father outside a grocery store, authorities said.

The nephew of Baja California’s tourism secretary, Angel Escobedo, was found fatally shot inside his car Saturday morning. In nearby Rosarito Beach, police over the weekend discovered a dismembered body in a car outside a taco stand, and another outside a small church.

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