Mexico raids kidnapping ring that filmed victims in cages
Mexican authorities raided a kidnapping ring that filmed its victims being held inside a cage and beaten, federal authorities said Saturday. An abducted businessman was freed and five people were arrested.
Police also confiscated an iron cage in the raid Friday at two houses on the outskirts of Mexico City that led to the arrests of five men ages 18 to 31, the federal attorney general’s office said.
The man freed had been held for ransom since May 19 by the group, which was known for filming its victims inside a cage or being beaten to pressure relatives for money, prosecutors said.
An arsenal including assault rifles and a submachine gun was found at the houses.
Federal authorities began investigating the group after the kidnapping of a Mexico City housewife in March 2003.
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Mexico charges seven cops with kidnapping
Mexican prosecutors announced Thursday they have filed kidnapping and organize crime charges against seven police officers accused of protecting hit men working for the feared Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel.
The men served in the police department in Ensenada, a tourist town 75 kilometers (45 miles) south of the California border, and they allegedly kidnapped people involved in the drug trade and held them for ransom, the Attorney General's Office said in a press statement.
They also protected members of the "Black Commando," a group of hit men working for the Arellano Felix cartel, authorities said.
They are
Mexico arrests 8 agents in filmed drug execution
Mexico said on Thursday it had arrested 10 people, including eight federal agents, in the kidnapping of four suspected drug gang hitmen and the filmed execution of at least one of them.
The case has thrown the spotlight on the often cosy relations between Mexican authorities and organised crime. Drug gangs routinely bribe police, officials and judges to protect them or carry out their dirty work.
Four men, beaten and bruised, were shown on a homemade DVD confessing to being members of the infamous Gulf Cartel of drug traffickers. One of them was then
Mexico, U.S. Break Up Counterfeit Ring
Mexico and the United States broke up a counterfeiting ring that printed an estimated $5 million in fake $100 bills in Mexico and sold them across the border, officials said Wednesday.
The ring, based in the western state of Jalisco, operated more than four years, selling fake $100 bills in Santa Ana, Calif., San Diego, Calif, and Phoenix, Ariz., said Jose Luis Marmolejo, of the attorney general's organized crime division.
The bills, produced with offset printing equipment, were "one of the best falsifications we've seen," Marmolejo said.
Authorities arrested six people, including a man they
Mexico arrests former police official in 1975 kidnap, disappearance of leftist rebel
Police on Thursday arrested Carlos Solana Macias, a former police director in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, for the 1975 kidnapping of leftist rebel Jesus Piedra Ibarra, who was never seen again.
It was the latest chapter in Mexico's uneven efforts to prosecute political crimes of the 1960s and 70s. Piedra Ibarra's mother, Rosario Ibarra, has fought a 30-year struggle for justice in her son's case.
Solana Macias was arrested while driving in a wealthy Mexico City neighborhood, and will be transferred to Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo
Rape Victims Denied Legal Abortion
Mexican officials actively prevent rape victims from gaining access to legal and safe abortion, and they fail to punish rape and sexual violence inside and outside the family, said Human Rights Watch in a report released today. The 92-page report, "The Second Assault: Obstructing Access to Legal Abortion after Rape in Mexico," details the disrespect, suspicion and apathy that pregnant rape victims encounter from public prosecutors and health workers. The report also exposes continuing and pervasive impunity for rape and other forms of sexual violence in states throughout Mexico.
"Pregnant rape victims are essentially assaulted twice,"
Jeff Jarrett Causes Near-Riot In Mexico City On Sunday Night
NEAR-RIOT ERUPTS IN MEXICO CITY DURING APPEARANCE BY NWA WORLD CHAMPION JEFF JARRETT
Security and police called in to escort Jarrett out of arena
The El Toreo arena in Mexico City nearly erupted in a full-scale riot on Sunday night during an appearance by NWA World Heavyweight Champion Jeff Jarrett.
During the main event of the huge AAA “Verano de Escandalo†show in front of over 20,000 spectators, police and extra security had to be called in after fans rushed the ring and threw hundreds of projectiles at Jarrett.
In a total show of disrespect,
MEXICO Ex-consul freed in setback for prosecutors
A judge has freed and cleared a former Mexican consul accused of participating in a ring that smuggled hundreds of Lebanese migrants into the United States, another setback for the Mexican attorney general's office.
The release of Imelda Ortiz Abdala, consul to Lebanon from 1999-2001, suggested that Mexican officials may have overreached as they went after a smuggling ring first prosecuted in the U.S.
The attorney general's office, which did not respond to requests for comment, has been embarrassed by bad arrests recently but often has blamed U.S. intelligence.
This month, officials arrested a Mexico City architect
Jennifer Lopez in Mexico to film movie about killings of women in border city
Singer-actress Jennifer Lopez is in the Mexican border city of Nogales filming a movie about the largely unsolved killings of women in Ciudad Juarez.
Traffic backed up around the set and hundreds of people crowded the streets of Nogales, across from Nogales, Arizona, to get a glimpse of Lopez, who was accompanied by her husband, singer-actor Marc Anthony, local newspapers reported Tuesday.
In "Bordertown," co-written and directed by Gregory Nava, Lopez plays a Chicago-based reporter sent to Mexico to investigate the killings.
Dressed in a blue shirt, khaki
Mexico Army Brings Aid to Katrina Victims
A Mexican army convoy began crossing into the United States on Thursday to bring aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Carrying water treatment plants and mobile kitchens that can feed 7,000 people daily, the convoy bound for San Antonio is the first Mexican military unit to operate on U.S. soil since 1846.
The first green tractor-trailers, with Mexican flags attached to the tops of their cabs, crossed the international bridge at Laredo at about 8:15 a.m. The rest of the 45-vehicle convoy was in a staging area on the U.S. side in about 15
Arizona Fugitive Detained in Mexico
Mexican authorities have detained and begun deportation proceedings against an Arizona man formerly on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, a U.S. official said Thursday.
Gary Edward Lasher, 28, was arrested Wednesday in the Caribbean resort city Playa del Carmen, said the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.
Lasher is wanted in Oxnard, Calif., for allegedly beating his mother-in-law unconscious and placing her in his car trunk before she was able to escape. He has been charged with kidnapping, kidnapping for ransom, and false imprisonment with violence in a California state arrest
