Mexico arrests 17 in wave of killings
Prosecutor says gunmen linked to many of 200 drug deaths near border
Federal authorities said Monday they have arrested a group of 17 gunmen who could be responsible for many of the 200 drug-related killings this year in the state of Tamaulipas that borders Texas.
The men were detained in a house in the Tamaulipas state capital of Victoria after a Sunday morning shootout that left two police officers dead, Mexico’s top drug prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, told a news conference.
Police also arrested four women in the house and found an arsenal that included six automatic rifles, six automatic pistols, three shotguns and three fragmentation grenades, authorities said. The prosecutor said without elaborating that there were indications the gunmen had carried out a series of execution-style killings.
Fifteen of the detainees were flown to Mexico City for questioning by federal investigators, he said. Two of the suspects were seriously wounded in the shootout and were being treated in Victoria.
The wave of violence in Tamaulipas state stems from a turf war between the Gulf Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel for control of drug-smuggling routes into Texas along the Interstate 35 corridor. More than half of the killings in the state have occurred in Nuevo Laredo, a city of 500,000 across the border from Laredo, Texas.
Investigators have said that some of the killings were carried out by the Zetas, a group of gunmen led by former army commandos who serve as the Gulf Cartel’s enforcers. Santiago did not identify which cartel allegedly employed the arrested men.
Across Mexico, more than 1,000 drug-related killings have been recorded since Jan. 1, according to the Mexico City newspaper El Universal. Most of the slayings happened near the U.S. border in Tamaulipas and in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa.
The violence has prompted the U.S. State Department to advise American travelers about the dangers of venturing into Nuevo Laredo and other cities on the Mexico-Texas border.
Source: chron.com
No end to women murders in Mexico
This year has been one of the worst for the murder of women in Mexico's Ciudad Juarez since a wave of killings started there in 1993, an official says.
Mexico's human rights ombudsman, Jose Luis Soberanes, said that 28 women had been murdered so far in 2005.
He called for a co-ordinated and tough effort by all levels of government to prevent more deaths in the city.
More than 300 women have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez. There is no generally accepted motive for the killings.
They have been variously attributed to serial killers, drug
7 killed in new wave of violence in Mexico
Seven people were killed and 19 others arrested in a new wave of violence affecting several regions of Mexico over the past 24 hours, police said Sunday.
Among the victims were three guards of a prison near the city of Monterrey in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon, police said.
The guards were thought to be killed in a revenge by drug-traffickers operating on the Mexican-US border.
So far this year, a total of 25 people have been killed in
Eight sent to asylum after horror exorcism killings in Mexico
A judge ordered eight adults committed to a prison psychiatric facility for 40 years on Thursday for the grisly exorcism slayings of a seven-month-old baby and a 13-year-old girl in a remote mountain community in western Mexico.
The brutality of the Dec. 7 killings -- the baby was hacked to death and dismembered while the teenager killed with stones -- has shocked Mexico. Officials say the killers were the victims' own parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, who had become convinced the girls were demons or possessed by the devil.
They carried out the
Two more busted gun trafficking to Mexico
Two more men were arrested in Arizona, part of an ongoing investigation of a gun trafficking operation selling arms in Mexico, the Arizona Daily Star reported.
The arrests of Antonio Moran, 20, and Francisco Coronado, 28, bring the number of detainees to seven in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigation.
ATF agents in Arizona said some 84 assault rifles were sold to Mexican nationals over the last few weeks. Officials said they thought the weapons were being used by Mexican drug smugglers or those helping illegal aliens enter the United States.
Deaths mounting on Mexico’s border security watch
A multimillion-dollar border security program launched in June has realized measurable results, but critics say it has failed to prevent more than 100 deaths since its inception as rival drug cartels fight for dominance along the country’s northern border.
Mexican President Vicente Fox initiated the Mexico Seguro or Safe Mexico program June 11 to address public safety concerns along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Since January, more than 800 have been killed in drug-related violence on the Mexican side of the border with almost daily killings and no arrests reported in Nuevo Laredo.
Although Matamoros and Reynosa have seen
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 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
U.S. teen sentenced in Mexico to two years in prison for police officer killings
A judge sentenced a U.S. teenager Wednesday to two years in prison for being an accomplice in the June killings of two traffic officers in this border city.
Bryan Torres, a 17-year-old boy from El Paso, Texas, was found guilty of stealing some of the officers' belongings and of helping his 19-year-old friend Daygoro Rivera move the bodies.
Torres has maintained he was sleeping when the officers were shot.
Rivera confessed to killing the officers because he didn't have money to pay a bribe to the officers so
FBI arrests man wanted for murder in Mexico
An illegal immigrant residing in Watertown who was arrested last week in the murder of a Mexican police officer was turned over to Mexican authorities Tuesday, according to a federal immigration spokeswoman.
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Gail Montenegro said Hector Cepeda-Vargas, 38, was placed on a government flight from Chicago, Ill., to El Paso, Texas, on Friday and was walked across the border and turned over to Mexican authorities Tuesday.
Montenegro said Cepeda-Vargas had fled Mexico and was living at 133 Dewey Ave. in Watertown under the alias Daniel de Dioz-Lopez. She
Mexico battles crime
New checkpoints were set up downtown Sunday and nightclubs were ordered closed early, part of what local and federal authorities call Phase 2 of a nationwide crackdown on organized crime.
As many as 600 new federal troops and agents joined hundreds more in what many here say is an elusive goal: stemming the violence in this border city across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas. The crime wave is spreading quickly and threatening several other cities across Mexico.
``Now we're going after true security for the public,'' said Nuevo Laredo Mayor Daniel Pena Trevino, announcing stepped-up measures of Operation
