MX Prison Breakout Means 200 More Serious Criminals on Street–Increase in Violence Expected

Close to 200 drug dealers, murderers, and human traffickers broke out of a Nuevo Laredo prison—probably with the help of guards who were bribed or threatened; members of the Zetas were behind the prison break. Intelligence analysts say that the breakout means that we should expect more violence in cities within the Zetas-dominated areas An intelligence analyst says there is a greater chance right now you could become a victim of a carjacking in Mexico. A former drug enforcement agency supervisor said the prison break in Nuevo Laredo is the reason why the threat of carjackings will go up.

“The Zetas were the ones that orchestrated their breakout to increase their number,” says Gary Hale. Hale is a former drug enforcement agency intelligence supervisor in the Houston field office. He now runs his own intelligence firm. He says the prison breakout means more violence against people traveling to Mexico.

Hale and his team built a map to show the four cities in Mexico that are fifty miles from the border where Zetas have recently carjacked people. He says it could happen in every Mexican state that borders the United States. The Zetas operate in all of them. Hale analyzed the Zetas in a new report he released this past weekend. He says the Zetas are expanding in Mexico. They are now in Sonora, across the border from Arizona. He says the Mexican government is still arresting Zeta operatives. Last week, a Zeta recruiter trying to enlist teenagers was arrested in Monterrey.

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Bomb deactivated at Mexican mall

Mexican soldiers deactivated a bomb at a mall in central Mexico Saturday, but it was not clear if the incident was tied to the country's drug war, Mexican newspaper Milenio reported. A message from a criminal group was left with the bomb in Leon, Milenio said. There was no information on the nature of the group. Authorities in Leon, a city of about a million people, were not immediately available for comment.

The newspaper said workers found an "explosive device" in the mall's parking lot and alerted authorities. Army troops deactivated it. Nobody was reported injured. Mexican drug gangs started using car bombs this year to target police, but have so far not used bombs against the general population. Four people were killed in July in Ciudad Juarez by a bomb planted in a car, the first such attack since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.

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Clinton says Mexico drug wars starting to look like insurgency

Mexico's violent drug cartels increasingly resemble an insurgency with the power to challenge the government's control of wide swaths of its own soil, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday. Clinton's comments reflected a striking shift in the public comments of the Obama administration about the bloodshed that has cost 28,000 lives in Mexico since December 2006. They come as U.S. officials weigh a large increase in aid to the southern neighbor to help fight the cartels.

Clinton compared the conflict in Mexico to Colombia's recent struggle against a drug-financed leftist insurgency that, at its peak, controlled up to 40% of that country. She said the United States, Mexico and Central American countries need to cooperate on an "equivalent" of Plan Colombia — the multibillion-dollar military and aid program that helped turn back Colombia's insurgents. "We face an increasing threat from a well-organized network, drug-trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing into, or making common cause with, what we would consider an insurgency," Clinton said in response to a question after a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

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Cancun, Mexico, bar bombed; 8 dead

Eight people died early Tuesday after attackers hurled several Molotov cocktails into a Cancun, Mexico, bar, the state attorney general said. Six women and two men, all Mexican nationals and employees of the tavern, were killed in the 1:30 a.m. strike, now under investigation by judicial police, according to a release from Francisco Alor Quezada, attorney general for the state of Quintana Roo. Eight men hurled the explosives at the bar and fled in vehicles, the release said. No shots were fired. Although the tavern is just 5 kilometers from the city's tourist stretch, it sits apart from the area frequented by tourists, and the clientele is composed of locals, it said. Four of those slain died of burns and the others of asphyxiation, the release said.

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Mexico nabs U.S.-born drug lord 'La Barbie'

Mexican authorities captured a legendary Texan on Monday who is accused of a bloody climb to the top echelon of one of the hemisphere's most powerful drug cartels. Edgar Valdez Villarreal, known as "La Barbie" for his looks, faces a slew of charges in Mexico, but also is wanted in the United States, where he has been indicted for smuggling thousands of pounds of cocaine into this country. The U.S. government has offered a reward of up to $2 million for his capture. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle late Monday, a Houston lawyer representing Valdez, 37, said he fears his client will be tortured or worse before he can be returned to the United States for trial. "I do not think anyone is safe in the hands of the Mexican military" defense attorney Kent Schaffer said. "Something is going to happen."

Most recently, Valdez was indicted in Atlanta on federal charges he imported and distributed thousands of kilograms of cocaine from 2004 to 2006. U.S. prosecutors contend the drugs were often smuggled north through Texas and then on to Atlanta, which is a hub for cartel activity in the Southeastern United States. In turn, millions of dollars in proceeds were sent back to Mexico a similar way, according to court papers. Valdez is said to have been a standout high-school football player in the Texas-Mexico border city of Laredo, where a coach nicknamed him Barbie for his hair and eye color. It is unusual for an American to climb so high in the ranks of Mexican organized crime, but not unprecedented.

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Mexican police investigate possible new drug gang after group claims credit for 6 killings

Mexican authorities are investigating the possible emergence of a new drug gang that appeared to take credit for six killings through a message left with the bodies Monday, officials said. The six men were found inside a car in the southwestern city of Chilpancingo, Guerrero state police said in a statement. Next to them lay a message reading: "This will happen to all rapists, extortionists and kidnappers. Attentively, the New Cartel of the Sierra."

Authorities are investigating the authenticity of the gang, said an official with the state prosecutors office, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. The official said authorities had no previous knowledge of such an organized crime group. The car was reported stolen hours before the bodies were found, according to the police statement. The owner told police that armed men intercepted him on a highway and forced him out of the car. One body was found stuffed inside a black bag and the rest were tied up.

At least seven major drug trafficking cartels operate in Mexico, but there are many smaller gangs throughout the country, often affiliated with one of the bigger groups. The cartels have increasingly splintered since President Felipe Calderon launched an intensified crackdown after taking office in late 2006, deploying thousands of troops and federal police across Mexico. Mexican authorities have blamed the infighting for a surge of gang violence that has killed nearly 25,000 people in less than four years.

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Arrests shed light on border kidnappings

The bedraggled immigrants were picking their way through the boulders and scrub when a group of heavily armed men descended on them just short of the California-Mexico border. They corralled them in a cave and pointed their guns on the 10 men and one woman. These lawless badlands in the hills east of Tijuana have long teemed with bandits and rapists, but these criminals demanded only phone numbers. They started calling the immigrants' loved ones in Pomona, San Diego and Bakersfield: Send us money or we'll shoot, they said. The days-long kidnapping ordeal in May illustrates a growing trend as roaming gangs of well-organized, heavily armed gunmen turn their sights on illegal immigrants, making a treacherous journey ever more dangerous for people trekking north.

In the spree of kidnappings, which began about two years ago, gunmen hold people captive until family members in the U.S. send wire transfers of up to $5,000 to accounts in Mexico. Some immigrants are beaten; several have been killed, including a pair of brothers from Mexico. Many straggle across the border and turn themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents. Others end up in migrant shelters in Tijuana, too frightened to report the cases to Mexican police. Little was known about how the criminals operate until Mexican authorities dismantled two gangs in recent months, including the one in May, when 11 suspects were arrested after a shootout and a wild foot chase through the hills. The arrests provided authorities with a rare glimpse into criminal networks whose reach stretches from the border to cities across the U.S. and Mexico. The gang was allegedly run by a career criminal from Nayarit and included a former Mexican army soldier. They admitted kidnapping more than 100 immigrants over 18 months, holding them in remote caves, makeshift camp and ranches.

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Mexico thwarts Hezbollah bid to set up South American network

Mexico foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to establish a network in South America, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported on Tuesday. Hezbollah operatives employed Mexicans nationals with family ties to Lebanon to set up the network, designed to target Israel and the West, the Al-Seyassah daily said. According to the report, Mexican police mounted a surveillance operation on the group's leader, Jameel Nasr, who traveled frequently to Lebanon to receive information and instructions from Hezbollah commanders there. Police say Nasr also made frequent trips to other countries in Latin America, including a two-month stay in Venezuela in the summer of 2008. Nasr was living in Tijuana, Mexico at the time of his arrest, the report said. The report follows warnings from the United States that Hezbollah and its backer Iran are stepping up operations in the region.

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Drug gang hangs two from bridge near Mexico City

The two men were found stripped to the waist and hung by the neck from the bridge near a shopping mall early Friday morning in Cuernavaca, said the attorney general's office for Morelos state, which includes the city. Suspected drug hitmen hung the bodies of two men off a major bridge on Friday in a weekend get-away near Mexico City in the latest brazen act of drug violence near the capital. Mexican media reported the hitmen riddled the bodies with bullets before fleeing the scene.

Drug violence is raging across Mexico and almost 20,000 people have died in the fight among cartels and with Mexican security forces since President Felipe Calderon (pictured above) launched his army-led crackdown on drug gangs in late 2006. "Given the characteristics of this act, the killings appear to be linked to drug cartels and it is something we are seeing more of in the area," said a spokesman for the attorney general's office who declined to be named.

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18 gunmen die in attack on two army bases in Mexico

Dozens of gunmen mounted rare and apparently coordinated attacks targeting two army garrisons in northern Mexico, touching off firefights that killed 18 attackers. The attempts to blockade soldiers inside their bases -- part of seven near-simultaneous attacks across two northern states -- appeared to mark a serious escalation in Mexico's drug war, in which cartel gunmen attacked in unit-size forces armed with bulletproof vehicles, dozens of hand grenades and assault rifles.

While drug gunmen frequently shoot at soldiers on patrol, they seldom target army bases, and even more rarely attack in the force displayed during the confrontations Tuesday in the border states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon -- areas that have seen a surge of bloodshed in recent months. The violence mainly involves a fight between the Gulf cartel and its former allies, the Zetas, a gang of hit men. The cartel -- which has apparently formed an alliance with other cartels seeking to exterminate the Zetas -- has been warning people in the region with a series of banners and e-mails that the conflict would get worse over the next two to three months.

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Mexico arrests 2 reputed leaders of Tijuana gang

Mexican federal police arrested two suspected gang leaders Monday, delivering another big blow to a brutal drug cartel that terrorized the border city of Tijuana for several years. The capture of Raydel Lopez Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental apparently wipes out the existing leadership of the cartel headed by Teodoro Garcia Simental, who was captured last month. Teodoro and Manuel Garcia are brothers.

Lopez, known as "El Muletas," and Garcia, known as "El Chiquilin," were arrested Monday in La Paz, a city in the southern end of the Baja California peninsula, said Amy Roderick, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The gang was known for its brutality, having executed, beheaded and mutilated hundreds of rivals in Tijuana, which is across the U.S. border from San Diego. Gang members pinned notes to corpses and dissolved bodies in caustic soda.

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Drug cartels tighten grip; Mexico becoming 'narco-state'

For months, the leaders of Tancitaro had held firm against the drug lords battling for control of this central Mexican town. Then one morning, after months of threats and violence from the traffickers, they finally surrendered.Before dawn, gunmen kidnapped the elderly fathers of the town administrator and the secretary of the City Council. Within hours, both officials resigned along with the mayor, the entire seven-member City Council, two department heads, the police chief and all 60 police officers. Tancitaro had fallen to the enemy.

Across Mexico, the continuing ability of traffickers to topple governments like Tancitaro's, intimidate police and keep drug shipments flowing is raising doubts about the Mexican government's 3-year-old, U.S.-backed war on the drug cartels.Far from eliminating the gangs, the battle has exposed criminal networks more ingrained than most Americans could imagine: Hidden economies that employ up to one-fifth of the people in some Mexican states. Business empires that include holdings as everyday as gyms and a day-care center. And the death toll continues to mount: Mexico saw 6,587 drug-related murders in 2009, up from 5,207 in 2008 and 2,275 in 2007, according to an unofficial tally by the respected newspaper Reforma. Cartels have multiplied, improved their armament and are perfecting simultaneous, terrorist-style attacks.

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Mexican prison brawl leaves 23 dead

Twenty-three inmates were killed and several others injured during a prison brawl Wednesday morning at a northern Mexico penitentiary, prison officials said. The fight broke out between inmates at the state prison in the city of Durango that houses 2,025 inmates, said prison spokeswoman Carla Puente. Puente said she did not know the specific number of injuries nor the reason for the fight, which was quelled by guards.

More than 60 inmates have died during fierce fights at Mexico's often overcrowded and loosely run prisons in the past two years. Officials at the state-run prisons frequently complain that they are not equipped to handle violent drug traffickers who are being held on federal charges. Once a quiet state, Durango has seen an upsurge in cartel violence in recent years, both in its cities and its prisons.

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Mexico Captures Major Tijuana Drug Gang Leader

Mexican police captured a drug kingpin on Tuesday known for having the corpses of tortured rivals dissolved in acid and blamed for much of a surge in violence in the northern border city of Tijuana. In a fresh victory for Mexico's bloody war on drug gangs, Teodoro Garcia Simental was caught in southern Baja California early Tuesday, police said.

Garcia Simental, also known as "El Teo" or "Tres Letras" for the three letters in his nickname Teo, was apprehended when an elite force of some 50 federal police raided an upscale neighbourhood in the beach town of La Paz near the tip of the Baja California peninsula. They searched several houses before finding him.

"No shots were fired. It was a very fast operation. The investigation has been going on for a long time," a police officer who participated in the operation told Reuters. Garcia Simental was handcuffed and swiftly flown to Mexico City. The top smuggler split from the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel to help Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman -- head of the rival Sinaloa cartel and Mexico's most wanted man -- wrest control of key smuggling corridors in northern Mexico.

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Mexico Captures Alleged Drug Lord

Just two weeks after a chilling reprisal attack for troops' killing of the reputed boss of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, police have captured one of his brothers, sending a strong message that Mexico won't back down in the drug war. The Public Safety Department said in a statement Saturday night that Carlos Beltrán Leyva was arrested in Culiacán, the capital of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, where he and several of his brothers were born and allegedly started their gang.On Dec. 16, his brother Arturo, the alleged chief of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, died during a two-hour shootout with marines in the city of Cuernavaca. He was the highest-ranking drug suspect taken down since President Felipe Calderón sent tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police across the country three years ago to fight brutal drug gangs.

Mexican officials in the past have described Carlos Beltrán Levya, 40 years old, as a key member of the gang, but it was unclear if he took over as chief of the cartel after his brother died. A third brother, Alfredo, was arrested in January 2008. At least one other brother, Mario, remains at large and is listed as one of Mexico's 24 most-wanted drug lords, with a $2 million reward offered for his capture. Carlos Beltrán wasn't included on the list, although the Public Safety Department said there had been a warrant for his arrest since 2008. The arrest gave Mr. Calderón back-to-back victories in the drug war and underscored the government's determination to destroy the Beltrán Leyva cartel despite the threat of reprisal attacks.

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Mexico's Cartel Criminals Manipulate Police Intelligence

Proactive security and organized crime interdiction in Mexico is being seriously compromised in at least three critical facets of national security. Those being military, diplomatic and police intelligence capabilities. The main issue that prevents the use and deployment of sound intelligence initiatives in Mexico is simply trust.

The murders of government officials, police, and military throughout Mexico are not an exaggeration of an ungovernable situation nationwide or along the U.S. border. The use of strategic and tactical intelligence as a prelude to decision and action within Mexican enforcement circles is often challenged by unauthorized disclosure. Expected damage from such leaks is resulting in rivers of blood and associated carnage. Much of this attributed to the execution of clandestine sources of narco-trafficker informers.

Twelve bodies of off-duty military intelligence officers dumped in Michoacan state, ambushed and executed by the La Familia cartel in July of this year, are graphic examples of the cartel’s reach through compromised intelligence elements. Politicians of several Michoacan cities that included seven mayors and a state prosecutor were arrested and jailed on charges that included their protection of the cartel. An arrest warrant for federal lawmaker Julio Godoy, of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the half-brother of Michoacan state Governor Leonel Godoy, was also issued

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Incomplete 1,000-foot tunnel found on U.S.-Mexico border

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency says Mexican authorities have discovered an incomplete tunnel that extends into San Diego. The tunnel is equipped with a lift system, ventilation and lighting. The DEA said Wednesday that the tunnel runs nearly 1,000 feet from its entry in Tijuana, Mexico, including 860 feet into the United States. There is no exit on the U.S. side.

The DEA says Mexican authorities arrested more than a dozen people inside the tunnel Wednesday. No arrests have been made in the United States. The tunnel reaches a depth of 90 to 100 feet and authorities think it has been under construction for about two years.

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Mexico: Emergence of an Unexpected Threat

At approximately 2 a.m. on Sept. 25, a small improvised explosive device (IED) consisting of three or four butane canisters was used to attack a Banamex bank branch in the Milpa Alta delegation of Mexico City. The device damaged an ATM and shattered the bank’s front windows. It was not an isolated event. The bombing was the seventh recorded IED attack in the Federal District — and the fifth such attack against a local bank branch — since the beginning of September.

The attack was claimed in a communique posted to a Spanish-language anarchist Web site by a group calling itself the Subversive Alliance for the Liberation of the Earth, Animals and Humans (ASLTAH). The note said, “Once again we have proven who our enemies are,” indicating that the organization’s “cells for the dissolution of civilization” were behind the other, similar attacks. The communique noted that the organization had attacked Banamex because it was a “business that promotes torture, destruction and slavery” and vowed that ASLTAH would not stop attacking “until we see your ashes.” The group closed its communique by sending greetings to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the “eco-pyromaniacs for the liberation of the earth in this place.” Communiques have also claimed some of the other recent IED attacks in the name of ASLTAH.

These IED attacks are the most recent incidents in a wave of anarchist, animal rights, and eco-protest attacks that have swept across Mexico this year. Activists have conducted literally hundreds of incidents of vandalism, arson and, in more recent months, IED attacks in various locations across the country. The most active cells are in Mexico City and Guadalajara.

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Mexican police end hijack drama

As if they didn't have enough to worry about with fighting drug cartels, Mexican police have freed more than 100 people unharmed after a jet flying from Cancun to Mexico City was hijacked by a man claiming to be on a divine mission. Bolivian-born Jose Flores Pereira threatened to blow up the plane unless he could warn Mexican President Felipe Calderon of an "impending earthquake".

Mr Flores told flight attendants that a canned drink he had was a bomb. Police stormed the Aeromexico plane after it had landed in Mexico City and women and children were allowed off. Several people were initially arrested and taken away in handcuffs as Mr Flores said he had accomplices, but police later said there had been only one hijacker and no bombs on board.

Flores had told flight attendants that he had three accomplices, "the Father, Son and Holy Ghost". He said that he acted on 9 September 2009, because the numbers 9/9/9 were the inverse of 6/6/6, the number linked to the Anti-Christ. "Christ is coming soon," Mr Flores told journalists.

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Mexico replaces all border agents

Mexico has replaced all 700 of its customs inspectors in a bid to stamp out corruption and drug smuggling. Sunday's shake-up also doubled the size of the country's customs inspection force, with more than 1,400 new inspectors dispatched to 49 customs points at airports and border crossings.

The new agents have undergone background checks to ensure they have no criminal records and received months of training, Pedro Canabal, a spokesman for the tax administration service, said on Sunday. The previous agents were replaced after some were found to be linked to contraband operations, however, Canabal said the previous inspectors were not fired - the government just did not rehire them when their contracts expired.

Custom inspectors were told to turn over their badges and weapons to soldiers before leaving their posts at airports and border crossings across the country on Saturday night. Enrique Torres, a spokesman for the military and federal police in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, said soldiers were at the border crossing with El Paso, Texas, to help avoid violence during the transition.

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