2,200 arrested in U.S. crackdown on Mexican drug cartels

Federal authorities on Thursday announced the arrests of more than 2,200 people in 19 states on narcotics-related charges in the largest in a series of operations targeting violent Mexican drug cartels. The 2,266 arrests over the past 22 months were part of Project Deliverance, a joint effort with Mexican authorities that the Justice Department did not disclose until Thursday. Investigators from more than 300 federal, state, local and foreign law enforcement agencies seized 74 tons of drugs, 501 weapons and $154 million in cash, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced.

The crackdown, which included more than 400 arrests on Wednesday, targeted the transportation networks of Mexican drug organizations in the United States, especially along the drug-ravaged southwest border. Among those arrested was Carlos Ramon Castro-Rocha, described as a major heroin trafficker, who was detained by Mexican authorities May 30 and has been charged in federal courts in Arizona and North Carolina. The arrests extended to the Washington area, where 15 people were indicted in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on charges of running a cocaine trafficking network that funneled drugs from Mexico to Virginia and three other states, said U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride.

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6 charged with left-wing terrorism in Greece

A Greek prosecutor on Monday charged six people with membership in the country's most active far-left terrorist group, which has claimed a string of bombings and a rocket attack on the U.S. embassy in Athens. The five men and one woman, aged between 30 and 41, were also charged with multiple counts of attempted homicide, causing explosions, and arms offenses linked with the Revolutionary Struggle organization. Each faces a maximum 25-year sentence if found guilty on the main charges.

The suspects were arrested in and around Athens Saturday. Police said they found Revolutionary Struggle proclamations and plans for future attacks in one of the detainees' homes, but have located no weapons or explosives. Revolutionary Struggle first appeared in 2003, a year after authorities eradicated Greece's deadliest left-wing group, November 17, and has bombed banks, government buildings and the Athens Stock Exchange, in three cases causing minor injuries to bystanders. Its most spectacular hit was the 2007 rocket-propelled grenade attack on the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy, which caused minor damage but no injuries.

The U.S. government subsequently offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the capture of Revolutionary Struggle members. The group also shot and severely wounded a riot policeman last year. That attack came during a spike in anarchist and far-left violence that followed the fatal police shooting of an Athens teenager in December 2008 and days of rioting in Greek cities. The six suspects arrived at the main Athens court complex escorted by anti-terrorist police, and were whisked into the prosecutor's office. When they exited, dozens of people who had gathered to chant slogans in support of the detainees threw plastic bottles and scuffled with police, who responded with pepper spray. Two people were arrested for the disturbance, which followed anarchist groups' calls for a show of solidarity.

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Australian police mount counter terrorism raids

Australian police say they have foiled a mission by Islamic terrorists to launch a suicide shoot-out on a military base in what they say would have been the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil. Police also say they have pinpointed an Australian terrorist cell supporting and directly involved in insurgency activity in the African country of Somalia.

In seven months of surveillance and a series of raids early today, codenamed Operation Neath, approximately 400 officers from the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police and NSW Police made four arrests and are questioning several other people. The four arrested are all Australian citizens, police say. They are being interviewed and several others are assisting with inquiries, a joint press release said.

Victoria Police Commissioner Simon Overland said: "I can assure the Victorian community that we are doing everything in our power to ensure the state remains one of the safest in the country.''

Mr Overland said police acted after it "got to a point where we decided it was appropriate to act" and stressed the overwhelming number of Islamic people in Australia and Melbourne were valued members of the community, not terrorists.

He said he was disappointed by leaks that lead to reporting of the raids in The Australian newspaper. The newspaper this morning reported that national security agencies had uncovered the plot by Islamic extremists to launch a suicide attack on an Australian army base.

It said the raids involved a suspected terrorist cell of Australian nationals of Somali and Lebanese backgrounds. The report said members of the group had been observed carrying out surveillance at the army base and other suspicious activity around defence bases in Victoria. Copies of the newspaper were publicly available at 1.30am in Melbourne, well ahead of the raids.

• "Four arrested as 400 police mount counter terrorism raids", Sydney Morning Herald, 8/4/09.
• "Australia arrests 'terror' suspects", Al Jazeera, 8/4/09.
  
• "Australia Launches Major Anti-Terror Operation", New York Times, 8/3/09.

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Corruption New Jersey style, complete with body parts trafficking

A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.

The case began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in a seaside town. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, it mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes in New Jersey’s recent past.

It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash — once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000.

“For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” Ralph J. Marra Jr., the acting United States attorney in New Jersey, said at a news conference. “They existed in an ethics-free zone.” Mr. Marra said that average citizens “don’t have a chance” against the culture of influence peddling the investigation had unearthed.

As 44 people walked before cameras last week, their hands in cuffs, after they were arrested in the state’s biggest corruption scandal in years — but not, to be sure, that many years — even their most scandal-fatigued constituents, from the gritty precincts of Journal Square in Jersey City to the glittering new condominiums on the Hudson in Hoboken, began to wonder: Why is New Jersey so unshakably corrupt?

That answer, it turns out, has as many nuances as corruption itself. Interviews with law enforcement officials, prosecutors and, perhaps the best authority on the subject — those arrested in previous sweeps, like Mr. Botti — reveal a culture of corruption so ingrained that it has become impossible to resist when the envelope appears.

• "44 Charged by U.S. in New Jersey Corruption Sweep", New York Times, 7/23/09.
• "The Man Who Sank New Jersey", Forbes, 7/23/09.
• "With arrests, New Jersey stakes claim as corruption capital", Christian Science Monitor, 7/23/09.
• "The beautiful side of New Jersey corruption", Time, 7/24/09.
• "Officials decry New Jersey corruption", Time, 7/24/09.
  
• "In New Jersey, Ideal Conditions for Corruption", New York Times, 7/26/09.
• "About That New Jersey Organ Scandal", Wall Street Journal, 7/26/09.

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