Search This Blog

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Borderland Beat

Borderland Beat

Link to Borderland Beat

video footage: Tuta being transferred via helicopter

Posted: 27 Feb 2015 09:44 PM PST

Lucio: material from changoonga


This is a much longer video than necessary, Tuta appears beginning at the 4:40 mark

Federal police seized:  3 grenades 40mm, 4 rifles, seven handguns, cocaine, 3 vehicles, tactical clothing , communication devices and propaganda material on the group calling itself Caballeros Templarios.

At  4:22 hours Friday, federal forces made the arrest at  la calle Findencio Juárez número 49 in the  Tenencia Morelos.  The drug trafficker has orders of arrest against him for, kidnapping, extortion, homicide, trafficking arms, trafficking drug, manufacturing of crystal meth.  There are 17 other federal investigations for various offenses.


Detainees who were detained with Servando Gómez were identified as Eduardo Esteban Avilés 43-year-old from Tijuana, Marie Antoinette Moon Avalos 27 years of Lazaro Cardenas, Juan Manuel Ayala Maldonado, Edgar Augusto Ramírez Haro, Fabricio Magaña Jurado, Jesus Fernando Uruapan Magaña, Cristian Emanuel Arias Sánchez 30 years of Guadalajara, and Marcelo Sánchez Reyes 46 of Tumbiscatío. His brother Flavio, at , was arrested today in Merida.

Drug Trafficking for Dummies

Posted: 27 Feb 2015 02:21 PM PST


U.S. and Mexican authorities hailed the capture of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in the Pacific coast town of Mazatlan as a major victory in their war on drugs. A year later the power vacuum caused by his absence is fueling chaos on the streets of Chicago and Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso.

As head of the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's largest, Guzman was a ruthless enforcer of discipline. He employed violence to protect his distribution routes and intimidate rivals. The kingpin of kingpins, Guzman had the sway to settle disputes with other drug traffickers. In Chicago, his distribution center for the U.S., he cast a long shadow: Few dared cheat the Sinaloa cartel.

The order Guzman imposed is starting to dissolve. At least two of Guzman's lieutenants are in a struggle to control the Sinaloa organization. The resurgent Juárez cartel is trying to retake the narcotics supply routes that Sinaloa wrested from the Juárez group in a drug war five years ago that cost more than 10,000 lives. 

"The Juárez cartel is taking back Juárez. We've seen a recent spike in violence in the last couple of weeks," says Oscar Hagelsieb, an assistant special agent in charge with the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations office. He says Guzman's capture "demoralized people that were fighting for Chapo outside of the conventional strongholds and rallied rival cartels."

Guzman secured his near-mythic status by escaping from prison in a laundry cart in 2001 and later unleashing an assassination spree of rival drug lords. Afterward he controlled much of the narcotics entering the U.S. 


His nickname—"Shorty" in English—belied his outsize reputation. A grade-school dropout, he transformed the drug trade by centralizing everything from warehousing and distribution to collection and transport of money back to Mexico. Five months before his arrest, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's top official in Chicago at the time, Jack Riley, called Guzman "a logistical genius." Guzman instilled such fear that he could enforce his rule in northern U.S. cities far from his heavily guarded compound in Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains.
The Sinaloa cartel long provided much of the heroin, cocaine, and meth sold in the Midwest. Chicago, whose crime commission formally labeled Guzman as "Public Enemy Number One" in 2013, now feels the impact of El Chapo in a different way. The decline of the biggest gangs, many of them retailers of Sinaloa drugs, has spurred the city's 70,000 gang members to form ever-smaller groups—some 625, according to Chicago police—all fighting for their piece of turf. Police sources blame a flood of illegal guns for the 12 percent rise in shooting incidents in the city last year. But an ex-gang leader says it's because Guzman's shadow is gone. The low-level gangsters "aren't fearing anybody," says Harold "Noonie" Ward, who once ranked high up in Chicago's Gangster Disciples gang, which peddled Sinaloa drugs. As for Chicago's 3 percent drop in murders, chalk it up to rookie gangsters with bad aim, Ward says.

Absent Guzman, traffickers from the Sinaloa cartel have had to find creative ways to avoid not only police but also bandits in Mexico and the U.S. who no longer fear retribution for ripping off a load of drugs from Guzman's former foot soldiers. Traffickers for Sinaloa are using new methods of delivery, even drones. "It's very tech-savvy," says Joseph Lopez, a Chicago attorney who represents accused traffickers.

While Guzman would ship drugs hidden in the trunk of a family's car, his followers have recently ramped up production of harder-to-detect liquid meth at their labs in Mexico. It can be transported in propane tanks, tequila bottles, even by letters soaked in the stuff. On Feb. 8 border authorities in California arrested a man who was hiding more than 15 gallons of it in a special container placed in the fuel tank of a Ford pickup, according to U.S. customs officials. "If you can turn it into a liquid form, you can put it into almost anything," says Francis Brown, assistant director of field operations at U.S. Customs and Border Protection's El Paso office.

 Guzman shunned social media, but the new ranks of traffickers embrace it to boast, recruit, and deal. "Like any of the younger generation, they're so much more gifted with electronic devices, so they come up with ways to utilize social media to benefit them," Brown says. "But they also do things that give themselves away." Last fall the Mexican military captured the son of one of Guzman's partners after he posted photos on Twitter of his lavish lifestyle, which included guns, cars, and parties. Attorney Lopez says he's come into court to find prosecutors with elaborate presentations drawn from an accused trafficker's text messages.

Along the 500-mile stretch of the border that includes El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, authorities seized 247 pounds of heroin from October 2013 to September 2014—almost triple the haul of the year before. New restrictions on prescription drug use are driving more U.S. addicts to heroin. And the fragmentation of drug groups in post-Guzman Mexico may mean more freelancers are trying their hand at producing heroin, says national security analyst Alejandro Hope, who's based in Mexico City. "There could be more traffickers participating than the Sinaloa cartel, increasing the supply," says the former Mexican intelligence official.

Mexican government statistics show murders dropped 15 percent last year. But kidnappings rose 30 percent, says Asociación Alto al Secuestro, which offers aid to families of kidnap victims. Guerreros Unidos, a splinter group of a Sinaloa rival, allegedly murdered 43 students in the town of Cocula last September. Authorities say the students were kidnapped by corrupt police on the orders of the gang-connected wife of a politician.

Cocaine seized by U.S. authorities along the border from New Mexico to West Texas (the same stretch that witnessed the rise in heroin shipments) fell to 644 pounds in fiscal 2014 from 817 pounds the previous year. That drop suggests that some longtime cocaine producers from Peru and Colombia have decided to sell more of their drugs in Europe, where prices are higher than in the U.S. The switch reflects a post-Guzman world where some of the most experienced suppliers would rather avoid the increased risk that Mexico's less seasoned gangs pose. 

Says ex-gangster Ward: "When they got Chapo, that means that everybody's got a piece of the action now. Everybody wants to be the man."

Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam is "transferred"

Posted: 27 Feb 2015 09:58 AM PST

Proceso (www.proceso.com.mx/?p=397077) February 27, 2015 Translated by un vato

Former head of PGR Jesus Murillo Karam

Senator Arely Gomez Gonzalez
 

 MEXICO, D.F. (apro).- In the context of the 90th March for Ayotzinapa, Jesus Murillo Karam leaves the Attorney General's Office of the Republic (PGR) to head the Secretariat of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development (Sedatu: Secretaria de Desarrollo Agrario, Territorial y Urbano).

At the head of the PGR, President Enrique Pena Nieto will propose the appointment of Arely Gomez Gonzalez*, who today requested leave to resign from her Senate seat.

Murillo Karam incited rejection by the Ayotzinapa families, and from investigators and social organizations, when he promoted the so-called "historical truth" that the 43 students were massacred by gunmen with the Guerreros Unidos and their remains incinerated in an immense pyre then scattered in a river.  

In Joaquin Lopez Doriga's nightly news report, the reporter also predicted that Jorge Carlos Ramirez Marin, still the head of the Sedatu, will seek a "plurinominal" (proportional vote) candidacy to the Chamber of Deputies (Camara de Diputados, analogous to the U.S. House of Representatives).

* Senator Arely Gomez Gonzalez is the former head of the Special Office for the Prosecution of Electoral Crimes (Fepade: Fiscalia Especializada Para la Atencion de Delitos Electorales). She is also the sister of Leopoldo Gomez, Vice President of News with the Televisa network.-- un vato

Tuta was captured while eating 3 am hotdogs

Posted: 27 Feb 2015 06:43 PM PST

Lucio for Borderland Beat

La Tuta's brother  Flavio Gómex Martínez also captured in Merida, in a simultaneous operation

Reforma and others are reporting the hotdog story, it appears the four homes that the FP busted into, thinking Tuta was there, came had come up empty.  This is what several Mexican mainstream outlets are reporting.  Until PGR gives their conference we will not know for certain, but I thought I would
put out this version of the capture from  Reforma, El Norte and others.
At the stroke of 3:00 am on Friday, Servando Gómez, "La Tuta," one of the most important targets in the  Caballeros Templarios of the federal government, was arrested while eating.
The alerts came into the Center Police Intelligence Federal (PF) when "La Tuta" apparently was eating hot dogs in downtown Morelia, said federal sources. "He did nothing to resist or prevent  his capture.  Supposedly, 6 others were taken into custody along with the organized crime leader, including his girlfriend.
The location of Gómez was surprising because, according to investigations in late January, the Army
and federal police determined that the Templarios leader was traveling in Michoacán territory, but on the border with Colima and Jalisco. 
 Sources of the Department of Defense claimed that even his lieutenants or hit men were detected in Lazaro Cardenas, Aquila, Coahuayana and Los Reyes with the capo.
The federal government will detail at a press conference the arrest of Gomez, who a few days ago released, an audio in which he denied having an agreement for his protection by authorities.
At the end of the recording, the Templario leader said that it would be his last message,  "not out of fear, (but) because I have to take measures to move and protect myself, he said.

The PGR agency reports that after Tuta gives his statement, he will be transferred to Supermax prison No. 1 "Altiplano" in the state of Mexico.
 
(To read the narrative of his last message, link to post here)  


United States weighs in on the capture

DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart today issued the following statement in response to the capture of  Servando Gomez-Martinez, a.k.a. "La Tuta" by the Mexican Federal Police:
(videos and photos on next page)

"The arrest of Servando Gomez-Martinez, a.k.a. "La Tuta," is another win for Mexico in the fight against brutal criminal cartels like the Caballeros Templarios. La Tuta led one of the world's most vicious and violent drug and criminal networks. He not only headed the drug trafficking activities, but was in charge of all organized crime, including extortion, kidnappings, and murder. We congratulate the brave members of the Mexican Federal Police for their successful operation and look forward to more successes against global organized crime."



Flavio
The house where Tuta and 6 others were staying is the middle one in the photo above

El Chapo and La Barbie return to head up another prison protest at Altiplano

Posted: 27 Feb 2015 10:37 AM PST

Translated for Borderland Beat from a Proceso article by Otis B Fly-Wheel


They want better treatment at the Altiplano Super-max in State of Mexico, they started a hunger strike, organised by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and Edgar Valdez Villarreal, "La Barbie", in this past June, it was raised by inmates in a complaint submitted to National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH).

In a hand written letter made from 11 pages stripped from a notebook, the 138 prisoners accuse the Prison Authorities of violating their human rights.

The document, broadcast in the portal Nayaritenlinea.mx, describes the irregular conditions in which conjugal and family visits are carried out. It also describes the overcrowded and unsanitary cells, in addition to unstable power supplies to the prison and problems with telephone calls.

The prisoners, according to the text, only have one hour a day to leave their cells, there are no social re-insertion activities, the medical service is inefficient and the prison shop is insufficient and badly operated.

The group of criminals, among them "El Chapo" and "La Barbie", Hector Beltran Leyva "El H" and Miguel Angel Felix Gallado, denounce Librado Carmona Garcia, Technical Director of the prison located in the State of Mexico, and who they accuse of corruption and repression. ( Otis: cry me a river, the boot is on the other foot now).








With legible letters, the list of alleged violations of Human Rights of the prisoners starts with the family visits, where the prisoners assure that from the moment they enter the prison, until the moment they leave they are treated in an indignant manner, well without respect, they are also searched naked before entering under the gaze of officials, in many cases they are verbally abused and intimidated, without any sense of professional ethics, with no regard for humans feelings on the part of the Security personnel.

In regards of the rooms supplied for conjugal visits, the complaint to the CDNH says that the rooms supplied are leaking water, unsanitary, some covered in broken glass, walls that are broken or with holes in. Wash basins, fallen off the wall that give neither hot or cold water, dirty broken mattresses with wires hanging out.

In respect of their internment, there are inhuman conditions of overcrowding where cells built to house two inmates have three, with one person living on the floor, which has led to skin diseases, pulmonary and respiratory problems, in addition to water leaks and the smell of sewerage.

In regards of complaints of the food, the company who provides the catering, served chicken undercooked and in bad condition, the beans have stones in, sausages that are rotten and out of date and local fruit has disappeared from the diet.

In respect of personal communication, every prisoner has the right to a telephone call of ten minutes duration every nine days, which is constantly sabotaged by negligence or laziness of the operator.

And at this point, they demand the installation of two public telephones with the appropriate security measures.

Its not possible to be incarcerated 23 of 24 hours per day, said another prisoner, they only allow one hour outside of the cell, this doesn't amount to 60 minutes, because 15 minutes of that are lost to searches of body and clothing, the rest of the activities we are meant to have are a utopia because they do not exist, it said in the text.

The inmates suggest that they should be allowed two hours of yard time per day, and reactivation of standard activities which are including in protocols for running max security establishments.

About the medical services, they assure that "Areli" is a arrogant and haughty manager of this area, who treats the prisoners worse than animals, is the girlfriend of the Prison Technical Director Librado Carmona Garcia, who qualifies as the untouchable regime, who really governs the institution and who traffics privileges of the prisoners for large amounts of cash, conspiring with other prison department directors, who take bribes from wealthy prisoners in exchange for giving them their rights.



They also add that the authorized 664 pesos allowed per month per prisoner to buy items from the prison shop is inadequate, toilet paper, soap for example, is insufficient to satisfy the basic necessities , the prisoners assure that the products sold in the prison shop are of very poor quality and of dubious brands.

Among the prisoners who signed the complaint, are Juan Frutos Aguilar a member of "Mochaorejas",  Abel Valadez Uribe of La Familia Michoacana, and Ramiro Rangel Soto of the Cartel del Golfo, are soliciting the immediate intervention of CNDH for a quick solution of what they consider " frank violation of rights and human dignity.

They advertise, "we know that this complaint will come into public light, it is sure and inevitable that the institution will immediately undertake reprisals as subjugation and repression to all the under signed and the prison population in general."

Original article in Spanish at Proceso

Link to great Chivis article on life at Altiplano No 1.

No comments: