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- Cartel del Golfo narco - espionage network dismantled in Reynosa
- Part Two: "The Miracle of Juárez", Sinaloa vs Juarez Cartel
- Doubts surround Government version of Tanhuato "clash" that ended with 43 deaths
| Cartel del Golfo narco - espionage network dismantled in Reynosa Posted: 25 May 2015 05:55 AM PDT Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Proceso article [ Subject Matter: Narco Surveillance Network used to spy on the Army Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required]  Reporter: Proceso Redaction and Benjamin Flores State Police of the Tamaulipas Force, dismantled in Reynosa, a system of narco espionage, of organized criminals that consisted of a circuit of cameras installed in this Town. The Tamaulipas Group for Coordination informed in a communication that the network was installed at 52 points of high impact to carry the data from 39 cameras operating via the internet, with which they carried out surveillance of the actions of the State and Federal Forces of security, as well as the civilian population. The dismantling took place Monday and Tuesday past by elements of the Tamaulipas Force, with support of the Military who provided security at the places where State Police retired the apparatus. During the operation to retire the devices, members of a criminal group that operate in this frontier Town, on realizing the network was being dismantled, retreated and switched off 18 cameras on the network. The majority of the cameras were installed on electricity and telephone poles belonging to the Federal Commission of Electricity (CFE), and Mexican Telephones. The 52 points of narco espionage dismantled were located opposite installations of the Eighth Military Zone, Marina, PGR and Tamaulipas Force, like the Avenue Villa Dorada, Morelos Boulevard, Luis Donaldo Colosio Boulevard, Las Fuentes Boulevard, in commercial centres and fraccionamientos.  The video cameras have the capacity to transmit wired or wirelessly, and sent through the internet via telephone lines and or cable services. They have in addition, modems, video, encoded data to video cards, and electric cables. In the Las Fuentes Colonia, in the Aztlan section, were found five points of "halcon", with each point being able to handle five incoming camera feeds. Officials indicated that the video system belongs to the Cartel del Golfo. Original article in Spanish at Proceso Additional picture from Milenio | ||||||||
| Part Two: "The Miracle of Juárez", Sinaloa vs Juarez Cartel Posted: 24 May 2015 08:19 PM PDT Lucio R. Borderland Beat-Posted by Texan24 republished from Animal Politico Part One link here
The tragedy of Salvárcar On Friday January 30, 2010, El Diego answered his phone. Los Artistas Asesinos (The Assassin Artists), or AA, a street gang with members in El Paso and Juarez, were among his enemies, and an informant told him of a party that night in the working class neighborhood of Villas de Salvárcar, in southeast Ciudad Juarez . The AA worked with Sinaloa selling drugsin the street. Barrio Azteca did the same for the Juarez cartel. In 2010, four gangs working for the two cartels worked as assassins or murderers, to eliminate the small drug dealers. "None of the shootings and killings in that period occurred among senior members of the cartel. The gunmen concentrated on killing retail drug dealers. Preserving the territory for their cartel, " said a police source in Juarez.  Luz Maria Davila, a small woman with a warm smile, was busy in her small house on Villa del Portal Street, adjacent to a narrow alley. A few meters away, her teenage children Marcos and Jose Luis were partying at a friend's birthday with other young neighbors, soccer players in the American football league. Davila's husband was surfing the Internet on his children's computer, waiting for his night shift at the "maquila" (US company) located in Juarez, where he worked as a guard. A few minutes before 10 pm, a convoy of vehicles entered the alley, with dozens of men, members of La Linea and Barrio Azteca. The gunmen, many of them natives of Juarez and all in their twenties, moved fast in a macabre dance of death. Two cars blocked the exits of Villa del Portal Street while others concentrated on house where techno music boomed and young couples danced and talked. Some of the thugs covered their faces with bandanas. Many were exposed, without fear of being discovered. Diego was in charge via cell phone: "kill everyone" he ordered. The murderers walked together toward the house, brandishing heavy weapons. In less than 30 minutes, 15 lay dead and several others wounded. As were the children of Luz Maria, most of the children were of maquila workers and were high school students or university students. Some were the first in their family to fulfill the dream of going to college.  Blood everywhere Luz Maria told her husband to stay as she ran out of the house, she turned abruptly and ran a few meters from her home to the party house. Along the way, she ran into one of the gang members who had stayed behind, she heard the vehicles speed in their flight. She entered the small house and found blood, broken glass and bodies everywhere, some had collapsed together. "I first found Marcos, but he was dead. I looked for José Luis. He was lying in the hallway. He said he was fine. She recently recalled the tragedy at her home, where she has continued to live after the massacre. Calmly, she told her story, the one she has repeated countless times to reporters and government investigators during the past four years. "We took Jose Luis to the clinic in our car. And he kept telling me he was okay. But he died in the evening after the surgery". Marcos was in the first year of college, studying to be a foreign official. José Luis wanted to pursue international business. Since their deaths, Luz Maria and her husband have added a second floor where they have a room for the possessions of their sons. Luz Maria receives visitors in a small living room with a big TV. Pictures of Marcos and José Luis preside over the room. Photos are selfies the young teens took themselves a few days before their death.
Young people were delighted with this "clubhouse". Salvárcar, like other working class districts neighboring Juarez lack parks and places for youth and children to play and socialize. "Finally, now we have a park… now, after they are dead," said Luz Maria. In the end, young people killed in Villa del Portal were not members of AA who Diego sought. AA in this case, were the initials that represented the American football team that organized the party. Diego was incensed by the news that kids were killed, not AA gang members. He had the informant executed, who provided the information about the party. The deaths shocked the city of Juárez and aroused national and international attention on the city. Presidential insensitivity
A week and a half after the slaughter, President Felipe Calderon traveled to Ciudad Juarez with a large government delegation including his wife. The people of Juarez were irate when after the murders, initially Calderon said the victims of the slaughter were gang members. He called a public meeting with victims' families, activists and representatives of citizen groups to try to minimize the damage. Luz Maria was invited to attend, she decided to attend at the last minute. She sat with other "special guests" like her Salvárcar neighbors, loved ones of the victims, the type of people who are not usually invited to meetings with the President. When the microphone went to the relatives, she got up took the mic and a maquiladora mother confronted the nations President. She vented with a monologue that became part of history. "Excuse me, Mr. President, I cannot welcome you. Murders have been committed, I want justice, I want my children returned to me. I cannot shake hands with you because you are not welcome.I want a retraction of what you said, accusing my children of being gang members, they good boys, they were students, and they worked…I want you to apologize. I assure you that if someone had killed your child, you would have already captured the murderers! You would have turned over every rock and used everything possible; I do not have those advantages. Here the governor and the mayor always say the same, they promise justice but we do to receive justice. I want justice. Put yourself in my place, to see what I feel. I love my children." The president was solemn, nodding slowly. Sitting next to the president was Mrs. Calderon, she looked both sick and stunned. Then, turning her back to the President, she looked at the audience. "You gentlemen say nothing, you just applaud the President.....Do something!" Dávila is still shocked by her reaction of five years ago, but her audacity embarrassed the federal government who then created a social project of five billion pesos called "We are all Juárez". The program supported social projects and the creation of a round table for justice and, with representatives from business, civil society, Juarez government who began to meet weekly and work with the police to clean up the city. Technology improves the way to kill But violence continued to increase and El Diego seemed unstoppable. Homicides increased to 300 per month. National and international attention to the struggling city increased. But La Linea and their criminal cronies gang Barrio Azteca, continued undisturbed. And then the cartel sought high-technology. Two Mexican engineers were hired to develop an advanced encryption system of a network of receivers, transmitters with upright antennas in the highest peak in Juarez, La Bola. The network had been set up and began operation in March 2010.
La Linea and Barrio Azteca used it to its next big mission, an attack against an American officer of the Consulate of the U.S., Leslie Ann Enríquez, her husband, Arthur Redelfs, and the husband of another consular official, after they left a children's birthday party, on March 13, 2010. El Diego and Arturo Gallegos Castrellón, alias "El Benny", leader of Barrio Azteca, were intensifying their operations. They were going after the United States. There are several theories about the reasons for the attack. One is that Redelfs, an official of the Regional Detention Center in El Paso, mistreated members of the Juarez cartel imprisoned there. Another is that Barrio Azteca believed Leslie Ann Enriquez working for the Sinaloa cartel. After his arrest in 2011, El Diego said that Barrio Azteca simply made a mistake. The US government responded quickly, ordering the families of members of the Consulate leave Juarez to El Paso. The U.S. also set their sights on La Linea. Insanity escalates In mid 2010, El Diego became even crazier and ordered his people to load a vehicle with 10 kilos of Tovex, an explosive used for mining and construction. On July 15, they parked the car on the September 16th Street, in the city center, attracting police and ambulance to the car by leaving the body of a man dressed as a policeman.  Dr. Jose Guillermo Ortiz, (at left) a doctor in town caring for low-income patients had his office nearby, and was passing by with his son when he saw the victim. He sent his son for his medical bag as he continued towards the vehicle. The blast was sudden. Dr. Ortiz was hit by the blast, and died later in a hospital. A federal police also died and six federal agents and a television cameraman were wounded. The bomb was activated by a cell phone. The bomb did more than scare a city that was tired of violence. It also sent a message to the U.S.: black spray paint graffiti on the wall of an elementary school warned there would be more car bombs. "What happened on September Avenue will continue to happen to all authorities who support 'El Chapo'. We have more car bombsSincerely, The Juarez cartel" The bomb attack petrified one of the engineers who put the encrypted communications receivers and Linea network. He heard Benny Gallegos, the Barrio Azteca, congratulating his people: "Good job, boys, well done. They did very well, and we gave a lesson to those pigs .... "  These people are completely crazy, surmised the engineer, and decided he had to alert the authorities. The engineer, who has never been identified, became the key to the downfall of La Linea. In the following weeks, the engineer knocked on the door of the Mexican Attorney General and the Armed Forces in Mexico. No luck. He stayed away from the Juarez police since learning through radio conversations that many of them were on the take. Then he went to the US Consulate and lied saying he had information about another attack against U.S., the doors opened and he became a DEA protected witness. Between July and December 2012 he recorded thousands of hours of radio communications for the US authorities. | ||||||||
| Doubts surround Government version of Tanhuato "clash" that ended with 43 deaths Posted: 24 May 2015 11:43 PM PDT by Lucio R. Borderland Beat
Raul Benitez Manaut, a security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico says: "Apparently the gang offered no resistance; it was a very uneven fight. A battle where 42 die on one side and only one on the other is not a battle." Alejandro Hope: "Many details are missing. We don't know how many people participated in the police and military operation. We don't know if the helicopter was armed," said the former intelligence agency official. "Authorities have to demonstrate that this was not another Tlatlaya," he said. "Those denying Tanhuato is another Tlatlaya are the same people who denied that Tlatlaya was a case of extrajudicial killings." As multiple BB readers have commented, the number of weapons seized doesn't match the number of dead and detained. As people take to social networks to cast doubts, photos are appearing and given great scrutiny. In several of the photos smoke can be seen escaping the main ranch house. State police contend they were simply "cleaning up", "We are burning trash. It was very dirty. There were clothes and rotten food." Yet photos of the interior challenge that claim. Photos of the dead are concerning. Two photos side by side of the same scene, where weapons magically appear in one. Weapons in photos appear staged. Injuries are suspect, such as limbs with obvious fractures, one appears to be a compound fracture. Missing in most the photos are pooling of blood, and hordes of bullet casings that should be present in a 3 hour shootout. A federal investigator did say there were three areas of large pools of blood along the perimeter fence.  In the image above signs of staging are apparent and noted. The slide show has photos of some of the dead. In the photos, the images raise questions of weapons being planted. In some of the photos there are signs of beatings, including limb fractures, one having multiple fractures on one arm. Be mindful that the scene is not preserved. Soldiers are not to be walking in the areas of evidence, they must wait for investigators from PGR to collect evidence. Soldiers and police are trained to observe protocol and respect the criminology procedures that will follow the event. For sound forensics and gathering of evidence to remain uncompromised, the crime scene must remain intact, and uncontaminated. This is to ensure due process is truthful and for the protection of all involved parties. If a crime scene is tampered with by placing, or removing objects, or bodies, developing a theory, substantiated by evidence cannot be attained. Detection of vital signs can be achieved without compromising the scene. Soldiers and police are trained in how to proceed after an event. There is a photo on the ranch home interior, which authorities claimed was filled with trash, hence their fire for cleanup. Yet the home looks relatively clean, and does not appear to have been used to any great degree. Were the dead men really camped out at the ranch? Some photos, including the one at top, rigors mortis has set in, but not in a position that is consistent to where it now rests, indicating a movement of the corpse. The left arm was resting on something previously. Other photos indicate the same. To stop youtube "autoplay" view video on YT and click off autoplay on upper right corner Representatives from Michoacán and national human rights commissions have been to the ranch to inspect and investigate. Mexican lawmakers are casting suspicion on the version of the Federal Government that the shooting occurred yesterday in Tanhuato, Michoacán between government forces and CJNG gunmen was the result of a pursuit that led to a confrontation. Senator Alejandro Encinas said that, "based on the facts, there was no pursuit that culminated in at a large ranch, but rather was a pre-planned operation." He said it is extraordinary that there are 42 dead on the side of criminals and only one of the police forces. "Everything indicates that an operation was designed to annihilate this group and was not a circumstantial event." "Regardless of whether it is a criminal element, if you begin with them, because they may be criminals, but then tomorrow what? Maybe it's criminals today but tomorrow it could be anyone." But, we have been aware of such killings in Mexico for years, Black squads, and military kill operations. What is new, are the advancements of communication technology. It is difficult to keep truth away from the public eye and scrutiny. "We have Tlatlaya, Iguala, Apatzingán, and now Tanhuato, Michoacán, so the practical operation of the oppressive state is set," said Encinas the member of the Bicameral Commission on National Security. In reading a few of the BB comments coming through on this story, a few have expressed approval of the killings in Tanhuato. Good riddance to the scum, right? It is a knee-jerk reaction to say something like that. It is understandable to harbor such feelings, but it is wrong and has no place in a civil democracy. No one knows who the dead men were what they are, where they are from, what they have done. Innocents have been used as pawns in this so called drug war. No authority, government, agency, person can become, judge, jury and executioner. Each citizen, even suspected criminals, have the right to due process, meaning equal and fair treatment through the judicial system. Encinas states the oppressive stage is set, criminals today, what about tomorrow? Citizens? politicians? We have long passed that threshold; take in account of 43 students, kidnapped in Iguala and killed, or the killings of social activist Arturo Hernández Cardona. The killing of the 43 was directed by municipal authority, and Hernández Cardona's murder allegedly directly conducted by authority. And the director of security and his deputies are now charged in the recent killing of Mayoral candidate Enrique Hernandez Salcedo in Yurécuaro, Michoacán. When one supports extrajudicial killings to be conducted without legal authority, then you are in affect giving carte blanche for authorities to unilaterally decide whose life should end; A social activist "nuisance", or an inconvenient political candidate, a bus load problematic students, autodefensas attempting to attain security. What happened in Tanhuato, in this reporter's opinion, was a message sent to Mencho, leader of Cartel Jalisco New Generation. A violent, retaliatory planned response, for the downing of an air force helicopter, and the ambush of federal forces by CJNG. Let's be clear, in recent confrontations, CJNG has greatly embarrassed government forces. CJNG have appeared being better warriors in recent conflicts, If it is true that there were 300-500 federal forces with top of the line weaponry, helos in the air, that attacked 50-60 guys in Tanhuato, to send a message. The message that may be construed, is federal forces appear weak, having to rely on such lopsided advantage and perhaps extrajudicial slaughter to even the score and send a message. |
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