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| "Lucifer" , El Grandes replacement in Los Damaso Posted: 09 Jul 2015 01:49 PM PDT Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Zetatijuana BCS report The assassin is the successor to "El Grande" and "El 5", after the desertion of Melissa Margarita Calderon Ojeda "La China", now captured and relegated from "Los 28" under the criminal command of Damaso Lopez Serrano "El Mini Lic". [ Subject Matter: Los Damaso, Lucifer, Baja California Sur Recommendation: Read this article on the arrest of El Grande]
Reporter: Zeta Investigation and Cortesia In the last elaborate crime map by Military and Federal Authorities, the Sicario identified as "Lucifer" is, since the 17th of June 2015, the new armed wing commander of the so called "Fuerzas Especiales de Damaso" in La Paz. The boss of Sicarios had been passed over until the arrest of the thug Abel Nahum Quintero Manjarrez "El Grande", on the 28th of May, he had previously appeared in videos and photographs participating in the torture and killing of narco traffickers from rival groups. The Military and Federal primary investigations indicate that the gun man is between 20 and 25 years old, and is the natural successor to "El Grande" and of Adrian Medina Velazquez "El 5" after they were detained on 28th of May and 17th of June respectively, by Security Forces of the three levels of Government.  An investigating agent indicated that the Federal and Military authorities, "actually demanded information about the true identity of the unknown Sicario, of whom they have no personal references, social and family networks of his first circle don't exist, except on video where he exhibits violence and a merciless way of torturing and killing his rivals without any type of remorse". The investigating agents described "Lucifer" with a criminal profile of " a cold blooded killer", despicable and cruel, who entered this narco war so he could exploit the wave of violence, after the apparent fictitious calm, and there have been more cases of drug dealers being killed, burnt and buried. Media information on the new head of Sicarios of Las Fuerzas Especiales de Los Damaso, describes a person of thin stature, 5 feet 10 in height, square chin, regular nose, medium sized ears, large eyebrows, black eyes which sag, and dark circles on his face, and scars on the knuckles of his hands". The criminal identified The first time that Lucifer was seen, was on video capture.  On which the Sicario is seen repeatedly hitting one of his victims with the butt of his assault rifle, and asking for information about the heads of rival groups of Las Fuerzas Especiales de Los Damaso. "I want names asshole", he shouts while hitting his victim, who was doubled up in pain and couldn't respond rapidly through lack of air. The thug insists on knowing the names and addresses of his adversaries in the business of drug sales, distribution and transit of drugs by dealers in La Paz. "Where do these assholes live?", he persistently asks while hitting his victim in the face, head, back, stomach and wherever. Dressed in military uniform, Lucifer carries a 9mm pistol at his waist, together with some handcuffs and an M4 carbine. With elbow pads, knee pads, and a black bulletproof vest, he was the only one who interrogated captured Sicarios at the time of interrogation and torture, who were armed with pistols and rifles, encouraged what seems to be their leader. "Fuck him up Lucifer", teach this bitch what its like to live in your hell!, they say and start laughing at their captives. The thug takes charge, " are you going to speak"? he receives a reply of " I don't know anything", which infuriates the Sicario, he quickly follows that up with "I'm just a distributor", "I don't know any of the bosses" and " I don't know their names or where they live", he then hits him again with the butt of his assault rifle. The recording does not stop, as the thug notes his victims tied hands and feet and the video begins to lose focus until it just shows the floor of what looks like a two storey apartment. "This bitch is worth dick already", exclaims one of his accomplices, that bastard will make good meat! Disembowel him, cut off his legs, arms and head, so those sons of bitches know who is in charge here". The recording of this video appears in a cell phone of the Sicario Gabriel Antonio Leal Gutierrez "El 28", ( Otis: well one of the El 28's as there have been several sicarios using this call sign), taken down on the afternoon of 28th of May in Villas del Encanto Colonia of La Paz, when he was captured, the head of sicarios of Los Damaso, Abel Nahum Qunitero Manjarrez "El Grande", in a gun battle that lasted 45 minutes. The final destiny of the victim could be seen in a set of photographs taken after the video where he can be seen completely dismembered.  The head is wrapped in cinnamon colored tape and it completely covers the mouth of the victim, and according to research of the case agents, was covered to deaden the screams of the victim that could be heard by the neighbours of the safe house. Located at 322 Calle Villa Letitia, Villa Ceibei and Villa Nahomi, in the Villas del Encanto Colonia in La Paz. The day of the video was a bloody day for Las Fuerzas Especiales de Los Damaso. On one side of the tortured man that appears in the video, lies a second body in the middle of a lake of blood. He was wearing jeans, a shirt with blue and white stripes, white socks and gray tennis shoes. His hands and feet were tied with yellow rope and cinnamon tape. The investigation The video recording forms part of a set of around 50 videos and more than a 100 pictures that the department specializing in crimes against health of SEIDO, integrated into the case under the number PGR/SEIDO/UEIDCS/059/2015, after the capture of the following criminals: Rolando Gonzalez Moreno " El Compadron", La Paz Abel Nahum Quintero Manjarrez "El Grande", La Paz Hector Gregorio Garcia Garcia "El 26", La Paz Luis Diego Garcia Villarreal "El Luigi", La Paz Fernanda Judith Bravo Castro "La Fer" or "La Guera", La Paz Erick Uriel Zacarias Lopez "El Terre", La Paz Antonio Quinonez Garcia "El Mazatleco", La Paz Pedro Hector Gomez Camarena "El Chino", La Paz Sergio Nunez Beltran "El Scar", La Paz Adrian Medina Velazquez "El 5" or "El Moreno", La Paz The exception is "El Compadron", who after giving his statements was imprisoned La Paz CEFERESO, the rest of the Sicarios and in the Arraignment centre of SEIDO in Mexico City. According to the investigating Agents, little by little the Sicarios have been giving their statements in shifts about the narco war for control of the plaza of La Paz, between Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Damaso Lopez Serrano "El Mini Lic", of the Sinaloa Cartel. The investigating Agents of SEIDO worked on the physical identification of the cells of Sicarios, who appear in the more than 100 photos of them participating in crimes of torture, armed with pistols and assault rifles. The majority are youths that are not more than 25 years old, and were photographed in groups of 4,5,6 and 8 persons for the head of Sicarios in drink ups, hanging about and killings. An Agent included that one group of between 6 and 10 youths, were recently recruited for Los Damaso in La Paz, they received weapons training in an area known as "Los Encinos", on the highway from La Paz to San Juan de Los Planes.  After the investigation, SEIDO also located three vehicles that had been deploying those responsible for the current wave of violence in La Paz: White Ford Raptor Pick up White Jeep Wrangler Red Jeep Wrangler The Impunity A few days after the capture of "El Grande", and viewing the graphic material, the investigating Agents from SEIDO arrived at a safe house of "Lucifer", located on Calle Villa Leititia number 322, between Villa Nahomi and Villa Ceibei, in the Villas del Encanto Colonia of La Paz. Without doubt, the dwelling was empty, they only found some pools of blood at the bottom of the stairs, of which, according to the recordings corresponds to the scene of the crime of torture of the last victims of "Los Damaso", where on the morning of 24th of May, they kidnapped and beat Rafael Banales Osuna "El Capi".  Their principle interest is in "La China", according to a member of the Group for Coordination of State Public Security, whose antecedents are as an Agent of La Paz Municipal Transit Police, State Preventative Police, and Public Safety, remain discarded, and the Directorate of Human Resource Management at La Paz town hall, after a search in the labor files. According to criminal records of the Sicaria, she was detained on three occasions, previously her name had been mentioned again and again in the wave of crime in the South Californian Capital City. 14th of April 2012 for the crime of causing harm after brawling at the Fortune Casino in La Paz. 26th of September 2013 for brawling in public in the Arcoiris 3 Colonia of La Paz. 27th of June of 2104 for the crime of robbery in the Arcoiris 3 Colonia of La Paz. In the opinion of the member of the Group for Coordination of Security, the arrivals and exits of "La China" to prison " stopped with the encouragement of impunity, and after being the protagonist of public brawling and robbery, she came to be part of a criminal organization and integrate into the ranks of Las Fuerzas Especiales de Los Damaso". The member of the institutional group considers that "the capture and freeing of criminals, uniquely fortifies the emotional state and it makes them feel impunity under the arm of the law.  One good example of this impunity is the case of the drug dealers Jaime Valdez Reyes, Victor Reyes Liera and Alfonso Dominguez Labrador, who after being captured with drugs and guns by Agents of the Municipal Police of Los Cabos, were rapidly freed by the Public Ministry Agent of the Federation of the PGR, Edgar Estrella Talamantes. According to informational part of CSL/S1/012/2015, the dealers of drugs were detained on the 8th of March, when they were driving a Chevrolet Silverado pick up, coffee colored, circulation plates CE-87-300 around the streets on the 5th of February and Abasolo in the Ejidal Colonia of Cabo San Lucas. The security Agents pulled the vehicle over and after a search of the interior of the vehicle found the following: A 9mm Beretta Pistol model 92 with the serial number BER486599 with a 16 round magazine. Four brown bags containing the following: Marijuana, second 100 packages of the same drug, the 3rd bag 32 packages of the same drug and the fourth bag, money. A Glock Pistol serial number EFN241 in 9mm calibre with a 15 round magazine. The arms, drugs, and money plus the vehicles and the detained were put at the disposition of an Agent of Public Ministry of the PGR, Edgar Estrella Talamantes, who after 24 hours, authorized the freeing of the detained of the criminal organization of the plaza boss of narco trafficking in Los Cabos, Javier Lopez Riviera "El Javy" or "El Javier". Original article in Spanish at Zetatijuana | ||
| Luis Cardona, the Mexican Journalist Who Narrates His Kidnapping with Drawings Posted: 09 Jul 2015 10:00 AM PDT
By: Alberto Nájar | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat The sound of the wind blows hard, while the background of the screen is black. Almost immediately a voice is heard: "The 16th kidnapping was mine," he says, while a drawing of a bearded man appears as he raises his hand and then picks up a rock. The speaker is journalist Luis Cardona. In September 2012, he was kidnapped in Nuevo Casas Grande, Chihuahua, in northern Mexico. The reporter had published articles about a series of disappearances of youths, who narco-trafficking gangs "pick up" in order to take them to work in the cultivation of opium poppy and marijuana. He couldn't continue at his job. After the kidnapping, he fled the city, and for more than two years, he spent his time in exile in the Mexican capital. His story is told in the short film "Soy el Número 16," done with animated drawing by the group Sácalepunta. The name of the video refers to the number that the journalist occupied in the list of kidnappings. It's the first documentary of this type about the plight that dozens of Mexican journalists live through in exile. "I'd prefer them to beat me" The kidnapping of Cardona occurred on September 19 2012 in Nuevo Casas Grandes, a municipality close to Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. The journalist was an editor of a local newspaper and intended to retire soon. But then a wave of disappearances of youths began to happen, which drug gangs had taken by force to work in drug cultivation. Cardona published articles about the 15 kidnapped. He was the next. A group of men dressed as military soldiers kidnapped him in the center of the city, in front of dozens of people. With his eyes blindfolded, they took him to a place, where according to the journalist, was the headquarters of the police. There, someone who claimed to be "the head of the plaza" asked him "how much do you earn?" "Like 250 pesos (US$16) a day," Cardona answered. The capo scoffed. "And for that bullshit you're going to die?" And then the beatings started. "They were so continuous that they were no longer felt," Cardona recalls in the film. "I preferred them to beat me, one after the other because it would numb my body." "After the beating, I fell asleep. I wasn't fainted, but asleep." Exile Being kidnapped, even for a few hours, is a terrible experience. But what comes next is hell. In the case of journalists who have been kidnapped in Mexico, the tragedy is added to the forced exile, unemployment, and poverty. Something that Cardona knows well. Why he was not killed during his kidnappings is something that he still doesn't understand, he tells BBC. But since then, his life has changed completely. What happens next is a nightmare, they break you, they break you with your family, job stability is lost, everything goes down the drain," he says. "You're left with a stigma, nobody wants to hire you. You submit your resume and when they find out that you're displaced, everything goes backwards; they don't want any problems."  Cardona found himself in a very different city. At first, civil organizations helped him, but then he had to seek employment. He didn't find it. He barely managed to sell some articles to foreign media because in Mexico, nobody wanted to buy them. A few months ago, he returned to Ciudad Juárez where his family is at and founded a magazine that saved him from misery. He also says that he found support in the Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Freedom of Expression of the Attorney (Prosecutor) General of the Republic (PGR). War The life of the displaced and exiled journalists is an issue that is rarely discussed in Mexico. The media that address violence against journalists often focus on assaults and homicides. But the tragedy of leaving your home, job, and sometimes your family, there is very little news shown. The short video aims to make this reality visible, says Rafael Pineda, the cartoonist who is also the director of the documentary to BBC. Rapé, as he signs his drawings as, is also a journalist in exile: a few years ago, he was threatened with death in Xalapa, Veracruz, where he lived, and was forced to take refuge in Mexico City. He knows the problem well. "The displaced journalists need to work and tell these stories, what happened to me is a small thing compared to what happened with Luis," he explains. "The people should know that we are becoming the news and not for other things that this war of (Felipe) Calderón began for." Violence In Mexico, since 2000, 103 journalists have been murdered, according to data from the public prosecutor that serves for crimes against journalists in the PGR. Twenty-five other journalists are missing and several tens (the number isn't clear) have fled their homes.  Around 20 have requested asylum in the United States and another emigrated to Europe. The majority are in Mexico City or in other large cities. Organizations such as Periodistas de a Pie have made collections to help but the proceeds have not been enough. Meanwhile, violence against journalists continues. On June 15, photographer Rubén Espinosa fled Veracruz due to death threats made against him. Veracruz is considered to be the most dangerous state in Mexico for journalists. It is unclear whether the photographer who is now in exile can return home, as several others have not done who have fled several years ago. Source: BBC |
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