Drug cartel suspected in massacre of 72 migrants

[wildcard]

The drug cartels do more in a single day to stop the flow of illegals than the us gov does in a decade.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100825/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_drug_war_mexico

Drug cartel suspected in massacre of 72 migrants

By MARK STEVENSON and E. EDUARDO CASTILLO, Associated Press Writer Mark Stevenson And E. Eduardo Castillo, Associated Press Writer – Wed Aug 25, 7:37 pm ET

MEXICO CITY – A wounded migrant stumbled into a military checkpoint and led marines to a gruesome scene, what may be the biggest massacre so far in Mexico's bloody drug war: a room strewn with the bodies of 72 fellow travelers, some piled on top of each other, just 100 miles from their goal, the U.S. border.

The 58 men and 14 women were killed, the migrant told investigators Wednesday, by the Zetas cartel, a group of former Mexican army special forces known to extort migrants who pass through its territory.

If authorities corroborate his story, it would be the most horrifying example yet of the plight of migrants trying to cross a country where drug cartels are increasingly scouting shelters and highways, hoping to extort or even recruit vulnerable immigrants.

"It's absolutely terrible and it demands the condemnation of all of our society," said government security spokesman Alejandro Poire.

The Ecuadorean migrant stumbled to the checkpoint on Tuesday, telling the marines he had just escaped from gunmen at a ranch in San Fernando, a town in the northern state of Tamaulipas about 100 miles from Brownsville, Texas.

The Zetas so brutally control some parts of Tamaulipas that even many Mexicans do not dare to travel on the highways in the states.

Many residents in the state tell of loved ones or friends who have disappeared traveling from one town to the next. Many of these kidnappings are never reported for fear that police are in league with the criminals.

The marines scrambled helicopters to raid the ranch, drawing gunfire from cartel gunmen. One marine and three gunmen died in a gunbattle. Then the marines discovered the bodies, some slumped in the chairs where they had been shot, one federal official said.

... continues at link above

[zap]

Yep I saw that one earlier today.

[willie pete]

I'll bet it happens all the time, what would be the reason for killing so many? I guess they weren't killed at the same time, but why? maybe saw too much?

[wildcard]

Oops

Mexican massacre investigator found dead

Body of official dumped beside road near scene of killing of 72 Central and South American migrants in Tamaulipas

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/27/mexico-massacre-investigator-migrants

The body of an official investigating the massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants killed in a ranch in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas was found today dumped beside a nearby road alongside another unidentified victim, according to local media.

Earlier, two cars exploded outside the studios of the national TV network Televisa in the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. There were no casualties, but the blasts added to a growing sense of fear in the aftermath of the worst single act of violence in the country's raging drug wars.

Meanwhile, investigators under armed guard continued the process of identifying the victims, with 20 named by midday on Friday, local officials said.

The migrants, 14 of them women, came from at least four countries, including Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil and Ecuador. They were found bound and blindfolded by the wall of a barn after navy personnel stormed the ranch on Tuesday.

The massacre was discovered after an Ecuadorian migrant, who had been left for dead with a neck wound, escaped. Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla, 18, found his way to a navy road checkpoint.

He said the migrants had been kidnapped by armed men who identified themselves as belonging to the Zetas, one of the cartels fighting for supremacy in the state. He said the killing began after they refused offers to work for the cartel.

Interviewed at their home in a remote Andean village by Ecuadorian TV, Lala's family said he had left for the US two months ago after paying $15,000 (£9,000) to a people smuggler to organise the trip.

"I told him not to go, but he went," said one of his seven brothers, Luis Alfredo. His 17-year-old pregnant wife Maria said she had received a call a few weeks ago from Guatemala, indicating all that was well.

The Ecuadorian government has complained that the survivor's security has been put at risk by the publication of his identity around the world. Mexican newspapers said he had been transferred from hospital to a naval base. His family in Ecuador was put under police protection.

The massacre has focused attention on the vulnerability of US-bound economic migrants as they cross Mexico, a situation long denounced by activists, but largely ignored by the Mexican government until now. Since at least 2008 organised crime groups, particularly the Zetas, have preyed on migrants, primarily from Central America. Copycat groups might also be using the name of the infamously violent cartel to terrify their victims. A report published in 2009 by Mexico's national commission of human rights estimated that more than 1,600 migrants were kidnapped every month.

Typically, the aim has been to force relatives in the US to pay a ransom. Activists have also documented many cases of complicity within the Mexican authorities.

In a chilling testimony published in El Universal newspaper this week, a Salvadoran identified as Marisolina described being forced to cook and clean for the kidnappers as other migrants disappeared if they could not raise the ransom.

"They kept the ones who couldn't pay tied up in a room waiting to be killed," she said. "I would give them food in the morning and next day they wouldn't be there and new ones would be in their place."

[Liquid]

Hmmm, makes you wonder if the Zetas are getting funding to help control our immigration problem.

[wildcard]

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/140439.html

2 blasts near Mexico massacre morgue


At least one person has been injured after two bombs went off near a morgue in the Mexican city of Reynosa where the bodies of 72 migrants massacred last week are being kept.


"They were two different bombs about a block apart. We're investigating. We don't know what types of devices were used," AFP quoted an official as saying on Sunday.

The twin bombing has injured at least one person, the Mexican official confirmed.

There have also been unconfirmed reports about a third bomb going off as officials warn people to stay away from the area due to its insecurity.

The morgue currently holds the bodies of 72 migrants who were ambushed by 10 gunmen on Tuesday. The migrants were shot dead after refusing to help the gunmen in trafficking drugs.

Meanwhile, Mexican federal authorities have taken over the investigation as evidence pointing to drug traffickers makes it a federal crime.

The government "will continue its frontal assault against these organizations so that terrible events like these that occurred this week will not be repeated," government security spokesman Alejandro Poire said on Friday.

Drug violence is spreading across Mexico as drug cartels kidnap people, especially migrants, and force them into drug trafficking.

Almost 2,800 migrants have been rescued from criminal gangs this year.

[FunnyMoney]

In Mexico the avg working class person has no right to self protection. It is illegal for them to own guns and with the wages they earn it is very difficult for them to properly protect themselves by buying arms on the black market.

Govts around the world are interested in being in charge of solving the world's problems, actually solving them would be counter-productive to that self imposed position.

The founding fathers knew that things would eventually come down to the 2nd amendment. Criminals and govts will ALWAYS have guns, for most of the globe that leaves only one group that doesn't. The problems will mount for the USA, TPTB understand all too well about the 2nd amendment. The only large group of middle class workers with the ability to self protection left on the globe is now the primary focus for financial attack, among other forms. I do not expect the middle class workers to survive these attacks coming in from all sides. In the end, as it has been throughout history, the masses will turn in their liberties for a semblance of security, at which point they will then have neither.

[hoarder]

I'll bet it happens all the time, what would be the reason for killing so many? I guess they weren't killed at the same time, but why? maybe saw too much?
If they're migrants coming back from the USA, robbery is the motive.

[wildcard]

Dunno if this is related:

Mayor killed in Mexican border state

By the CNN Wire Staff
August 30, 2010 4:04 a.m. EDT

(CNN) -- The mayor of a city in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas was killed and his 10-year-old daughter was injured Sunday, officials said.

Marco Antonio Leal Garcia, mayor of the city of Hidalgo, was driving a truck around 4:30 p.m. when he was killed, state prosecutors said in a statement. They did not provide details about the attack.

Leal's daughter, who was riding with him, sustained non-life-threatening injuries, prosecutors said.

"It was not just attack against a person. It was an attack against institutions," Tamaulipas Governor Eugenio Hernandez Flores said in a statement Sunday night.

He said police were still investigating the attack, and called on federal authorities to send reinforcements to the state in response to a notable increase in crime.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon's office released a statement condemning the attack.

"This cowardly crime and reprehensible violent acts which occurred recently in this state reinforce our commitment to use all the resources of the Mexican state to continue fighting criminal gangs seeking to intimidate the families Tamaulipas," the statement said.

The state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas, has seen a spike in violence amid Mexico's drug war. On Tuesday, investigators found the bodies of 72 slain migrants there.

A young man from Ecuador who led navy personnel to the scene of the massacre said he escaped after pretending he was dead. Officials are investigating whether the Zetas drug gang carried out the killings, as the young man reportedly told police.

More than 28,000 people have died in drug violence since Calderon intensified the government's fight against drug cartels and organized crime after taking office in December 2006.

CNN's Nick Valencia and Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report.

[wildcard]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100827/wl_mcclatchy/3609525

What's behind Mexican migrant killings still unclear

By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers Tim Johnson, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Fri Aug 27, 6:40 pm ET

MEXICO CITY — President Felipe Calderon on Friday accused the gunmen who killed 72 illegal migrants in northern Mexico this week of "incalculable savagery" as his government attempted to depict the major drug gang implicated in the slaughter as weakened and desperate.

The discovery of the grisly massacre Tuesday night at a ranch near San Fernando , about 45 miles southwest of Brownsville, Texas , put the spotlight on Los Zetas, a crime syndicate based along the Gulf Coast of Mexico that has international tentacles.

The massacre — and its murky motives — continued to shake Mexico on Friday.

A small car bomb blew up near the local offices of Mexican network Televisa farther south in Tamaulipas state, in Ciudad Victoria , causing damage but no injuries. Calderon himself also confirmed that two state criminal investigators who'd been assigned to probe the slayings had vanished.

In an interview on W Radio, Calderon searched for words to describe the contempt he felt for the gunmen who lined up the migrants — mostly from Central America but also from Ecuador and Brazil — and sprayed them with bullets.

"They are simply beasts," Calderon said.

The sole apparent survivor, an Ecuadorean, feigned death and escaped the San Fernando ranch, stumbling with a bullet wound in his neck to alert Mexican marines who were stationed nearby.

A top aide to Calderon blamed Los Zetas and said military pressure on the group had left it weakened and in need of reinforcements. Alejandro Poire of the National Security Council said the gunmen had captured the migrants and given them a choice: Work for Los Zetas as gunslingers and peons, or face death.

When the 58 male and 14 female migrants resisted, they were killed.

"Rather than a kidnapping with an apparent financial aim, it was done fundamentally with the goal of detaining these people and forcing them to join the structures of organized crime," Poire said, according to a transcript of his remarks, made in another radio interview, that Calderon's office issued Friday.

Human and civil rights groups voiced outrage that the Calderon government used the massacre to defend its military campaign against drug cartels, even as the human toll grows.

Poire "tries to diminish the magnitude of the massacre, affirming that it is a sign that organized crime has been hit by the government," 39 groups from around Latin America said in a statement.

However, an Austin, Texas -based strategic intelligence research group, Stratfor, said in a report Friday that Los Zetas, sometimes called simply the "Z's," indeed are hurting.

Los Zetas, which arose more than a decade ago as a paramilitary shock force for the Gulf Cartel, broke away from the struggling Gulf drug lords in February and have been locked in a bloody war with other trafficking groups since then.

The group has branched into other areas of criminal activity, including piracy of consumer goods, extortion and taking control of human smuggling routes from traffickers known as coyotes, reaping from $2,000 to $10,000 per migrant.

Needing more gunmen against its rivals, Los Zetas called up Central American gang members with whom they're allied, the Stratfor report said.

"This latest incident shows a continued desperation for manpower and ability to put boots on the ground to defend Los Zetas' home territory," it said.

Another analyst of Mexico's security situation, Edgardo Buscaglia , cast doubt on official accounts of the massacre and criticized Calderon's handling of it.

"First, we have to find out whether they really were Zetas," Buscaglia said, or whether they might have been crime gangs further down the chain.

Buscaglia said Calderon had glossed over evidence that all of Mexico's major crime groups had grown stronger during his term, and that he has used military force against the cartels without taking other steps to deal with pervasive government corruption, which allowed the cartels to strengthen.

"The president, unfortunately, looks at all of this as a media war," Buscaglia said. The portrayal of Los Zetas as weakened "is a marketing story" to deal with the international black eye Mexico has suffered with the massacre, he said.

"Every serious expert in the world agrees that Mexican organized crime groups are more powerful than ever before," Buscaglia said.

Los Zetas have moved into parts of Central America . In March, police in Guatemala said the group had threatened to kill President Alvaro Colom , and a month later El Salvador's president warned of Los Zetas' presence in his country.

Police in Bolivia and Colombia also have reported ties between local drug clans and the violent Los Zetas.

[wildcard]

Mexico makes first arrest in migrant murder case

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-08/31/c_13470847.htm

2010-08-31

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Mexico's Attorney General's Office has put a suspect under house arrest following the murder of 72 migrants in northern Mexico last week, the first arrest made about the massacre, a spokesperson said on Monday.

The office had put Eduardo Rico Perez under house arrest for 40 days, said the Attorney General's Office spokeswoman Viviana Macias. The suspect had tried to argue that he was a minor, but medical tests showed later that he was at least 18 years old.

Macias said the investigation will continue and more arrests may be expected, but she declined to comment on details of the police investigation undertaken.

Also on Monday, local media reported that the massacre's sole witness, an 18-year-old Ecuadorian citizen Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla who was badly wounded in the attack, had flown home in the company of senior Ecuadorian officials.

Mexico's navy and regional police found 72 dead migrants -- 58 men and 14 women -- on Aug. 24 at a ranch about 160 km from Tamaulipas, a Gulf coast state bordering Texas of the United States.

So far 37 of the dead have remained unidentified as they lacked papers. Those who have been identified were 16 Hondurans, 13 Salvadoreans, five Guatemalans and a Brazilian.

The victims of the deadliest drug cartel massacre to date in Mexico were believed to have been gunned down by the Zetas drug gang after refusing to smuggle drugs

The Zetas were founded by former Mexican army special forces soldiers and have become a lethal drug gang that has been notorious for extorting migrants.

The cartel controls much of Tamaulipas, the last leg for migrants running the challenge up the Gulf coast to Texas.