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Guards and officials at a prison in northern Mexico allegedly let inmates out, lent them guns and allowed them to use official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings, including the massacre of 17 people last week, prosecutors said Sunday.

After carrying out the killings the inmates would return to their cells, the Attorney General's Office said in a revelation that was shocking even for a country wearied by years of drug violence and corruption.

"According to witnesses, the inmates were allowed to leave with authorization of the prison director ... to carry out instructions for revenge attacks using official vehicles and using guards' weapons for executions," office spokesman Ricardo Najera said at a news conference.

The director of the prison in Gomez Palacio in Durango state and three other officials were placed under a form of house arrest pending further investigation. No charges have yet been filed.

Prosecutors said the prison-based hit squad is suspected in three mass shootings, including the July 18 attack on a party in the city of Torreon, which is near Gomez Palacio. In that incident, gunmen fired indiscriminately into a crowd of mainly young people in a rented hall, killing 17 people, including women.

Police found more than 120 bullet casings at the scene, and Najera said tests matched those casings to four assault rifles assigned to guards at the prison.

Similar ballistics tests linked the guns to earlier killings at two bars in Torreon, the capital of northern Coahuila state, he said. At least 16 people were killed in those attacks on Feb. 1 and May 15, local media reported.

Najera blamed the killings on disputes between rival drug cartels. "Unfortunately, the criminals also carried out cowardly killings of innocent civilians, only to return to their cells," he said.

Coahuila and neighboring Durango are among several northern states that have seen a spike in drug-related violence that authorities attribute to a fight between the Gulf cartel and its former enforcers, known as the Zetas.

Mexico has long had a problem with investigating crimes, catching criminals and convicting people. Reports estimate less than 2 percent of crimes in Mexico result in prison sentences. But Sunday's revelation suggests that even putting cartel gunmen in prison may not prevent them from continuing to commit crimes.

Interior Secretary Francisco Blake said the revelation "can only be seen as a wake-up call for authorities to address, once again, the state of deterioration in many local law enforcement institutions ... we cannot allow this kind of thing to happen again."

Also Sunday, Mexican federal police announced the arrest of an alleged leading member of a drug gang blamed in recent killings and a car-bombing in the violence-ridden border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.

Police described Luis Vazquez Barragan, 39, as a top member of La Linea gang, the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel, saying he received orders directly from cartel boss Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

Vazquez Barragan allegedly organized payments, moved drugs and oversaw a system of safe houses in and around Ciudad Juarez.

Police said he held the same rank as fugitive gang leader Juan Pablo Ledezma, though Vazquez Barragan is not named on reward or most-wanted lists published by the Attorney General's Office, as Ledezma is.

La Linea has been blamed for a car bomb that killed three people July 15 in Ciudad Juarez and for two separate shootings March 13 that killed a U.S. consular employee and two other people connected to the consulate.

Police did not say when they caught Vazquez Barragan, but he was allegedly in possession of about a half-kilogram (pound) of cocaine and two guns.

His arrest led to a raid on a safe house where authorities detained four suspects and freed a kidnap victim.

Also Sunday, the Attorney General's Office said soldiers on patrol in Ciudad Madero in the border state of Tamaulipas seized an arsenal of about three dozen guns, 17 grenades and thousands of bullets in a house.

Elsewhere in Tamaulipas, police and prosecutors raided a lot full of truck-pulled tankers in the border city of Reynosa and seized two loaded with oil of a type sometimes stolen from the pipelines of the state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos. Nore than a dozen other tankers and freight containers were also seized.

Mexican drug cartels have allegedly become involved in increasingly sophisticated thefts of fuel and oil from Mexico's pipelines.

In the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, authorities reported Sunday they had found the bullet-ridden bodies of six men dumped in various locations, including three in or around the resort of Acapulco. Two of the dead men were identified as people kidnapped earlier in the month.

It's practically a daily ritual: Accused drug traffickers and assassins, shackled and bruised from beatings, are paraded before the news media to show that Mexico is winning its drug war. Once the television lights dim, however, about three-quarters of them are let go.

Even as President Felipe Calderon's government touts its arrest record, cases built by prosecutors and police under huge pressure to make swift captures unravel from lack of evidence. Innocent people are tortured into confessing. The guilty are set free, only to be hauled in again for other crimes. Sometimes, the drug cartels decide who gets arrested.

Records obtained by The Associated Press showed that the government arrested 226,667 drug suspects between December 2006 and September 2009, the most recent numbers available. Less than a quarter of that number were charged. Only 15 percent saw a verdict, and the Mexican attorney general's office won't say how many of those were guilty.

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EDITOR'S NOTE -- This is one in an occasional series of reports by The Associated Press examining why -- four decades and $1 trillion after Richard Nixon declared war on drugs -- the U.S. and Mexico continue to fight a losing battle.

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The judicial void is a key reason why Mexican cartels continue to deliver tons of marijuana, methamphetamines, heroin and cocaine onto U.S. streets.

"It in effect gives them impunity," U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual told the AP, "and allows them to be able to function in ways that can extend themselves into the United States."

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Mexico's justice system is carried out largely in secret and has long been viciously corrupt. Add a drug war that Calderon intensified, and the system has been overrun. Nearly 25,000 people have died in the war to date, and the vast majority of their cases remain unsolved.

The AP obtained court documents and prison records restricted from the public and conducted dozens of interviews with suspects' relatives, lawyers, human rights groups and government officials to find out what happened after suspects were publicly paraded in key cartel murder cases.

In Ciudad Juarez, where a war between two cartels over trafficking routes killed a record 2,600 people in 2009, prosecutors filed 93 homicide cases that year and got 19 convictions, the AP found. Only five were for first-degree murder, court records show, and none came under federal statutes with higher penalties designed to prosecute the drug war.

"They never charge anyone with homicide because they don't have the evidence, they don't have proof," said Jorge Gonzalez, president of the public defenders association. "They just show them to the media to give the impression that they're solving cases."

Soldiers in Juarez routinely announce to the public that suspects have confessed to a shocking number of murders.

Hector Armando Alcibar Wong, known as "El Koreano," killed 15, they said. But a year after his August 2009 arrest, authorities don't even know where he is. Chihuahua state officials say they handed him over to federal authorities; the attorney general's office says it never had him.

Soldiers told the media in 2008 that Juan Pablo Castillo Lopez was tied to 23 killings. He was never charged with homicide and was freed from state prison less than a year later. The army quickly arrested him again, saying he killed two more people within three days. Nine months after that, he still doesn't face a homicide charge.

Oswaldo Munoz Gonzalez, known as "El Gonzo," admitted to killing 40 people, according to the joint police-army operation in Ciudad Juarez. His family says he was tortured into that confession. Eight months later, he hasn't been charged with a single homicide either.

Munoz was first detained in 2008 and accused of aggravated robbery but he was released after prosecutors failed to present enough evidence.

Two months after he was released, authorities say they nabbed Munoz during a traffic stop, and found drugs and guns in his truck.

His sister, Petra Munoz Gonzalez, says they're lying -- he was dragged from his home while his wife and two young daughters watched. She says her brother, a taxi driver and occasional bus driver with a third-grade education, does not drink or use drugs.

Munoz's family didn't know where he was until they saw him paraded on television days later, with guns and drugs in front of him.

"He told me, 'I never killed anyone,'" Petra Munoz said. "He said he confessed because he had been tortured. He told me they put a bag over his head so he couldn't breathe and gave him electric shocks down there (on his genitals) and beat him until he fell over in pain. Who would endure that?"

"I just ask that the truth be told," she added. "Why haven't they presented proof, or witnesses, or anything that incriminates him? It's been almost a year."

Chihuahua authorities say they can't discuss open cases. Mexico Attorney General Arturo Chavez declined several AP requests for comment.

The attorney general's records show the same pattern of catch and release in all states where Calderon's government sent federal police and soldiers to crush the cartels.

In Baja California, home to the border city of Tijuana, nearly 33,000 people were arrested but 24,000 were freed. In the northern state of Sinaloa -- the cradle of the powerful cartel by the same name -- more than 9,700 were detained, but 5,606 freed. In Tamaulipas, birthplace of the Gulf cartel, nearly 3,600 were detained while 2,083 were freed.

Calderon first launched his military assault in December 2006 in his home state of Michoacan, deploying thousands of troops shortly after a new cartel called La Familia rolled five severed heads onto a nightclub's dance floor.

Since then, federal forces have arrested more than 3,300 drug suspects. Nearly half have been released.

In 2008, drug traffickers in Michoacan lobbed hand grenades into a crowd celebrating Mexico's independence. Eight revelers died, including a 13-year-old boy, making it one of Mexico's highest-profile murder cases. Police and federal authorities arrested three suspects within 10 days. None of the men had criminal records. All three confessed.

But at least 16 people say the three men weren't even there.

The witnesses -- next-door neighbors, relatives, bar owners, waitresses, a corner store owner and a doctor -- told authorities they saw all three that night in Lazaro Cardenas, more than 300 miles from the colonial square in Morelia where the attacks occurred, according to interviews and statements obtained by the AP.

Neighbor Gloria Ortiz and her daughter, Selene, told the AP they had dinner with one of the men in his cramped living room. Juan Carlos Castro, a mechanic who loves to cook, invited them over for a favorite dish -- stewed pig's feet in chili sauce -- and discussed a menu for Selene's 15th birthday party, which Castro had offered to cater.

Edith Franco, a Lazaro Cardenas doctor, testified under oath that she had dinner with Julio Cesar Mondragon at her mother's taco restaurant that night.

Three days later, Castro's wife, Esperanza Fajardo, was told that gunmen had taken him away in a car. She reported a kidnapping to police.

Three days after that, Mondragon was kidnapped as he washed his car outside his house. His wife said she heard her husband scream for help, but by the time she rushed to the window he was gone.

Alfredo Rosas' girlfriend said he was abducted in a similar way two days later.

The next time the three women saw them, the men were being paraded in front of television cameras in Mexico City by federal police, who identified them as terrorists and members of the Zeta drug cartel.

Castro was cut and bruised. Mondragon's face was black-and-blue. Rosas, who was wearing a hospital robe, had five broken ribs and a black eye.

"At that moment, you cry, you scream. You feel impotent," Fajardo said. "I said, 'How is it possible that they are accusing him of something he didn't do?'"

Castro says he was beaten until he not only confessed, but gave them Mondragon's name as an accomplice.

"They showed me videos in which they were cutting someone's head off, and they told me they would cut me up finger by finger, arm by arm, and my family, too," Castro said in handwritten court testimony obtained by the AP. "I would repeat what they told me to say, and if I made a mistake, they would hit me."

Mondragon said in his court statement that his captors took him blindfolded to a spot where he heard what he thought were the screams of a man being burned alive. "Set him on fire!" Mondragon's captors shouted. He prayed he "would die quickly."

Instead, he said, his captors took him to a house and repeatedly dunked his head into a bucket of water, beat him with a rifle butt and hung him from a tree, singeing his ears with a lighter. Mondragon said he gave them Rosas' name.

Federal police say an anonymous phone tip then led them to a house in the Michoacan town of Apatzingan, a known stronghold for La Familia, where they found the three men tied up, blindfolded and whimpering.

The tip came days after the government accused La Familia of staging the grenade attack, and the cartel responded by hanging a banner claiming its innocence and vowing to find the killers.

Police say the battered men confessed and claimed allegiance to La Familia's biggest rival. They were flown blindfolded to Mexico City, still unaware who their captors were.

"I started to think, 'Could this be the government?'" Mondragon said in his statement. "'What if I tell them the truth, that I didn't do any of the things I've been talking about?' But I didn't say anything. I was afraid."

The attorney general's office had two secret witnesses who claimed Castro and Mondragon smuggled drugs and attacked police, but said nothing about the grenade attack. One witness was killed last year, said Rosas' attorney, Raul Espinoza de Los Monteras Santillan. The other, he said, admitted he never met the defendants.

In February, the prosecution's own expert dismissed as unreliable a blurry surveillance video that supposedly placed two of the suspects at the celebration.

A year after the arrests, an appeals judge dismissed charges of organized crime, terrorism and grenade possession against all three men. The confessions have been retracted, but homicide charges still stand.

The proceedings have been delayed because at least one of the three arresting officers failed to show up at the last eight hearings. The judge recently notified defense attorneys that two of the officers are being tried on federal charges in another state -- though they don't know what charges.

The government says it cannot comment on an ongoing trial.

Castro, Mondragon and Rosas remain in jail.

"I'm really disappointed in the government," witness Franco told the AP. "They didn't look for the culprits. They looked for someone to blame."

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Even Mexico's president admitted the court system is inept recently as he touted a new judicial system that Mexico has begun to adopt.

"It fosters injustice, impunity and corruption," Calderon wrote on the presidential website. "We need a profound change and that's why we have begun an unprecedented effort to modernize and redesign our legal system."

That effort, with aid from the United States, started under a constitutional amendment passed by the legislature, approved by all 32 states and signed by Calderon in 2008.

Under the old system, defendants are presumed guilty until proven innocent, proceedings are carried out almost entirely in writing, and judges usually rubber-stamp whatever government prosecutors and investigators hand them. Without public scrutiny, mistaken arrests, bungled investigations and false confessions are commonplace.

With the reform, defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty; police must investigate crimes and collect evidence before making arrests; a panel of judges decides whether there is enough evidence for the case to proceed, and trials are argued orally in courts open to the public.

The law calls for the changeover to be completed by 2016. The U.S. Agency for International Development has provided training in forensics, interviewing and courtroom arguments to 550 Mexican prosecutors. Some 5,000 federal police officers have taken basic investigation courses, also with U.S. funding. The Obama administration is requesting $207 million in its 2011 budget for judicial and government reforms in Mexico.

The new system was piloted in Chihuahua state, home to Ciudad Juarez, in 2007 -- just before the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels began their bloody war to control drug routes into the United States. All Chihuahua prosecutors and judges were trained in the new techniques.

But even state prosecutors say the drug war has stymied the new system.

Soldiers, who under Mexican law can't do police work, routinely bring in evidence such as illegally obtained confessions that judges are forced to throw out.

"The numbers of arrests increased tremendously but the numbers of prosecutions virtually didn't change," noted Pascual, the U.S. ambassador.

Since the reform was implemented, 98 officials who had received training -- police investigators, forensic experts, prosecutors -- have been assassinated by gangs, said Carlos Gonzalez, spokesman for the Chihuahua attorney general's office.

Nobody has been arrested in any of those killings

Dan Kumar, chief of international affairs for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the cartels "absolutely have the capacity and ability" to continue such attacks and there is reason to "expect more of this type of violence."

"This latest incident has raised a lot of concern in the U.S. and Mexico," Kumar said, adding that the cartels have turned even more violent in a vicious war to control the drug routes to the U.S.

The bombing last Thursday in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, killed three people, including a police officer. It marked the first time a vehicle bomb has emerged in the deadly conflict, Kumar said.

El Paso Police Department spokesman Darrel Petry said there is no evidence the violence will spill into the U.S., but local authorities are prepared.

"Are our officers advised to use extra caution? Yes," he said.

Drug gangs allegedly lured police and other emergency responders near a vehicle packed with explosives by dropping a wounded man dressed as a police officer near the car, Juárez Mayor José Reyes Ferriz said after the attack. As police and other emergency officials arrived to assist the wounded man, the bomb was detonated remotely.

This week, Mexican President Felipe Calderón appealed for the entire country's help.

"This is not just a job for the federal government, much less just for the president," he said Tuesday. "Citizens, of course, cannot face the criminals by themselves, but we ask for their support and understanding to continue this fight."

Kumar said the cartels have steadily increased their use of explosives, a mix of military ordnance and homemade grenades, in the past two years.

The emergence of explosives in cartel battles, he said, prompted the Mexican government to create a team to examine the phenomenon. Its work has expanded as the use of explosives has increased.

"I think we have to expect ... these types of car bombs," Kumar said.

In a bulletin issued to state and local law enforcement officials in the United States, Department of Homeland Security analysts said the attack — "within walking distance" of the U.S. border — highlighted "the potential for American casualties if similar attacks are conducted in the future."

The Juárez Cartel, which has claimed responsibility for the bombing, and the Sinaloa Cartel are responsible for much of the fighting.

"There is no indication either cartel will target U.S. law enforcement personnel," the July 17 bulletin states. "There is potential, however, for collateral injury to U.S. persons in Mexico and along the border regions as violence escalates," the bulletin says.

A new documentary series turns the lens on the cops policing the Downtown Eastside

 

Three times a week, the country’s only police judo club meets at a no-frills police gym above the Vancouver Police Department’s Main Street branch at the heart of the city’s troubled Downtown Eastside. At one recent gathering, police sergeant and judo black belt Toby Hinton muscled his much larger opponent onto his back. The 22-year police veteran and head of the Downtown Eastside Beat Enforcement Team 5 (BET)—all bulging vein and muscle—pinned the helpless, writhing man to the mat. For club members, foot sweeps and throws have become instinctive. Good training in the sport of mental smarts and physical skill can circumvent the need to pull out a baton or a gun. (“If the Mounties had this, [Robert] Dziekanski would never have happened,” head judo coach Brian Shipper says of the infamous taser-related death of the Polish immigrant.)

 

Hinton, the boyish 47-year-old star of the mats, is also a star of The Beat, a 10-part documentary series that launched on Citytv this week; it follows six members of the squad under his command. The show is a behind-the-scenes look at policing Vancouver’s notorious 12-block neighbourhood: a “violence-filled waste of human potential,” according to Sgt. Mark Steinkampf, another black belt and BET top cop. Unlike ride-along reality shows like Cops or To Serve and Protect—“arrest porn,”

according to The Beat’s director, Todd Serotiuk—the Galafilm Productions “docudrama” follows more closely in the tradition of the famed U.S. police drama The Wire, presenting a layered narrative and a close-up look at socio-political themes and debates—and the stings, arrests and sometimes difficult home lives of city police (down to the lesbian cop trying to have a child with her partner).

The series opens with police academy trainee Mariya Zhalovaga and Det. Const. Shane Aitkin, charged with training her. Aitkin, a veteran of the first Gulf War, is a class-A hard-ass, prone to smacking his lips with the intensity of an NHL coach in a playoff game seven. “I need you to take it up a notch—to focus, concentrate. I need you to start taking some control,” he shouts at his wide-eyed charge. When it comes to earning police chops, there’s no better training than the chaotic crime scenes, hostile witnesses, and victims of the Downtown Eastside. “Entrez-vous,” Aitkin beckons, as Zhalovaga enters a tenement to investigate her first death, hours into the job.

This is where The Beat differs from the National Film Board’s Through a Blue Lens, granddaddy of Canada’s reality-cop genre, and surely the most famous film to emerge from the neighbourhood. The conceit is one and the same: a documentary about the beat squad, and the misery of addiction. So is the police impulse: to document that misery and take it to the world outside. Both Steinkampf and Hinton featured in Blue Lens and helped found the police-run production house the Odd Squad, which produced it (they both still volunteer there). But absent here, at least in early shows, is the compassionate view of the neighbourhood and its endlessly victimized residents. The Beat is a lot more bang-bang. Maybe it’s the different circumstances: Blue Lens was filmed at a frightening time, when the neighbourhood’s 3,500 addicts suffered one overdose death a day. Maybe, 10 years on, Steinkampf and Hinton have grown a bit more hardened. Maybe it’s just that this time the cameras are on the cops.

The tough police life is front and centre: the difficulty of readjusting after a four-day shift—which knocks you right out of sync with the rest of society, Hinton told Maclean’s. Deprogramming takes a full day, adds the small-town boy from Vancouver Island. You’re not the “nicest person to be around.” Some, like Steinkampf, have wives who understand the “dragging my ass out of bed at two in the afternoon, walking around in a catatonic state.” Others can’t hack it and leave the squad, as one does by the end of The Beat.

No one type is attracted to the BET, but a few years in, they all grow to look alike, says Hinton. “You start becoming an adrenalin junkie. You like the accelerated pace, the busy, challenging, hectic calls, the action.” You start to listen, he adds, “for the warble of the serious call.”

Anti-mafia prosecutors claimed a major victory over the powerful and growing 'ndrangheta crime syndicate, infiltrating intimate weddings, baptisms and other events to gather information that led to the arrests Tuesday of 305 people, including top bosses, and the seizure of more than euro60 million ($76 million) in cash and property.

One of the most significant revelations to emerge from the investigation was that the Calabrian mob had a tight hierarchal structure like that of the Sicilian Mafia, and wasn't just an association of clans as previously believed. While expanding its economic reach into the wealthy Lombard region in northern Italy, the 'ndrangheta (en-DRAN-geh-tah) is also concentrating its power in its native Calabria, exerting tight control over all strategic decision-making, anti-mafia prosecutors said.

The operation began before dawn with the 4 a.m. arrest of Domenico Oppedisano, the crime group's top boss, in the small coastal town of Rosarno in Calabria.

But the investigation owed its success to investigators' ability to infiltrate events like the 2009 wedding of the children of two crime bosses in Calabria, attended by thousands of well-wishers, where Oppedisano was named to his post, said Calabrian anti-mafia prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone.

When Oppedisano was formally elevated some two weeks later, on Sept. 2, the feast of Madonna Polsi, undercover agents got video of the crime syndicate's major bosses all being confirmed in their new positions in the structure, he said.

"Police and carabinieri have been able to record since Aug. 1, 2009 all of the major negotiations of the various families," Pignatone told a news conference.

That includes some 40 similar meetings in Lombardy, which has become the Calabrian mob's moneymaking center, with operations focusing on excavations for construction sites, trash disposal and real estate. While officials seized euro60 million in cash and property, prosecutors are unable to estimate how much the 'ndrangheta is cashing in each year.

Wiretaps indicate that as many as 500 'ndrangheta mobsters are operating in Lombardy, where 160 were arrested. They include Pino Neri, whom police said was in charge of the gang's businesses in Milan, where the 'ndrangheta has been making major inroads.

The investigation revealed the 'ndrangheta was extremely "hierarchical, united and pyramidal," and not just clan-based as previously believed, said Italy's chief anti-mafia prosecutor Piero Grasso.

That became clear when the Lombard branch, empowered by its riches, attempted to exert autonomy and was cut short when the Calabrian bosses sent a professional killer to murder the would-be upstarts, Pignatone said.

The 'ndrangheta has emerged as one of the most powerful of the crime syndicates, even if only since February has Italian law recognized it as a criminal organization. From Calabria, it has spread its tentacles to northern Italy, where it migrated in the 1970s and 1980s, to Germany, and as far away as Canada and Australia.

Investigators described the operation as one of the biggest blows ever to an organization that is now considered to be more powerful than the Sicilian Mafia. The raids involved 3,000 police across the country and the charges against those arrested ranged from murder and extortion to arms and drug trafficking and criminal association.

The last big operation against the Calabrian mob dates to the 1990s. Since then, the 'ndrangheta has expanded its power, mainly through its grip on drug trafficking.

But what Grasso said was particularly worrisome was the crime group's infiltration into the economic arena, a form of mafia entrepreneurship, with the ability to get an inside track when contracts are handed out. Among those arrested was the head of the state health system in the city of Pavia, south of Milan.

Prosecutors emphasized that wiretaps were a key to the 'ndrangheta investigation, but declined to speculate on how a proposed new bill that would limit the use of electronic eavesdropping might have affected their work.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who has been stung by some embarrassing disclosure in published transcripts of private conversations mostly unrelated to investigations, is pushing the measures through parliament.

While terrorism and mafia investigations are exempt from the proposed restrictions, magistrates complain that big probes often stem from low-level criminal cases. Passage of the law, they say, will give criminals operating in Italy protection.

The restrictions include a strict time limit on wiretaps, which prosecutors say is insufficient, and a level of proof needed to obtain permission to launch the wiretaps that investigators charge is tantamount to evidence needed for a conviction.

"Today we violated the privacy of many 'ndranghetisti," Grasso quipped.

A top drug gang enforcer says he ordered the killing of a U.S. consulate worker because she helped provide visas to a rival gang in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, federal police said Friday.

Jesus Ernesto Chavez, whose arrest was announced on Friday, leads a band of hit men for a street gang tied to the Juarez cartel, said Ramon Pequeno, the head of anti-narcotics for the Federal Police.

Pequeno said Chavez ordered the March 13 attack that killed U.S. consulate employee Lesley Enriquez and her husband as they drove through the violent city toward a border crossing to the U.S. Pequeno said Chavez told police that Enriquez was targeted because she helped provide visas to a rival gang.

The suggestion that drug gangs may have infiltrated the U.S. diplomatic mission runs counter to previous statements by U.S. Embassy officials that Enriquez was never in a position to provide visas and worked in a section that provides basic services to U.S. citizens in Mexico.

Officials with the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City declined to comment. At the U.S. Justice Department in Washington, department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said that "U.S. law enforcement continues to work closely with our Mexican counterparts to bring to justice individuals involved in these murders."

The attack on Enriquez -- within view of the Texas border -- and a nearly simultaneous attack that killed the husband of a Mexican employee of the consulate raised concerns that Americans and U.S. government personnel were being caught up in drug-related violence.

Enriquez was four months pregnant when she and husband Arthur H. Redelfs, were killed by gunmen who opened fire on their vehicle after the couple left a children's birthday party. Their 7-month-old daughter was found wailing in the back seat.

Jorge Alberto Salcido, the husband of a Mexican employee of the consulate, also was killed by gunmen after leaving the same event in a separate vehicle.

Chavez told police that gunmen opened fire on Salcido because the two cars were the same color and the hit men did not know which one Enriquez was in, Pequeno said.

Investigators also have looked at whether Redelfs may have been targeted because of his work at an El Paso County Jail that holds several members of the Barrio Azteca, believed to be responsible in the attacks.

In March, U.S. federal, state and local law enforcement officers swept through El Paso, picking up suspected members of the gang in an effort to find new leads in the killings.

A suspect detained in Mexico shortly after the shooting confessed to acting as a lookout as the Azteca gang supposedly hunted down Redelfs, but he was never charged and was released without explanation.

Officials also have speculated that both attacks could have been a case of mistaken identity.

Pequeno said Chavez belongs to Barrio Azteca, which works for the Juarez cartel on both sides of the border.

The Juarez cartel's turf war against the Sinaloa cartel has made Ciudad Juarez one of the deadliest cities in the world. More than 2,600 people were killed last year in the city of 1.3 million people across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Mexican police say Chavez also confessed to participating in the Jan. 31 killing of 15 youths at a party that was mistaken as a gathering of drug-gang rivals. That massacre fueled outrage over innocents killed since President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out offensive against drug gangs in 2006. More than 23,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug related violence since then.

Mexico's central intelligence database says the 41-year-old suspect served five years in a Louisiana prison on drug distribution charges. Chavez was detained in Mexico in 2008 by the Mexican army on drug trafficking allegations and released, only to be promoted within the Azteca gang, Federal Police said.

Chavez was arrested along with five suspected gang associates who are accused of carrying out killings or providing support. Six assault rifles, a sub-machinegun and ammunition were seized.

Also on Friday, Mexican officials were investigating a gun battle between rival drug and migrant trafficking gangs near Mexico's border with Arizona that left 21 people dead and at least six others wounded.

Sonora state prosecutors say the fire fight on Thursday took place in a sparsely populated area about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the Arizona border, near the city of Nogales. The area is considered a prime corridor for migrant and drug smuggling. All of the victims were believed to be members of the gangs.

Gangs often fight for control of trafficking routes, abducting migrants from each other.

Gang violence near the Arizona border has led to calls from officials in the U.S. state for greater control of the border and is one reason given for a controversial law passed in April requiring Arizona police to ask people about their immigration status in certain situations.

 

Mexican gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre was ambushed and killed along with two campaign aides and at least one bodyguard early Monday in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas.

A leading Mexican gubernatorial candidate was killed early Monday in a state bordering Texas, in the highest-level assassination of a politician here since President Felipe Calderón declared war on drug cartels in 2006.

The killing of Rodolfo Torre, who was seen as a shoo-in for governor in Tamaulipas, represents an escalation of the drug traffickers' war against the Mexican state.

"This is an attack not only against one citizen, but against all society; an attack not just on one politician, but against all politicians and our political institutions," Mr. Calderón said in a televised address.

Mr. Torre, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed Mexico until 2000, and at least three others were killed when his campaign convoy was ambushed by gunmen on a rural highway in Tamaulipas state.

The candidate, his chief of staff, campaign chief and at least one bodyguard died, officials said. Televised images showed several bodies, covered in white sheets, laid out on the pavement near the candidate's convoy of bullet-riddled SUV's. Mr. Torre and the others are believed to have fled their cars during the attack, but didn't get far.

Mr. Torre, a 46-year-old former doctor and father of three, was leading opinion polls by an average of 20 percentage points for elections on July 4. Twelve of Mexico's 30 states are due to elect new governors and mayors on Sunday.

Although lower-level politicians have been killed by drug gangs, the killing of a gubernatorial candidate is a sign that cartels are increasingly willing to fight back against the government.

Mexico's warring cartels have killed 23,000 people since President Calderón took power in December 2006 and sent some 45,000 army troops and federal police to a handful of states to take on drug gangs.

The assassination was seen by many as evidence that Mexico could be going down the same road as Colombia, where drug cartels challenged the state through bombings and assassinations during the 1980s and 1990s in order to get the government to back off. Such a development would increase political instability in a nation of 105 million that shares a 2,000-mile border with the U.S. and is a top trade partner.

"This is a direct challenge to the Mexican state," said Ardelio Vargas, a PRI deputy and head of the national defense committee in Mexico's lower house. "This is an armed group trying to tell Mexicans who we can and can't elect." Mexico's leading political parties vowed to go ahead with Sunday's vote. There was no word of a replacement candidate for the PRI.

The attack was Mexico's highest-profile political assassination since 1994, when Mexico was rocked by two killings, including that of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio by a lone gunman. The killings weren't believed to be the work of drug cartels.

Officials said they had no clear idea why Mr. Torre was targeted. Speculation by analysts and politicians centered on three theories: Mr. Torre was an honest politician who posed a threat to drug gangs; Mr. Torre had struck a deal to protect one gang and was killed by a rival gang angry at being cut out; or a cartel killed him just to make life more difficult for a rival gang that controls turf in the state.

Until now, the cartels have mostly been killing each other as they battle for control of lucrative smuggling routes to send drugs to the U.S., the world's biggest market for illegal drugs. Tamaulipas, for instance, sits across the border from Texas and has three busy border crossings—Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, and Matamoros—where cartels can slip drugs across undetected.

But in recent months, several cartels have made it increasingly clear they won't consider the government itself off-limits. Under pressure from tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police sent in by Mr. Calderón, cartels have launched a greater number of attacks against soldiers, police, and even politicians. They have also threatened and killed reporters in several states, gagging much of the local press.

This year's state elections have proved particularly bloody. Last month, gunmen burst into a house owned by mayoral candidate José Mario Guajardo Varela of Mr. Calderón's National Action Party (PAN) in Valle Hermoso, Tamaulipas, killing Mr. Guajardo, his son and an employee. Earlier this month, bombs were thrown into the offices of the PAN and Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

In many of Tamaulipas's smaller cities, the PAN is asking of its candidates not to campaign to avoid being exposed to possible attacks. The PAN's gubernatorial candidate, José Julian Sacramento, said he pulled his wife and daughter off the campaign trail for fear of their safety

Mr. Sacramento mourned the killing of his rival. "He was my friend," he told Televisa network. "We had agreed to have a clean campaign and we were both focusing on the issues rather than personal attacks."

Organized crime hasn't only affected campaigns in the north. On May 25, the mayor of Cancún and PRD candidate for governor in Quintana Roo state, Gregorio Sanchez, was arrested on charges of money laundering and conspiring to traffic drugs. Mexican authorities said he had ties to the Los Zetas cartel, which operates around Cancún. Mr. Sanchez denies the charges.

The assassination of Mr. Torre added a deviation from the violence—which until Monday had targeted parties opposing the PRI.

During the party's long rule over Mexico, the PRI was known for a comfortable relationship with crime organizations, cutting political deals and carving out territory for drug traffickers. After Mexico's transition to democracy, the PRI took a less-tolerant stance to crime, but still appeared to be a more welcome alternative to drug cartels than Mr. Calderon's PAN.

But the dynamic in states dominated by PRI, such as Tamaulipas, has changed due to shifting alliances in the drug underworld. Two erstwhile allies, the Gulf and Zetas cartels, have fought a bloody turf battle this year for control of Reynosa. Meanwhile, the Sinaloa Cartel, run by kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, has also tried to make headway in the state.

As a result, old alliances have fallen and politicians are stuck in the middle. "Now you don't have a single cartel running the state," says George W. Grayson, a drugs expert and professor at the College of William and Mary.

Some say the violence threatens to erode Mexico's democracy in northern states. "The building of a political culture in which people resist having their vote taken away is very fragile in the north," says Dan Lund, a pollster with Mexico City-based The Mund Group. "Now it's been taken hostage by organized crime."

Via:CNN

He has relatives across the border, but he hasn't been to family gatherings in Mexico for three years. It's too risky -- an American police officer fetches a high price for cartel kidnappings.

"I've always tried to be careful," he says. "I never underestimate the cartels in Mexico. I take it very serious. I keep a low profile."

The cartel hit men are ruthless and he says some were trained by U.S. Special Forces to help Mexico fight the drug war, until they went to the other side. "That is what we're up against."

The recent death threats -- the first ever by Mexican cartels on the police here -- came after two recent busts by off-duty officers. In the first case, two officers were riding horseback when they intercepted a van full of marijuana.

A few days later, the same officers were roping cattle with a crowd of cowboys when they spotted a vehicle with bundles of pot being tossed into the trunk and backseat. The off-duty officers detained two men and called in support. "That was gutsy," says Morales.

The busts netted about $600,000 in marijuana -- relatively small potatoes in the underworld of drug trafficking.

Yet the cartels responded swiftly with a message for Nogales police: When you're not in uniform, you better look the other way or you'll be targeted. The message was relayed to police through an informant.

"They named the Nogales police department officers that were in that area off duty," says police chief Jeffrey Kirkham. "They are not happy and they are desperate to get that across."

"We're not going to be intimidated," adds Kirkham, the police chief for the last six months. "We're going to continue with our operations. In fact, we're going to step up our operations."

Nogales, population 24,000, is the largest border town in this region. Its downtown is a vibrant community with a Latino feel. Mexican and American flags hang outside storefronts. A quaint plaza is filled with children and parents alike. Outside of town, homes are built just a few feet from the fence dividing the two nations. Mexican neighbors live directly on the other side.

And while the region is a major drug corridor, Nogales has an extremely low crime rate. There has only been one murder in the last three years. By contrast, the police chief says, just across the border there have already been 126 drug-related murders this year.

Police say the cartels are being squeezed at the border and the drug lords are angry their profits are being cut into. Already more than $10 million in drugs have been confiscated in Santa Cruz County this year. And last year, the town of Nogales captured headlines when U.S. Border Patrol agents found a sophisticated drug-smuggling tunnel that went under the border fence.

The 60-member Nogales police force has now been told to keep weapons on them at all times. They're even encouraged to wear body armor when off duty. The officers remain in constant communication so their whereabouts are known.

"This is the first time Nogales police officers have ever been threatened by anyone in drug trafficking," says chief Kirkham. "I take a death threat any time against a police officer -- locally, federally or state -- as very serious."

At one point, while Morales is speaking with CNN, he turns down his radio for a few minutes. The department issues an all-points bulletin for him.

"It's very dangerous. You have to be very careful," he says.

The lifelong resident of Nogales then climbs back into his police car. Dust kicks up along the barren road. The patrols never stop.

Via:CNN

Alleged drug kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke was extradited Thursday from Jamaica to the United States, where he is to face drug and weapons charges.

His extradition occurred two days after he was taken into custody in Jamaica and several hours after he had waived his right to an extradition hearing in Jamaica. Coke arrived at about 7 p.m. at White Plains-Westchester County Airport outside New York City.

As a phalanx of armed Drug Enforcement Administration agents and U.S. marshals paraded him in front of about a dozen reporters to a silver SUV outside the terminal, Coke -- dressed in a blue open-necked shirt and black pants, his hands cuffed behind his back -- appeared subdued, a smirk on his face.

"I love the people of Jamaica," he said in response to a question from a Jamaican reporter.

A DEA agent said he was to be taken to New York City and arraigned Friday in federal court in Manhattan.

Prior to his departure from Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, he said in a statement that he had made the decision to waive his right to an extradition hearing of his own free will, and did so "even though I am of the belief that my case would have been successfully argued in the courts of Jamaica."

According to a superseding indictment filed in Manhattan federal court, Coke has led a criminal organization known as the "Shower Posse" since the early 1990s, with members in the United States, Jamaica and other countries.

"At Coke's direction and under his protection, members of his criminal organization sold marijuana and crack cocaine in the New York area and elsewhere, and sent the narcotics proceeds back to Coke and his co-conspirators," the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said in a statement.

"Coke and his co-conspirators also armed their organization with illegally trafficked firearms," the statement said.

Coke, 40, is charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana and conspiracy to illegally traffic in firearms. If convicted on the narcotics charge, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison, as well as a fine of up to $4 million.

He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison on the firearms trafficking charge and a fine of up to $250,000.

Coke was arrested on Tuesday when Jamaican police recognized him at a checkpoint.

Last month's failed attempt to arrest Coke sparked four days of gunbattles between security forces and his supporters in Kingston that left 76 people dead.

Coke, who is also known as "President," "Shortman" and "General," said he was "deeply upset and saddened by the unnecessary loss of lives" and said the deaths "could have been avoided."

"Everyone, the whole country, has been adversely affected by the process that has surrounded my extradition and I hope that my action today will go some way towards healing all who have suffered and will be of benefit to the community of Tivoli Gardens," a neighborhood where violence erupted, he said.

He said his decision to face charges in the United States was made in "the best interest of my family, community of Western Kingston and in particular the people of Tivoli Gardens and above all Jamaica."

He was leaving his country with "a heavy heart" and is "fully confident that in due course I will be vindicated."

"Pray for me and God bless Jamaica," he said.

A Jamaican opposition member, Peter Phillips, noted that since Tuesday's arrest there had been little unrest in Coke strongholds -- the neighborhoods of West Kingston and Tivoli Gardens.

The member of parliament and former national security minister attributed the calm to the fact that the government had declared a state of emergency and troops were in the streets.

But the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert for U.S. citizens planning to visit Jamaica, updating one that had been issued June 15.

"U.S. citizens are urged to exercise heightened security awareness and maintain a low profile," it said.

Phillips called for the appointment of an investigative commission to probe whether the ruling Labor Party may have tried to "prevent and frustrate the extradition request."

Jamaicans deserve to "understand the activities that took place, and the apparent conduct of members of government on the political and the administrative side," Phillips said. "We need to know if there was an attempt to obstruct justice on behalf of the government."

Newspaper polls suggest most Jamaicans believe the government mishandled the extradition request, he said.

"There are still questions left to be answered," he said. "We need a commission to look at all dimensions of this."

Coke has maintained a heroic reputation in the Kingston slums, with some people comparing him to Robin Hood, Jesus and one-time Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar.

His popularity stemmed from his community efforts, including handing out food, sending children to school and building medical centers. But drug enforcement officials say he deserves to be classified as one of the world's most dangerous drug lords.