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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 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.

When Mexican drug traffickers need someone killed or kidnapped, or drugs distributed in the United States, they increasingly call on American subcontractors — U.S.-based prison gangs that run criminal enterprises from behind bars, sometimes even from solitary confinement.

Prison gangs have long controlled armies of street toughs on the outside. But in interviews with The Associated Press, authorities say the gangs' activity has expanded beyond street-level drug sales to establish a business alliance with Mexican cartels.

"They'll do the dirty work that, say, the cartels, they don't want to do" in the United States. "They don't want to get involved," said a former member of Barrio Azteca, a U.S. prison gang tied to Mexico's Juarez cartel.

The partnership benefits both sides: The gangs give drug traffickers a large pool of experienced criminals and established distribution networks in the U.S. And the cartels provide the prison gangs with discounted drugs and the logistical support of top criminal organizations.

To carry on their gang activity, imprisoned gang members resort to elaborate subterfuge: using sign language, sending letters through third parties, enlisting corrupt prison officials, holding conference calls using contraband cell phones. Some even conduct business in an ancient Aztec language to foil censors.

FBI special agent Samantha Mikeska spent nearly a decade investigating the Barrio Azteca. Last year, three leaders got life sentences, but she questioned the real value of sending them back to prison.

"I think I've made them stronger," she said.

The latest annual National Drug Threat Assessment, released in February by the Justice Department, said prison gangs were operating in all 50 states and were increasing their influence over drug trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Federal authorities have documented numerous links between most of the major U.S. prison gangs and Mexican drug trafficking organizations.

For instance, federal prosecutors in San Diego charged 36 people last year in a racketeering case that connected California's infamous Mexican Mafia prison gang to the Arellano Felix drug trafficking organization in Tijuana. Gang members and associates allegedly worked in drug-trafficking, kidnapping and attempted murder for the Mexican cartel.

Baldemar Rivera ran a large Texas' prison gang called Raza Unida for years while confined in isolation, which is common for gang members.

Rivera, who is known as "the Professor" and perpetuates the name with wire-rimmed glasses and calm demeanor, said he used sign language to discuss business with a subordinate who visited him in prison. When Rivera needed to communicate with gang members in other Texas prisons, he turned to his captains — who were also imprisoned — to write to the men.

"Within three or four days, everything was known," Rivera, 50, said recently from a medium-security facility near Cuero, where he is serving a 60-year murder sentence. He says he left gang life a decade ago after finishing the state's gang-renouncement program.

Rivera was running Raza Unida in the 1990s, when prisoners often used the mail to communicate with each other and the outside world. Now they have cell phones. Authorities confiscated 1,200 phones from Texas prisons last year.

Texas inmates can no longer mail letters directly to each other, but they now use third parties. For instance, a letter sent to a girlfriend is immediately readdressed and mailed to another gang member in prison.

Inmates also hold conference calls arranged by friends on the outside. To get around mail censors, some even communicate in Nahuatl, the language of the ancient Aztecs, which is still spoken by about 1.4 million people in parts of Mexico.

Gang members learn the language from books and use it mostly in written communications. Some leaders adopt Aztec names in Nahuatl.

The use of the language "is to honor their heritage but most importantly to conceal their messages to law enforcement," said FBI special agent Armando Ramos.

Sometimes they get help from corrupt court or prison employees. A woman who worked in the federal public defender's office was convicted in El Paso of serving as a bridge between incarcerated gang members and cohorts on the outside.

In at least two recent federal cases, gang members testified about how money from the gang's outside enterprises — extortion, drug sales and other illicit activity — was routinely funneled to gang members' commissary accounts in state and federal prisons.

In a case against Texas' Mexican Mafia prison gang last year, an FBI agent testified that the gang collected at least $8,000 per week and sometimes as much as $40,000, just in San Antonio. The proceeds were sent to gang leaders in prison, where they could spend it on food, stationery and other personal items, or they could send it to family members on the outside.

"Commissary money, all that, it just comes in," said the former member of Barrio Azteca, who left the gang and is serving a 40-year murder sentence in Texas. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety in prison and after his release.

"Drugs — you don't even got to ask for that, it just flows in towards you. Visitations from girls that mess with the same people, with the group that you're in."

The contraband is smuggled in by corrupt guards, lawyers and visitors, and paid for with the revenue from the streets — a cell phone can cost $2,000. The goods are dropped at pre-arranged locations where prisoners can retrieve them while on work detail. Once 60 phones were found in an air compressor delivered for a Texas prison's workshop.

Once released, gang members are expected to report to gang leaders on the outside, attend regular gang meetings and contribute to the gang's money-making operations, usually by selling drugs or shaking down the street dealers in their assigned part of the city.

Estimates put the number of active gang members in the U.S. near 1 million. Prison gangs like the Mexican Mafia, the Texas Syndicate, Hermandad de Pistoleros Latinos, (the Brotherhood of Latino Gunmen), Raza Unida and Mexikanemi account for only about 145,000 gang members. But they control most of the local street gangs as well, particularly in southern California and south Texas.

An FBI investigation showed high-level contact between the Barrios Aztecas and the Juarez cartel, Mikeska said.

She cited recorded conversations between a Barrio Azteca captain in the U.S. and Eduardo Ravelo, who runs the Aztecas in Juarez and is known to be a close friend of the Juarez cartel's point man in that city. Ravelo is on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.

In 2005, an informant and former Barrio Azteca lieutenant testified that Ravelo told him to help find fellow gang members who had stolen from the cartel. The informant testified that later he was taken to a house in El Paso where a gang member's mouth, wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape. He was delivered to the Juarez cartel and never heard from again.

George Knox, director of the National Gang Crime Research Center in Illinois, said little formal research has been done into the ties between prison gangs and Mexican drug traffickers.

"It seems like kind of a Pandora's box that no one wants to open," he said.

Robert Walker, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent who has also worked in and consulted for state prisons, said "it's totally impossible to stop gangs inside the prison system from running outside interests."

Incarcerated gang members have 24 hours a day to devise ways to defeat guards working eight- to 10-hour shifts, Walker said. And for gang leaders who are already imprisoned, "prosecution is really meaningless when it comes to most of these cases, because they're already in there doing life sentences," he said. Each time they're prosecuted, they learn more about the investigative techniques used against them.

State prisons have become financially strapped because of the weak economy, so many officials worry that gang leaders will have even less supervision behind bars.

"They'll get away with more," Knox said.

Officials in Jamaica said Thursday that at least 71 people have died in five days of violence as government forces searched Kingston slums for an alleged drug lord.

But local human rights activists say the number may be even higher. The target of the search, Christopher "Dudus" Coke, appears to have eluded the authorities. The interior minister denied rumors that Coke had been captured or killed.

Maj. Ricardo Blackwood of the Jamaican army said soldiers are still carrying out block-by-block searches of homes in the embattled, trash-strewn slums of west Kingston, particularly in one known as Lizard Town. Significant sections of the Jamaican capital are now controlled by the military.

Under a tightly controlled tour organized by the Jamaican army, journalists were allowed to walk briefly through one part of the slum called Tivoli Gardens that had already been cleared by security forces. Blackwood stressed that journalists were free to interview residents, but only when and where his troops allowed.

Several women residents were eager to describe how security forces stormed into the neighborhood, shot up their houses and rounded up all the young men.

"They took them all. They took my 16-year-old from Monday," said Katharine Bennett, who pointed to the bullet holes in her windows and the grenade pockmarks on her neighbor's cement steps.

 

 

Tivoli Gardens residents gather outside their bullet-riddled home during a media tour organized by government authorities in Kingston on Thursday.

Bennett says the soldiers burst into every house.

"They told everybody to come outside. They started hounding us like animals. Told us to lay down on the floors. Everyone was held in that house over there, [held] on the ground," she said.

Bennett says she has no idea where her son is or even if he's all right.

The unrest began over the weekend. Residents started barricading the neighborhood when the government announced plans to arrest Coke. U.S. prosecutors accuse Coke of running a multimillion dollar drug and weapons smuggling operation.

Hundreds of Jamaican soldiers and police who stormed the area were met by burning ramparts and gunfire from the boxy tenements.

After days of intense confrontations, soldiers now dominate the streets.

The barricades at least in this part of Kingston have been bulldozed to the sides of the roadways, and there was a heavy presence of armed soldiers and police.

Despite the massive operation, police say they have only seized six weapons.

Bennett says the government's operation against Coke has been terrible. She says he is respected in the neighborhood.

"He's done a lot of things for the community," she said.

This is Coke's home turf. Since the 1970s, Kingston's slums have been divided politically into garrisons. A particular garrison supports a particular political party.

 

 Fighting in the Jamaican slum of Tivoli Gardens was set off by a U.S. extradition request for reputed Jamaican drug boss Christopher "Dudus" Coke to New York to face charges of drug trafficking and gun smuggling.

The local powerbroker — in this case, Coke — gets out the votes, and in exchange he gets to operate largely unimpeded.

But there's a growing sense that these dons have grown too powerful.

The U.S. has been clamoring for Coke's extradition, and this finally pushed the Jamaican government to go after him.

In a press conference Thursday, Minister of Information Daryl Vaz said all residents of the west Kingston slums will soon be allowed to freely come and go from their neighborhoods.

He acknowledged that there have been accusations of abuse by the security forces.

"The government of Jamaica has taken note and is very concerned about alleged reports of misconduct in operations that have taken place over the last five days," he said.

The allegations include the killing of innocent civilians.

Vaz said the Jamaican public defender's office will set up a special office in the area to gather information and complaints from citizens.

Rolling Stones legend Mick Jagger has called for U.K. government officials to legalize marijuana and other drugs on a British island, to see if it prevents violence associated with the illegal drug trade.

The death toll from the battle between Jamaican security forces and supporters of alleged drug lord Christopher Coke that erupted over the weekend reached 30 on Tuesday with no end yet in sight. But whether or not Jamaican authorities succeed in apprehending Coke, who faces extradition to the U.S., the mayhem threatens to bring down Prime Minister Bruce Golding — a shake-up that would be welcomed by many crime-weary Jamaicans.

As a front-page editorial Tuesday in the daily Jamaica Observer put it, "For a long time we have been heading for an explosion as those who have held the reins of government have given succor to criminals in their blinkered thirst for political power ... The upshot is that we now live in a society that accepts as normal the blatant disregard for the law and respect for the rights of others — a society in which it is considered good to be bad and bad to be good. It has to stop." 

The drama that led to the government declaring a state of emergency in Kingston this week started in New York City last summer, when a grand jury indicted Coke, 41, the reputed top don of Jamaica's most powerful drug-trafficking organization, the Shower Posse, for alleged cocaine distribution and arms smuggling. Coke denies the charges, but key evidence against him includes wiretapped conversations between Shower Posse members in the U.S. along with damning chatter recorded by law enforcement in Jamaica. Still, despite Jamaica's usually trouble-free extradition treaty with the U.S., Prime Minister Golding — claiming unspecified "breaches" in the gathering of the U.S. wiretap evidence — balked at arresting Coke and handing him over.

Golding, in fact, has acknowledged approving the idea of contacting a U.S. law firm to lobby the Obama Administration to drop the Coke extradition request. Golding says he only authorized his Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), not his government, to contact the firm. But earlier this month, Golding's Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Ronald Robinson resigned after admitting to contacts with U.S. attorneys that "could have been inappropriate."

With the allegations casting a scandalous light on his country, Golding finally agreed to Coke's extradition late last week. That prompted heavily armed Shower Posse members in Tivoli Gardens, their base neighborhood on Kingston's poor west side, to lash out at police and soldiers who went hunting for the don on Sunday.

Why did Golding and his ministers show such lavish concern for Coke's legal rights in the first place? David Rowe, a Jamaican-American attorney in Miami and an expert on extradition law, says the affidavits in Coke's case "clearly show that Golding did not have a valid argument" in casting doubt on the U.S. wiretap evidence. But what Coke does have, say Jamaican political observers, is a long and close relationship with the ruling, center-right JLP — one of whose most prominent Senators was until recently Coke's own attorney. 

Although the U.S. State Department has complained that "pervasive public corruption" is obstructing antidrug efforts in Jamaica, Golding and JLP leaders deny any corrupt ties to Coke. But in communities like Tivoli Gardens — which Golding represents in Parliament — Coke's nicknames include "Dudus," a Jamaican term of affection, and the "President," marking him as a populist hero to thousands of residents who regularly receive food and other gifts from his hand. Even after Coke's U.S. indictment, Golding's government continued to award his construction company, Incomparable Enterprise Ltd., millions of dollars in contracts.

And that revenue, say U.S. authorities, is a pittance compared to the money that drug trafficking earns the Shower Posse (named for the hail of bullets it's famous for showering on rivals). The gang's founder and Coke's father, Jamaican drug lord Lester "Don Dadda" Coke, died in a fire in his jail cell in 1992. His son took over, turning the Posse into a farther-reaching and more violent cartel that traffics cocaine and marijuana all along the U.S. Eastern seaboard and even to Alaska. It then buys heavy weapons in the U.S. and other countries, including AK-47 assault rifles, and ships them back to Jamaica via ports controlled by the gang.

Yet, despite its Robin Hood image in pockets like Tivoli Gardens, most Jamaicans today decry the Shower Posse's power and its role in saddling their country with one of the world's highest homicide rates. Its debasement of women is especially disturbing: in communities the Posse lords over, girls who turn 14 are often sent to lose their virginity to local Posse dons, and female gang members are forced to ferry drugs to the U.S. concealed in their genitalia.

As Jamaican authorities continue to fight off the Shower Posse this week — four of the dead so far are members of the security forces — Golding is fending off widespread calls for his resignation. He and his ministers "simply did not want [Coke] sent up" to the U.S., says Rowe, "and Golding has left the impression among many Jamaicans that it's because Coke may testify against him if he is." Such is the sordid situation in Kingston, on Jamaica's southern coast, far from the placid northern shores where U.S. tourists hang out. But unless the bond between the Posse and politicians is dissolved, the ugliness may spread even there.