Post by dixie56 on Mar 23, 2007 20:38:31 GMT -5
Drug cartels declare war on Mexican government
Friday 23 March 2007 03:06
The war between Mexico's drug cartels and the state intensified this week, with a death toll of nine police officers and others this week.
Prosecutors, lawyers and investigators have been targeted in the violence, and in a new twist, corpses are being delivered to the state's attorney offices with warning notes gruesomely attached.
Since year's begin, 515 people have died - on Wednesday alone, it was seven.
In his four months in office, Calderon has sent some 30,000 members of the country's security forces to the areas most affected by the drug trade, and his government has extradited four drug barons to the US, including Gulf Cartel boss Osiel Cardenas Guillen.
Late last week, security forces confiscated more than 205 million dollars in drug money and arrested seven members of a methamphetamine production gang.
Calderon called the action - which took place in Lomas de Chapultepec, one of the most expensive, best-guarded neighbourhoods in Mexico City - the "largest confiscation not only in Mexico but perhaps in the world. "
His aggressive style is in marked contrast to his predecessor Vicente Fox, who was criticized for failing to grapple with Mexico's growing and violent drug trade and mounting civil unrest.
Earlier this month, Calderon met with US President George W Bush, the leader of the country where most of the drug traffic flows. The two men stressed the need for a greater coordination in the fight against organized crime, and said they plan to launch in the coming months a regional effort that extends to Central America.
"It will be a tough fight, but we will win it," Calderon said of his campaign against the drug trade in early March.
On Wednesday, he sent a message to the drug cartels through his interior minister that he will continue the fight until his term ends in six years. The fight has become a war, which looks more and more every day like a war between the cartels and the state.
Experts doubt that the state can win.
"The war against the drug dealers only serves to take their money and their products and put them behind bars. But it won't end the drug trade in and of itself," the one-time attorney general of Colombia, Gustavo de Greiff Restrepo, told the Mexican newspaper Reforma.
He said the "proof" of his pessimism was in the 40 years of war his own country has waged against the drug trade. He called for an open international debate over legalizing drugs.
Mexican drug bosses and their organizations are incredibly rich and powerful, and they have infiltrated the state's security apparatus.
A hint at such complicity came from another voice in the region, Guatemala's Interior Minsiter Carlos Vielmann.
He recently said in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that 250 of the 1,000 police officers that were believed to be "clean" had ended up in jail for suspected murder, blackmail, kidnapping and drug dealing.
The drug lords have nearly unlimited power in the provinces of Mexico. In a northern Mexican state, two police reporters were invited to the state's attorney's office in the middle of the night. They were received not by the official, but by the local drug boss.
The reporters were told that the capos knew who they were, who their families were, and where their children went to school. Since then, no more reports have appeared in the local newspaper on the drug cartels and their crimes.
The governor of Nuevo Leon, Luis Carlos Trevi?o Berchelmann, also in northern Mexico, says he recently received several "messages" from the cartels. Two were addressed to the local prosecutor Rogelio Cerda.
The first one came with the corpse of a murder victim, pinned fast with an ice pick driven deep into the breast. The eyes of the dead man were shut with grey tape.
"Prosecutor, don't turn yourself into an idiot," the message read. "We will continue until all your children are dead. This is just the beginning. " dpa fs pr
jurnalo.com/jurnalo/storyPage.do?story_id=25023
Friday 23 March 2007 03:06
The war between Mexico's drug cartels and the state intensified this week, with a death toll of nine police officers and others this week.
Prosecutors, lawyers and investigators have been targeted in the violence, and in a new twist, corpses are being delivered to the state's attorney offices with warning notes gruesomely attached.
Since year's begin, 515 people have died - on Wednesday alone, it was seven.
In his four months in office, Calderon has sent some 30,000 members of the country's security forces to the areas most affected by the drug trade, and his government has extradited four drug barons to the US, including Gulf Cartel boss Osiel Cardenas Guillen.
Late last week, security forces confiscated more than 205 million dollars in drug money and arrested seven members of a methamphetamine production gang.
Calderon called the action - which took place in Lomas de Chapultepec, one of the most expensive, best-guarded neighbourhoods in Mexico City - the "largest confiscation not only in Mexico but perhaps in the world. "
His aggressive style is in marked contrast to his predecessor Vicente Fox, who was criticized for failing to grapple with Mexico's growing and violent drug trade and mounting civil unrest.
Earlier this month, Calderon met with US President George W Bush, the leader of the country where most of the drug traffic flows. The two men stressed the need for a greater coordination in the fight against organized crime, and said they plan to launch in the coming months a regional effort that extends to Central America.
"It will be a tough fight, but we will win it," Calderon said of his campaign against the drug trade in early March.
On Wednesday, he sent a message to the drug cartels through his interior minister that he will continue the fight until his term ends in six years. The fight has become a war, which looks more and more every day like a war between the cartels and the state.
Experts doubt that the state can win.
"The war against the drug dealers only serves to take their money and their products and put them behind bars. But it won't end the drug trade in and of itself," the one-time attorney general of Colombia, Gustavo de Greiff Restrepo, told the Mexican newspaper Reforma.
He said the "proof" of his pessimism was in the 40 years of war his own country has waged against the drug trade. He called for an open international debate over legalizing drugs.
Mexican drug bosses and their organizations are incredibly rich and powerful, and they have infiltrated the state's security apparatus.
A hint at such complicity came from another voice in the region, Guatemala's Interior Minsiter Carlos Vielmann.
He recently said in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that 250 of the 1,000 police officers that were believed to be "clean" had ended up in jail for suspected murder, blackmail, kidnapping and drug dealing.
The drug lords have nearly unlimited power in the provinces of Mexico. In a northern Mexican state, two police reporters were invited to the state's attorney's office in the middle of the night. They were received not by the official, but by the local drug boss.
The reporters were told that the capos knew who they were, who their families were, and where their children went to school. Since then, no more reports have appeared in the local newspaper on the drug cartels and their crimes.
The governor of Nuevo Leon, Luis Carlos Trevi?o Berchelmann, also in northern Mexico, says he recently received several "messages" from the cartels. Two were addressed to the local prosecutor Rogelio Cerda.
The first one came with the corpse of a murder victim, pinned fast with an ice pick driven deep into the breast. The eyes of the dead man were shut with grey tape.
"Prosecutor, don't turn yourself into an idiot," the message read. "We will continue until all your children are dead. This is just the beginning. " dpa fs pr
jurnalo.com/jurnalo/storyPage.do?story_id=25023