Videotape tells of mass slayings

[Angelhair]

MEXICO CITY - It was the dead men who did the talking.

And with their videotaped confession, the mystery may have been solved of what happened to 20 men who disappeared after going on vacation in Acapulco and being hauled away by gunmen.

Under heavy military guard, forensic specialists have extracted 18 bodies from a mass grave in a coconut grove south of Acapulco after the videotape popped up on YouTube. In the grainy tape, two beaten, bruised men confess to killing the group of 20 and reveal where they are buried.

On Thursday, investigators expanded the search area to about 2.5 acres.

Alerted separately by an anonymous telephone tip, police initially on Tuesday found two corpses believed to be of the men who appear in the video. A note attached to their bodies attributed the slayings to one of the drug-trafficking gangs working in the area, and again pinpointed the burial site of the other victims. The 6-by-12-foot clandestine grave was found alongside the two dead men, and digging began Wednesday.

Relatives of the missing 20, from the western state of Michoacan, will travel to the Acapulco area to attempt to identify the bodies, most found with their hands bound, said David Sotelo, prosecutor for the neighboring state of Guerrero.

Videotape tells of mass slayings


And the killings continue and continue.........

 

[waltky]

Not good for the tourista industry...

Death, Acapulco-style
March 28, 2011 | From the outside, it looks like a small warehouse. But approach the building, and the smell of death is unmistakable.

The Acapulco morgue is located inside a government compound belonging to the Guerrero state Department of Health, not far from the main tourist area. Heavily-armed guards at the entrance are not welcoming, but that's not the case with Dr. Keynes García Leguízamo, the morgue's director. "You'll get used to the smell in no time," says García, who has been in charge for about a year. García, 28, is a surgeon specializing in forensic medicine. In the morgue area where he and his team of eight forensic doctors carry out autopsies, he talks about the gruesome new realities of his job. A couple of years ago, most bodies brought to the morgue showed injuries including gunshot wounds, severe trauma or stabbings, says Garcia. "We're still getting plenty of those, but we're now getting bodies that have been dismembered or beheaded."

Last November Garcia and his team processed 18 badly decomposed bodies found in a shallow grave near Acapulco. The victims showed signs of execution. Authorities said at the beginning that they were all tourists from the neighboring state of Michoacan, but the motive has yet to be established. In January, the morgue's task was to identify 15 headless bodies dumped outside a shopping mall. The victims, all men aged 25 to 30, were found near burning vehicles. The shopping mall, known as Plaza Comercial Senderos, is not an area frequented by tourists, but it's not far from the main tourist strip. Sadly, García says, dismembered bodies are no longer rare. It is not uncommon for bodies to arrive "missing fingers, hands, cut up at the forearm, the shoulder, the head, ears or even those whose skin has been completely ripped off," says García.

No one foresaw this level of violence and cruelty stemming from a bloody turf war between drug cartels. Four dissection tables were enough just a couple of years ago, but not anymore. Morgue personnel just finished installing a new refrigeration unit. It has room for up to 30 bodies, doubling the previous capacity. At the end of 2010 it became alarmingly clear that the morgue needed to expand. The year ended with 1,010 violent deaths, marking a steady increase. There were 843 deaths in 2009 and 724 in 2008. So far this year the morgue has processed the bodies of more than 300 people.

Morgue personnel say that one of the hardest things for them is to see people arriving daily in search of relatives or loved ones. The morgue's main door is plastered with pictures of missing people. Some bring flyers with handwritten descriptions of the people they're looking for. One of the handwritten fliers was posted by the family of 43-year-old Miguel Angel de Anda Solís, who went missing on January 4. Garcia and his team sometimes have to reconstruct the faces of some victims when there are no tattoos, marks or other ways of identifying the bodies. A father of two small boys, who lives in the area puts it this way: "It's very difficult for me to see this violence, all of this, what awaits your children as they grow up. It's very difficult to understand the violence that these people generate."

Source

 

[waltky]

Demonstrations against cartel violence...

Mexicans march against violence
6 April 2011 - Protest marches have been held in more than 20 cities across Mexico against the drug-related violence sweeping the country.

Thousands of people joined the protest in the main square in Mexico City, chanting "no more blood". Some called for President Felipe Calderon to resign, saying his strategy had exacerbated the bloodshed. As the marches got under way, at least 59 bodies were found in a mass grave in Tamaulipas state. Around 35,000 Mexicans have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon began deploying the army to fight the the cartels in December 2006.

The demonstrations were inspired by the poet and journalist Javier Sicilia, whose son was killed last week. Mr Sicilia has blamed Mexican politicians as well as criminal gangs for the violence, saying they have "torn apart the fabric of the nation". Small demonstrations were also held in New York, Buenos Aires, Paris, Madrid and other cities around the world.

Pain

Javier Sicilia called for the protests after his 24-year-old son, Juan Francisco, was found dead inside a car along with six other people in the city of Cuernavaca last week. In an open letter to Mexico's politicians and criminals published in Proceso, he said President Calderon's campaign against the drugs gangs was "badly planned, badly carried out and badly led".

"The citizenry has lost confidence in its governors, its police, its army, and is afraid and in pain". Mr Sicilia also condemned the criminals as "subhuman, demonic and imbecilic". "We have had it up to here with your violence, your loss of honour, your cruelty and senselessness," he wrote. Before joining the demonstrations, Mr Sicilia met President Calderon in Mexico City. He said the president offered his condolences and briefed him on efforts to find his son's killers.

Mass grave

 

[waltky]

More Mexican drug cartel genocide...

Mass grave found in Durango, Mexico
21 April 2011 - Mexican officials say they have found another mass grave in the northern state of Durango. Police discovered 30 bodies in a residential area of Durango city.

The discovery comes as forensic experts continued to try and identify the remains of 145 people buried in mass graves in northern Tamaulipas. The northern states are at the centre of a violent battle between rival drug gangs for control of lucrative smuggling routes to the United States. Durango state prosecutor Ramiro Ortiz Aguirre said the search for more bodies was continuing.

He said the morgue was running out of space to store the bodies and asked for help providing extra refrigerated space. Forensic experts said the bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition. Durango is in an area where the powerful Sinaloa drugs cartel operates.

The cartel is led by Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, the most wanted man in Mexico. Almost 37,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels shortly after he came into office in December 2006.

BBC News - Mass grave found in Durango, Mexico

 

[waltky]

Dey gettin' savager an' savager...

Mass graves in Mexico reveal new levels of savagery
Sunday, April 24,`11 —  At the largest mass grave site ever found in Mexico, where 177 bodies have been found, authorities say they have little evidence that the dead were killed with a gun.

At the largest mass grave site ever found in Mexico, where 177 bodies have been pulled from deep pits, authorities say they have recovered few bullet casings and little evidence that the dead were killed with a gun. Instead, most died of blunt force trauma to the head, and a sledgehammer found at the crime scene this month is believed to have been used in the executions, according to Mexican investigators and state officials. The search continued Sunday, with state officials warning they expect the count to rise. They say as many as 122 of the victims were passengers dragged off buses at drug cartel roadblocks on the major highway to the United States.

The mass killings of civilians at isolated ranches 90 minutes south of the Texas border mark a new level of barbarity in Mexico’s four-year U.S.-backed drug war. As forensic teams and Mexican marines dig through deeper and darker layers here, the buried secrets in San Fernando are challenging President Felipe Calderon’s assertions that his government is winning the war and is in control of Mexico’s cities and roads. In the past four years, more than 35,000 people have been killed and thousands more have simply disappeared, since Calderon sent the military to battle Mexican organized crime with $1.6 billion in U.S. support. U.S. officials in Mexico worry that criminal gangs are taking over sections of the vital border region not by overwhelming firepower but sheer terror.

On Thursday, cartel gunmen sacked the city of Miguel Aleman, across the river from Roma, Texas, tossing grenades and burning down three car dealerships, an auto parts outlet, a furniture store and a gas station. Three buses were strafed with gunfire Saturday in separate attacks, wounding three people. The U.S. State Department issued new warnings Friday advising Americans to defer nonessential travel to the entire border state of Tamaulipas and large swaths of Mexico because of the threat of armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping and murder by organized crime. In the red dirt tombs of San Fernando, almost all the bodies were stripped of identification, meaning no licenses, bus ticket stubs or photographs of loved ones, according to interviews with local and state officials, making the job of notifying next of kin especially difficult.

Forensic photographs shown to The Washington Post depict mummified bodies caked in dirt and badly decomposed, with signs of extreme cranial trauma. In the largest two graves, holding 43 and 45 bodies, the corpses were piled atop one another in a 10-foot-deep pit dug by a backhoe, that criminals filled over in the past four months. The red nail polish on a young victim’s toe stands out in one photograph, along with her XS-size undergarments. Officials in Tamaulipas say they have found 34 grave sites scattered in a wide arc around this farming town of 60,000, where Mexican marines last week established a military camp for ground and helicopter patrols.

MORE

 

[waltky]

More bodies found...

11 Bodies Found In Mass Grave, Total Now 121
4 May`11 — Investigators in the northern Mexico state of Durango said they found the remains of 10 men and one woman in mass graves in the state capital Wednesday, bringing the total of bodies recovered there to 121.

The Durango state prosecutors' office said in a statement that the remains were uncovered by military personnel who have been excavating at about four sites in the city, which is also known as Durango. The search has been under way for about a month at pits where drug gangs are believed to have buried victims. The Durango graves are the second such discovery in a month. A total of 183 bodies have been unearthed in 40 pits in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas.

Mass graves have become an increasingly common discovery in Mexico, with drug cartels using the sites to dispose of enemies and other victims amid increased fighting among rival gangs. More than 34,600 people have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of federal security forces four years ago to fight traffickers. Authorities in Durango state say the discovery of mass graves there has not brought out many relatives of missing people, perhaps because families are too frightened to come forward.

As Mexicans braced for demonstrations scheduled for the weekend to protest ongoing violence associated with the anti-drug offensive, Calderon issued an impassioned appeal in a televised speech Wednesday for Mexicans to stick with fight, though he acknowledged it will take time. "Backing off from the fight is not an option," Calderon said. "If we retreat, we are going to allow gangs of criminals to roam the streets of Mexico, attacking people with no one to stop them."

Calderon criticized "those who, with good intentions or bad, are trying to stop the government from acting." He said "nobody likes violence," but warned that peace "is not a goal that will be achieved with false solutions." He said Mexico needed to reform its police forces and judicial system to be able to fight the drug cartels. "These are changes that will take time in order to be carried out, but it is worth the effort, because it is the only solid and lasting basis for the future."

Also Wednesday in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, state police said a man's dismembered body was found in four plastic bags at a shopping mall in the state capital, Chilpancingo. Police found a handwritten message of the kind frequently left by drug cartels; in keeping with policy, the contents of the message were not revealed.

Source

 

[editec]

Mexicans squabbling over who gets to take advantage of STUPID AMERICAN ANTIDRUGS LAWS.

One thing I do not understand though...

They killed "20 men who disappeared after going on vacation in Acapulco"?

Why?

We'll probably never know, but that doesn't really make sense if we assume these men were victims of the war to control the Mexican drug trade.

 

[BolshevikHunter]

That's it. I am going to Hawaii to brave the radiation instead. We were gonna go down to Cancun in July, but I am not bringing my family down there right now. What a shame that the mostly good people of Mexico cannot capitalize off of tourist dollars that really help their people and economy. ~BH

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Hang `em...

Mexican police arrest suspect tied to migrant massacre
June 18, 2011 -- Edgar Huerta was arrested Thursday with his girlfriend
Authorities say he confessed to directing the kidnappings of more than 70 migrants last year; He reportedly told authorities he had killed 10 people; Huerta is accused of belonging to the Zetas drug cartel

Federal police have arrested a man they believe is responsible for coordinating the kidnappings of more than 70 migrants later found dead in northern Mexico last year, authorities said Friday. Edgar Huerta, 22, was arrested with his girlfriend Thursday in the central northern state of Zacatecas. Huerta told authorities he was responsible for the August abductions of more than 70 undocumented immigrants, later found dead in the northern border state of Tamaulipas, authorities said after his arrest. He also reportedly told officials that he had killed 10 people.

Violence is common in Tamaulipas, where authorities are battling rival drug cartels. The Gulf cartel and the Zetas cartel used to work together, but split more than a year ago and are now fighting for control of lucrative smuggling routes into the United States. Huerta is accused of running with the Zetas and reportedly told authorities that he had directed the kidnappings of passengers on at least six buses near San Fernando, a town in Tamaulipas. The passengers were then allegedly taken to area safe houses and tortured to see whether they belonged to the rival Gulf cartel. The growing reach of the cartels has increased the risk for migrants crossing through Mexico to get to the United States, Mexico's National Commission for Human Rights has said. An investigation by the commission showed that 9,758 migrants were abducted from September 2008 to February 2009, or about 1,600 per month.

The bodies of 72 migrants from Central and South America were discovered at a ranch near San Fernando in August. In the same area, authorities found mass graves this year, containing the remains of nearly 200 people. They began finding the graves while investigating the kidnapping of passengers from a bus in late March. The Zetas have been blamed for the mass graves and for the deaths of the 72 migrants found last year. Nationwide, there have been some 35,000 drug-related deaths since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on the cartels in December 2006, the Mexican government says.

Source

See also:

Mexico Arrests Alleged Drug Cartel Boss
June 17, 2011 - Mexican federal police have arrested the man accused of leading the enforcement unit of the Juarez drug cartel.

They say Marco Guzman, nicknamed "El Brad Pitt," was taken into custody on Wednesday in Chihuahua state.

Police say he was involved in a 2010 car bomb attack that killed a police official and two of his bodyguards. They say he also took part in a killing that was recorded and posted on the Internet.

Authorities had offered a reward for information leading to Guzman's arrest.

Source

 

[waltky]

Mexico Journalist Found Dead In His Trunk...

Mexico violence: Police find body of journalist in car
May 14, 2012 - Police on Sunday found the body of Rene Orta Salgado in the trunk of his car in the central state of Morelos.

Another journalist has been killed in Mexico, this time in the central state of Morelos. Police on Sunday found the body of Rene Orta Salgado in the trunk of his car in a suburb of Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos, located 90 kilometers (55 miles) from Mexico City, Spanish news agency EFE reported today. His face was covered with a bandana and there were no apparent gunshot wounds, El Pais newspaper reported, citing the Morelos Attorney General's office.

Orta Salgado, a former reporter for the El Sol de Cuernavaca, was reported missing by his family on Saturday. He had left the newspaper to start a group to help elect Institutional Revolutionary Party presidential candidate Enrique Peno Nieto. An autopsy is being conducted to determine the cause of death, NTN24 reported. Orta Salgado is the latest journalist to be killed in Mexico where drug-related violence has claimed the lives of more than 47,000 people since President Felipe Calderon stepped up an offensive against the drug cartels when he took office in December 2006.

At least three journalists have been killed in the eastern state of Veracruz -- described by Reporters Without Borders last year as one of the most dangerous places in the world for the media -- in recent weeks where rival drug cartels have been waging an increasingly brutal and deadly war. On Sunday, the mutilated bodies of 49 people were found dumped at the entrance to the town of San Juan in the country’s north where the hyper-violent Zetas drug cartel is fighting the powerful Sinaloa Cartel for control over smuggling routes into the United States. The Associated Press said today that authorities were struggling to identify the bodies, whose heads, hands and feet had been chopped off.

Source

See also:

Mexican official calls cartel violence 'irrational'
Mon May 14, 2012 - Interior minister: Violence is related to fighting between the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel; "We have had a series of inhuman and despicable acts," Alejandro Poire says; Poire: Mexico will not retreat from its efforts to crack down on organized crime; His comments come after 49 decapitated bodies are found in northern Mexico

The 49 decapitated bodies authorities found on a roadside in northern Mexico over the weekend were likely the result of a fierce feud between rival drug cartels, a top Mexican official said Monday. "In recent weeks, we have had a series of inhuman and despicable acts in different parts of the country that mark an irrational fight fundamentally between two existing criminal groups and their criminal allies," Mexican Interior Minister Alejandro Poire said.

There are "clear indications," he said, that a recent surge in violent acts -- including the mutilated remains found Sunday in Nuevo Leon state -- stem from a "direct conflict" between the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartels over territory and power. Poire stressed that the Mexican government would not retreat from its efforts to crack down on organized crime, which is facing increasing criticism as Mexico's presidential campaign season heats up. "I know very well that these acts worry society, but the solution is not to let our guard down," Poire said.

President Felipe Calderon, seen as the chief champion of Mexico's crime-fighting strategy, is not running for re-election. But opposition candidates have criticized his administration's approach. More than 47,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when Calderon announced plans to deploy troops in efforts to combat cartels. On Sunday, it appeared that authorities would be adding at least 49 more people to that tally, after decapitated and dismembered bodies were found along a highway in the municipality of Cadereyta Jimenez, near the industrial city of Monterrey and about 80 miles southwest of the U.S. border. A message written on a wall nearby appeared to refer to the Zetas drug cartel.

The Zetas started with deserters from the Mexican army and quickly gained a reputation for ruthless violence as the armed branch of Mexico's Gulf cartel. The partnership ended in 2010. Now, analysts say the Gulf cartel is allied with the Sinaloa cartel, one of the nation's most powerful drug-trafficking groups. Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera is widely known as Mexico's most wanted fugitive. Forbes magazine has placed him on its list of the world's most powerful people, reporting his net worth is $1 billion as of March. Authorities are still working to identify the victims whose bodies were found Sunday, Poire said.

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[waltky]

Three Generals Detained Over Cartel Ties...

3rd Mexico army general probed for cartel ties
18 May`12 — Mexico's army said it had detained a third general for questioning on Thursday, hours after a judge placed the two other officers under a form of house arrest pending an investigation for possible links to the Beltran Leyva drug cartel.

A Defense Department statement did not say specifically whether retired Gen. Ricardo Escorcia was detained in connection with same allegations pending against the other two generals, who were brought in on Tuesday. But it did note that the detention order for Escorcia's was issued "simultaneously with the two previous detentions, with the aim of having him testify in the investigations" being carried out by civilian prosecutors. Escorcia retired from active service in 2010 after reaching mandatory retirement age. He previously served as head of the military base in Cuernavaca, a city just south of the Mexican capital that has been considered Beltran Leyva territory.

The leader of the cartel, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines at an apartment complex in Cuernavaca in 2009. The marines were reportedly called in to look for the capo after the army appeared to be slow to act on U.S. intelligence indicating the drug lord's location, according to a leaked U.S. Embassy diplomatic cable from late 2009. The army said that Escorcia was detained by military personnel and turned over to the Attorney General's Office, which had no immediate comment on whether he is named in the same probe as the other two generals. The office said in a statement earlier Thursday that the other two army officers, retired Gen. Tomas Angeles Dauahare and Gen. Roberto Dawe Gonzalez, will remain under arrest at least 40 days while prosecutors strengthen their case.

The investigation against Angeles Dauahare and Dawe Gonzalez is based on a case from 2009 that includes "the testimony of several people on trial, including some soldiers," the office said. An official at the Attorney General's Office said the generals protected members of the Beltran Leyva group, which has been battling the Sinaloa cartel since 2008, when they ended an alliance. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to discuss the case. President Felipe Calderon named Angeles Dauahare as assistant defense secretary in 2006. He left the post in 2008, when he retired. He is the highest ranking military official to be linked to drug traffickers under the current administration.

Dawe Gonzalez is currently assigned to a military base in the western state of Colima. Angeles Dauahare's lawyer, Alejandro Ortega, told The Associated Press Thursday he hasn't been given access to court files or allowed to talk to his client. He said the general told his wife he is being accused of taking money from associates of Edgar Valdez Villareal, who was allegedly top hit man for Beltran Leyva. Valdez Villareal was arrested in 2010. Ortega said the general supports himself with an army pension and owns a house and an apartment. He said the general's wife also owns a house she inherited. A few senior military officers have been arrested for alleged links to traffickers during Mexico's long struggle to control the cartels.

Retired Gen. Juan Manuel Barragan Espinosa was detained in February for alleged links to organized crime and Gen. Manuel Moreno Avina and 29 soldiers who were under his command in the border town of Ojinaga, across the border from Presidio, Texas, are being tried on charges of torture, homicide, drug trafficking and other crimes. In 1997, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo was arrested when he was Mexico's drug czar. He was charged with protecting then-cocaine kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes. More than 47,000 people have been killed in drug violence since Calderon deployed thousands of soldiers to drug hotspots, according to government figures.

Source