ATF agent's personal weapon found at Mexican beauty queen cartel crime scene

[Wehrwolfen]

ATF agent's personal weapon found at Mexican beauty queen cartel crime scene​

By: Sharyl Attkisson
19 Dec 2012


Mexican beauty queen Susana Flores Maria Gamez and four others died in a brutal gun battle between Sinaloa cartel members and the Mexican military in November. CBS News has learned that one weapon recovered from the area of the crime scene was originally purchased by federal agent George Gillett, an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) manager who was faulted by the Inspector General in Operation Fast and Furious.

Gillett was the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of ATF Phoenix when Fast and Furious started. The recovered weapon is a so-called FN Herstal pistol nicknamed a "cop-killer" because of its designation as a "weapon of choice" for Mexican drug cartels.


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Read more:
Pistol purchased by ATF agent found at alleged cartel crime scene in Mexico - Political Eye - CBS News

 

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Was she or wasn't she drug lord's moll?...

No escape from narcos for Mexican beauty queen
Feb 23,`13 -- Maria Susana Flores walked up to the microphone in a sequined black dress, showing the judges of the Sinaloa Woman beauty contest the smile and the strut she had perfected in pageants since preschool.

"Women, no matter how hard you try, you cannot change your past," the 20-year-old contestant said in a sweet, high voice. "But you can choose today what your future will be." Drums rolled as Susana left center stage and turned to pose, placing manicured hands on her tiny waist and shaking back long brown hair. The crowd whooped. The judges were dazzled by the dark-eyed beauty with the Penelope Cruz lips, and before long she was bowing her head to accept the 2012 crown.

If you had asked her that February weekend, the new Sinaloa Woman would have said the future she'd chosen was clear: a calendar of pageants as far away as China, a chance to compete for the coveted Miss Sinaloa title, and then, Miss Mexico. But Susy, as she was called, had chosen another path at the crossroads of power and beauty in a state known for drug lords and pageant queens. It was a fateful choice. In November, Susy died like a mobster's moll, carrying an AK-47 assault rifle into a spray of gunfire from Mexican soldiers. Hit below the neck, she dropped into a dirt field and bled to death, her carotid artery severed. "I swear I would have never imagined, ever in my life, that my daughter would die like this," said Maria del Carmen Gamez, Susy's devoted manager and biggest fan.

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Sinaloa, with its acres of corn and tomatoes, is the birthplace of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa cartel who is one of the wealthiest men in Mexico and one of the most-wanted men in the world. A long narrow state, it hugs the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean, though Mazatlan, its most popular resort town, has lost its luster under the violence of the drug wars. The cartel's internal battles over the international cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana trade has given the state one of Mexico's highest murder rates, while the drug business has provided its riches.

Thousands of Sinaloans are drawn wittingly or unwittingly into the narco economy, with vague titles such as "farmer" or "businessman" often serving as code for the more pedestrian jobs in the drug trade. Thousands more, from accountants to bar owners to musicians, cannot escape the reach of the drug cartels.

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Confusion over Mexico drug-lord death reports
22 Feb 2013 - Guatemalan official apologises for misunderstanding over reports that Joaquin "El Chapo" died amid clashes.

A Guatemalan official has said there was no evidence that Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, had been killed in a shootout in the rural north, calling such reports a misunderstanding. Mauricio Lopez Bonilla, interior minister, told local media on Friday that the original account was based on testimony from residents in San Valentin near the Mexican border, but that soldiers and police scanning the area found no sign of any confrontation. "I apologise if where was a misunderstanding," Lopez told the Guatemalan radio station Emisores Unidos. "It was a mix-up. We were referring to information generated from the area that there was possibly a crime scene with a dead person resembling El Chapo." Authorities mounted the search on Friday in the tropical state of Peten, an isolated area known for the transport of livestock. "As of now, we have no verification," Lopez said.

Most wanted fugitive

An Associated Press news agency photographer in the area also found no signs of shootout or victims, just a checkpoint of 12 soldiers stopping vehicles in an area considered to be held by Mexico's Zetas cartel, Guzman's biggest rivals. Guzman heads the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's most powerful international drug-trafficking network, and has been in hiding since escaping from a Mexican prison in a laundry cart in 2001. He is one of the world's most wanted fugitives, as well as one of the richest. Forbes magazine has estimated his fortune at $1 billion. Lopez said on Thursday that authorities were investigating whether Guzman was one of at least two men killed in the remote area. But the government later backtracked and said it had only received reports of a battle from local people.

Francisco Cuevas, government spokesman, first told Guatevision Television that two drug gangs had clashed in Peten, an area that has seen an increase in drug violence and that at least two men had died in the shoot-out. Peten province is an isolated area of jungle and ranches where 27 ranch workers were massacred in 2011 by the Zetas drug gang, a top rival for Guzman's Sinaloa drug cartel. Later, Cuevas told Mexico's Televisa network that authorities had not yet found a body or the scene where reports said a shoot-out took place. He never said what led officials to think that one of the dead men might be Guzman. Guzman, who has been in hiding since escaping from a Mexican prison in a laundry cart in 2001, is one of the world's most dangerous and most wanted fugitives.

He is also one of the richest: Forbes magazine has estimated his fortune at $1bn. Al Jazeera's John Hendren, reporting from Mexico City, said that the incident "is one of the more spectacular examples of initial information apparently being wrong". "In this case what we had was Guatemalan officials speaking on the record to a broad range of news organisations and confirming, first of all, that there was a shoot-out on the Guatemalan boarder with Mexico, and second of all, that they were investigating the possibility that Joaquin Guzman ... was one of the victims there," he said. "Today we're told that that in fact was not true, that those reports were based on reports to Guatemalan officials from local area people."

Confusion over Mexico drug-lord death reports - Americas - Al Jazeera English