NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS
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Foreign News Report
The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.
(Note: the following item, though not news originating from Mexico, is reported because of its degree of relevance. The item received wide coverage throughout Mexico today but originated with the paper below.)
El Universal (Mexico City) 7/17/08
– This paper accessed “restricted circulation” reports of the DEA which show that the Sinaloa and Gulf narcotraffic cartels have contacted extremist groups in Iran to send “elite” thugs, mainly ex-military, to that country to receive training in weapons and explosives and that these contacts go back to 2005. Reportedly, they travel to Iran via flights from Venezuela. In Iran, the Revolutionary Guard furnishes advanced training in command, control, rockets, automatic weapons, sniper rifles and explosives.
The Juarez cartel reportedly gets its training from Colombia’s FARC. Further, that some terrorist group members have married Mexican women and have changed their Arabic names to Hispanic ones which has allowed them to enter the United States.
– In Sinaloa, two car bombs were turned over to the “PGR” (Mex. Dep’t. of Justice) by the army. One had three gas cylinders of ten kilos each; the other had two gallons of gasoline.
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Cuarto Poder (Tuxtla, Chiapas) 7/17/08
The “PGR” disclosed that narcotraffic has caused the death of four thousand 313 persons in the country during the last nineteen months up to June 5 of this year. (Note: this corresponds to the time since Pres. Calderon took office, 12/1/06. The June 5 date is because of the timing of the particular request for this information.)
The figure for 2007 was 2,712 deaths, while from January 1st to June 5 of this year it reaches 1,529.
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El Diario de Coahuila (Saltillo, Coahuila) 7/17/08 ( plus also in a good number of other papers )
Thanks to “national and international intelligence information” the Mexican navy was able for the first time in history to intercept a mini-submarine in Mexican waters; the craft was first detected sailing north some 120 kms. S.W. of Salina Cruz, Oaxaca. The craft, 10 meters long by 2.5 meters wide, was boarded in a surprise maneuver when it surfaced. The crew, believed to be Colombians, was arrested.
( Reports of the cocaine being transported vary from one ton, to four, to seven, depending on which paper you read )
The craft is being taken to Santa Cruz Huatulco and is expected to arrive there early Friday morning.
(The area involved is to the west of the southern end of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrow neck of land in S.E. Mexico)
(Note: the leftist Mexico City paper La Jornada was the only one that omitted the international intelligence information which brought about the interception and seizure. Instead, it reported on a praiseful declaration to the Mexican navy by a Mexican congressman)
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El Financiero (Mexico City) 7/17/08
Three armed kidnappers who at first claimed to be “ministerial” police were arrested by local police in Tultepec. With them they also found a kidnap victim, a man from the Dominican Republic. Shortly afterward, the local chief of police started to receive threatening calls on his cellular phone and soon after that some twenty armed men mounted a gunfire assault on the police facility and rescued the three kidnappers. Three police officers were wounded in the attack; now Mex. army personnel are guarding the facility. (Tultepec, state of Mexico, is some 18 mi. no. of Mexico City)
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El Imparcial (Hermosillo, Sonora) 7/17/08
A survey by Mexico’s Dep’t. of Public Education shows that in Sonora, Baja Calif. and the Distrito Federal half of secondary school students have seen their schoolmates carrying weapons in school. The nationwide survey of more than 13 thousand secondary school students also found that in Mexico City half of them have seen some type of drug being sold around the classrooms. Violence and criminality have also fostered gang membership, which reaches 91.4% in the Distrito Federal and 80% in Baja Calif. & Nayarit.
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El Informador (Guadalajara, Jalisco) 7/17/08
A new wave of violence in Culiacan, Navolato and Guasave caused the deaths of six persons in less than 20 hours in the state of Sinaloa. The victim in Guasave was forcibly taken away from his home by black clad, hooded men. He was later found elsewhere, shot to death.
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a.m. (Leon, Guanajuato) 7/17/08
The body of a man was found dumped by the side of the road near El Paraiso, Guanajuato. His hands and feet were tied with “grey industrial tape” and he was gagged with the same. One of his arms was burned and his head was inside a plastic bag. (Note: there were several other reports of homicide victims in other publications around the country.)
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La Voz de la Frontera (Mexicali, Baja Calif.) 7/17/08
In Calexico, Border Patrol Agents responded with pepper gas grenades after a group of smugglers kept throwing rocks at them from Mexicali. The most affected turned out to be the Aguilar family, who live at #1731 Avenida Internacional, and who had one of the gas grenades land in front of their home. One of the grenades failed to activate and was later retrieved by Mex. army personnel. The rock throwing “polleros” avoided arrest by Mexicali police.
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Novedades de Quintana Roo (Cancun, Q.R.) 7/17/08
The offices of the Mex. Immigr. Dep’t. (“INM”) were broken into and robbed Wednesday morning. Items taken : an unknown quantity of blank FM2 & FM3 forms, which are issued by the “INM” and used as evidence of legal status by foreigners in Mexico. (Reports in other papers mentioned that “official stamps” had also been taken.)
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– end of report –
M3 Report 