South America Cartels
Hitman pleads guilty
SAN ANTONIO -
Investigators said Ruben 'Menace'
Reyes Jr. went to San Antonio police after his own gang tried to
kill him, admitting that he killed 16 people as part of the gang's
efforts to control the drug market here through extortion and
violence.
He was charged only in connection
to 5 killings.
(San Antonio Express-News)
MORE:
Hitman faces life in prison
TORONTO - OPP said that 13 people had been arrested as a result of a year-long investigation into the importation of drugs and weapons into Canada dubbed 'Project Monto.' (CTV)
Cartels fight over gold revenues
CARRIZALILLO - Heroin traffickers
are battling over millions of dollars paid by Canadian mining giant
Goldcorp
to a village in Mexico's southern gold belt, leading to a wave of
murders.
Residents of Carrizalillo in the
impoverished state of Guerrero say the some $3M a year in rent paid
by Goldcorp for their land, which
mine is built on, is fueling a
bloody feud between two rival cartels.
(Reuters)
EDMONTON - ALERT said that members of the La Familia gang, which has alleged ties to Mexican drug cartels and the Mara Salvatrucha gang, had been arrested in Edmonton following an ALERT investigation. (CTV) MORE: La Familia arrests in AB 4 arrested
newspaper reported that the body of Quebec City native Frederic Lavoie, 31, was found on May 12 in the town of Sabaneta. (Sun Media)
The author of a pioneering blog about Mexico's drug war (Blog del Narco) has said that she has fled the country and that her blog partner has gone missing. The young woman, using her pseudonym Lucy, said her colleague phoned her to say a single word – "run" – and then vanished, prompting her to flee to the US and then Spain. (Guardian UK)
WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama has added Belize and El Salvador to a blacklist of countries considered major producers or transit routes for illegal drugs. (BBC) PREVIOUS: US war on drugs
Farm boys from a tiny county that once depended on sugar cane have perfected an ingenious business model for selling a semi-processed form of Mexican heroin known as black tar. (LA Times)
SAN DIEGO - Federal agents in San Diego
have arrested
Edgar
Veytia,
46, the attorney general
for the Mexican state of
Nayarit
on charges that he conspired to smuggle heroin, cocaine and
methamphetamine into the US.
(Orlando Sentinel)
SANTO DOMINGO - The Dominican Republic's former top counter-narcotics official and 24 other people were arrested in connection with the theft of more than a ton of cocaine from a police storeroom. (EFE) MORE: Arrest warrants for DICAN officers
ALAMEDA
- The US Coast Guard showed off a 20 ton haul of cocaine confiscated
from sea traffickers - setting a record for the agency with $5.6B of
the drug intercepted over 12 months.
(Daily Mail)
Canadian and American authorities are concerned about Alberta Mennonites bringing Mexican cartel drugs into Canada. (CBC)
MEXICO CITY - The court cut short Rafael Caro Quintero's 40-year sentence for the 1985 killing of US Drug Enforcement agent Enrique Camarena. (BBC) Enrique Camarena Rafael Caro Quintero
VANCOUVER - Escalating Mexican cocaine cartel violence is claiming the lives of increasing numbers of ambitious Canadian mobsters, an RCMP internal report says. (Toronto Star) MORE: Cartels spread their tentacles
WASHINGTON - The DEA announced the results of “Project Below the Beltway”, a two-year series of investigations targeting the Sinaloa and Juarez Cartels and violent street gangs as part of on-going initiative against the cartels and their distribution network in America. (DEA PR)
MEXICO CITY - A senator has filed a criminal complaint against the governor of the Mexican Gulf coast state of Veracruz and two of his employees over the seizure of nearly $2M in undeclared cash on an official plane. (LAHT) MORE: Politics of Mexico PAN PRI Federal prosecutor arrested Loans arrest Coahuila
How Canucks blew a deal on blow
It looked to James Frost like a big payday was coming. The plan was simple. Buy cocaine from Colombian drug lords. Smuggle it into Canada on a yacht. (Toronto Star)
MEXICO CITY - Furious at spiraling corruption and violence, Mexican
voters unleashed a political earthquake by electing a leftist
firebrand as president and giving him a broad mandate to overthrow
the political establishment and govern for the poor.
Lopez Obrador, who campaigned on vows to transform Mexico and
oust the 'mafia of power' ruling the country, rode widespread voter
anger and discontent with the governing.
(AP)
Canada: refugee protection claims by country
Rafael Caro Quintero Kiki Camarena
Informe de victimas de homicidio .pdf (in Spanish)
Luis Fernando Sanchez Arellano
The draft report .pdf
Drug lord Guzman on Forbes list
Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen
Majority of arms comes from the US
The world's most dangerous place?
APARTADO - Police seized 12 tons of cocaine, the largest single drug seizure in the history of the country. The drugs were discovered stored underground when around 400 anti-narcotics police stormed 4 farms in a banana-growing area in the NW department of Antioquia. Police said the drugs belonged to Colombia's most-wanted man, Dario Antonio Usuga, who is the chief of the country's largest drug-trafficking gang, the Clan del Golfo. (AFP)
Nobel peace prize for Juan Manuel Santos
Treasury sanctions Colombian cartel
Gilberto & Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela
Colombia's new urban drugs war
CANAYRE - It happens about 4 times a day, right under the nose of Peru's military: A small single-engine plane drops onto a dirt airstrip in the world's No. 1 coca-growing valley, delivers a bundle of cash, picks up more than 300 kilos of cocaine and flies to Bolivia. (AP)
Arrest warrant for ex-president
PATACAMAYA - The more than 7 tons of cocaine chlorhydrate found by Bolivia's anti-drug force in a shipment of ulexite that was being exported to Honduras and then was to have been shipped to the US is valued at $379M. (EFE)
US deports 'minister for cocaine'
SAN SALVADOR - Last year in El Salvador, more than 1 person in every 1,000 was killed, a figure more typical of a country at war. (AFP)
Most violent city in the world
Nine held over Honduras massacre
Gang linked to Honduras attack
USB sticks provide look inside criminal gang
Crackdown appears to be working
RIO DE JANEIRO - In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's second largest city there were 1,202 murders in 2015. (EFE)
1964-1985 military dictatorship
Abuse 'rife' under Brazil military rule
12 shot after policeman killed
Brazil arrests 75 Rio cops for OC ties
Brazilian Crime Group Defies Police
Brazil holds Colombia ‘drug lord’
GUATEMALA CITY - The FECI began to press charges against a crime ring headed by ex-President Otto Perez Molina and ex-Vice President Roxana Baldetti suspected of stealing millions of dollars in public funds. (EFE)