Najibullah Zazi Arrested in Denver in Anti-Terrorism Investigation

DENVER (Reuters) - Federal agents on Saturday arrested a Colorado man who had been under surveillance as part of an anti-terrorism investigation that came to light in a series of New York City raids this week, a spokeswoman for his attorney said.

The suspect, Najibullah Zazi, 24, a native of Afghanistan said to work as an airport shuttle driver in Colorado, was taken into custody along with his father after three days of questioning by the FBI in Denver, said Wendy Aiello, a spokeswoman for attorney Art Folsom.
Aiello said both men were taken to a local county jail for booking.

FBI agents entered Zazi's residence in suburban Aurora, Colorado, on Wednesday afternoon with a search warrant.

The entire three-story apartment building was roped off with yellow crime-scene tape, and authorities put black screens over the building's windows to prevent onlookers from seeing inside.

A house a few miles away was likewise cordoned off later in the day for what a local law enforcement source said was a search related to the anti-terrorism investigation.

The questioning of Zazi, who authorities suspect of sympathizing with al Qaeda, came days after he traveled to New York City.

He was stopped by authorities on September 10 while driving a rental car on the George Washington Bridge, which connects New York city with New Jersey, but later returned to Colorado.

Early on Monday, a joint anti-terrorism task force carried out a series of raids in an area of the Queens borough of New York where he had visited over the weekend.

(Writing by Dan Whitcomb, editing by Eric Beech)

The Rest @ Reuters

Maryland IDs MS-13 Recruiting Patern

Published: 09/17/2009

Prosecutors and police on Tuesday pressed Maryland lawmakers to make it easier to put gang members convicted of crimes behind bars for longer sentences, saying a 2-year-old state statute aimed at doing so had proven all but useless.

Lawmakers, including House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) who sat in on the hearing and asked an usually large number of questions, probed law enforcement officers for specifics on how the Maryland Gang Prosecution Act had failed.

They also seemed split on whether changes were needed. Del. Victor R. Ramirez (D-Prince George's) and others questioning if more draconian sentencing guidelines could inadvertently snare less violent teenagers charged as gang co-conspirators. And House Judiciary Committee Chairman Del. Joseph F. Vallario, Jr. (D-Prince George's), said the legislature did not want to get so specific in setting sentences that it risked undercutting judges' prerogative to order prison terms best fitting circumstances of crimes.

In the course of the hearing, Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy also released some interesting statistics about gang activity:

Last year, Montgomery County prosecuted 524 cases against gang members. In the county, there are now roughly 40 active gangs, and some 1,600 identified gang members, he said.

So far this year, suspects arrested in five of the county's 10 homicides have been gang members.

McCarthy said he believes the high percentage of killings tied to gangs this year is an anomaly. But he and others said the recruiting years for gangs across the state are now 6th, 7th and 8th grades. By the time teens enter high school, McCarthy said police in Montgomery have identified 20 to 25 incoming freshmen, on average, in each school as known members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha.


The Rest @ Corrections.com

Mexico Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora Resigns

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Felipe Calderon removed his attorney general yesterday to try to revamp a war against drug cartels that have resisted an army campaign to defeat them.

Calderon told reporters that Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora, who spearheaded the government’s fight against drug trafficking, had resigned and would be replaced by a little-known former legal official.

A crackdown by thousands of troops and federal police has been unable to suppress turf wars between rival cartels that have killed more than 13,000 people since Calderon took power in late 2006.

Calderon has staked his presidency on his war on drugs, but cartels are killing about 20 people a day in Mexico — often after torturing them — and traffickers have infiltrated many state and municipal police forces.A large deployment of troops in the city of Ciudad Juarez, on the border with Texas, has not slowed a wave of drug killings there.About a dozen hooded gunmen burst into a drug rehabilitation clinic in Ciudad Juarez last week, lined up patients and shot 17 of them dead in a gang killing.Medina Mora will be replaced by Arturo Chavez, a former official in the attorney general’s office, Calderon said.

Despite making big drug seizures and capturing some cartel leaders, security forces have been unable to catch Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, the head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
Mexico’s most-wanted man, Guzman escaped from jail in a laundry van in 2001.

The Rest @ Stabroek News

Cartel Sergio Saucedo,Trafficker, Money Launderer, Executed by Cartel

September 9th, 2009 EL PASO, Texas —

A body found with its severed arms crossed and placed on its chest in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was identified by authorities Wednesday as a Texas man kidnapped from his home.

Sergio Saucedo, 30, was kidnapped from his Horizon City house outside El Paso last Thursday. His mutilated body was found Tuesday in the Mexican border city across the Rio Grande, said El Paso County Sheriff’s spokesman Jesse Tovar.

“It’s apparent that the spillover has occurred,” Tovar said of the drug violence plaguing Juarez and much of Mexico.

Saucedo, who has a long criminal record including convictions for drug possession and money laundering, was kidnapped by three men, investigators said. His wife told deputies the men broke into the house, bound Saucedo with duct tape and carried him out the back door to the driveway, where he was stuffed into a dark sport utility vehicle with no license plates.
Witnesses reported hearing at least one gun shot and said Saucedo struggled with his attackers as he yelled for help.

Saucedo’s body was found dumped in the street late Tuesday with his severed arms placed on top of a cardboard sign on his chest, said Arturo Sandoval, spokesman for a regional prosecutor’s office in Juarez. He said the killers stuffed plastic bags into Saucedo’s mouth and taped his eyes.
The sign was immediately removed and authorities have not revealed what it said. Drug cartels often leave messages with victims they kill.

Ciudad Juarez is Mexico’s deadliest city with more than 1,300 drug-related killings this year.
El Paso investigators believe Saucedo was killed in Mexico, but a specific motive for the kidnapping and killing remained unclear Wednesday, Tovar said.

Court records show Saucedo, who has used various aliases, had been convicted of money laundering, possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, trafficking marijuana and other drugs in Texas and Oklahoma. Tovar said investigators were not aware of a specific connection to any particular drug gang in Mexico.

Saucedo’s case is among a handful of drug-related kidnappings reported to federal authorities in recent years, said Andrea Simmons, an FBI spokeswoman in El Paso. While none Simmons knew of had previously ended so violently, Saucedo’s kidnapping isn’t the first sign of cartel violence in El Paso.

• In May, a Juarez cartel lieutenant and U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement informant was shot eight times in front of his east El Paso house.
• A fellow cartel lieutenant and informant, along with two other men and a juvenile, have been arrested on capital murder charges in that case. At the time, authorities and experts said Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana was the highest ranking cartel member to be killed in the United States.
  

The rest @ blog Taragana

Lewsiville, TX Police Heads up

Some New Tags showed up last week in Central Lewisville, TX, North East of the Dallas Fort Worth Airport.

MS-13 and Southside tags Locos tagged a single Street in North Lewisville.

-Gochoa

Extradition of Minors Cotributes to Gang Activities

The week of 29 June 2009 saw two very interesting developments in Mexico, with the continuation of a third very important economic indicator.First, remittances from the United States to Mexico continue to drop.

In the first six months of 2009, we have seen remittances drop by 19.9%, compared to the first half of 2008. This decline represents some US$1.9 billion dollars.A new vigilante group has emerged.

The “Mata Zetas” is one of the latest of the so-called splinter groups we’ve seen surface. At the end of June, when police discovered three bodies in Cancun, they also discovered a note that read: “We are the new group, Mata Zetas, and we are against kidnapping and extortion and we are going to fight against them in all of the state for a cleaner Mexico."

Just a few days later, police arrested eleven members of a separate splinter group known as “La Contra”. Mexican authorities suspect this group has formed to fill gaps opened by arrested members of the Los Zetas and La Familia.

• Analysis:After petroleum exports, remittances make up the largest source of foreign currency in Mexico. And from January to April, total remittances added up to US$7.3 million. This number continues to drop as a direct function of the economy.

Indirect effects, however, may be seen in Mexico, where individuals who relied on these remittances have little option but to turn to organized crime to pay the bills.Consider three converging realities.

• Last year, 17,772 minors were deported from the United States to Mexico. It is likely that many of them landed in a crime-controlled municipality.
• Between 60 and 65% percent of all Mexican municipalities suffer from organized crime infiltration. This adds up to about 1,500 cities.
• Finally, there are a reported 980 zones of impunity across the country. Also called “criminal enclaves” the political leadership is either directly involved in organized crime, or is somehow compromised. We’re not surprised by the presence of La Contra and Mata Zetas. We expect more such groups to surface before the end of the year.

The Rest @ Samuel Logan and Security in Latin America

MS-13 Watch: Providing Services to Other Criminals

This author, who has a long history of journalism in South and Central America as well as other places recently wrote this status of interational gangs, especialmented de La Mara, MS-13

-Gochoa


Tuesday July 7, 2009
How Gangs Threaten Us All

For those interested in exploring one of the greatest internal and transnational threats to the United States, there is a new book out today by Samuel Logan, This is For the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America’s Most Violent Gang.

The book traces the history of Brenda Paz, a young Honduran who joins MS-13 and eventually becomes the most effective police witness against the organization, before she was killed. But besides the individual story, the book shows just how powerful and ruthless the MS-13 has become. Given that it now has chapters in thousands of cities across the United States, and maintains its transnational structure through the clan structure in Central America, the gang (or mara in Spanish) presents a significant challenge.

But it is not just a local law enforcement issue. It is truly a transnational threat that can destroy countries. Yesterday I heard Carlos Castresana Fernandez, head of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (Comision Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala-CICIG) discuss the serious problems of the organized criminal networks operating out of Guatemala.

He noted how the already-disturbing situation in Guatemala had gotten dramatically worse in the past three years and Mexican and Colombian cartel operatives, particularly Los Zetas, moved in and took control of local criminal operations.

The cartels were aided and abetted in their takeover efforts by the local gangs, primarily MS-13. On Guatemala’s northern border with Mexico, Castresana Fernandez said, the organized criminal groups and gangs are the only authority, in the face of the complete absence of the
state. “Maras plus organized crime has proven deadly,” he said.

That is the reality on the ground in much of Central America. The gangs are increasingly moving from local criminal operations, coordinated with their partner gangs in the United States, to move illicit products like stolen cars, methamphetamine and weapons, into the muscle for the drug cartels.

The consequences, as Castresana Fernandez noted, is that already weak and corrupt police forces and militaries are simply overwhelmed or bought, allowing the gangs to grow in power both in their home countries and in this country. The richer they become the bigger threat they become, both here and south of our border.

The book offers an inside look at how the gangs operate at granular level. For those of us who spent time with the gangs (I did for a Washington Post series in 1998), it is a harrowing and accurate description of the amazing and disturbing world that gang members inhabit. It also places the development of the gangs and the recruitment of gang members in its proper context of displacement, social dislocation and family separation that has helped define the Central American immigrant narrative.

I am not one who worries a great deal about the use of Hezbollah or other terrorist groups of gang-controlled pipelines to enter the United States. With embassies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua etc. all willing to issue valid travel documents to them, it is hard to see why they would bother with the riskier and more vulnerable method of moving over the land border clandestinely.

But it is clear that these gangs and cartels are, in their own right, becoming increasingly strong transnational threats, and that they offer other services to Hezbollah and other groups that would be useful-drug trafficking routes, protection of the pipelines they use etc. To understand why the gangs are a threat, this book is a good place to start

-by Doug Farah

The Rest @ Douglas Farah