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San Diego: 30 kilos of cocaine seized in Chula Vista

March 3, 2017, 3:46 pm
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30 kilos of cocaine seized in Chula Vista

The nondescript Mercury Sable sedan made it's way into Chula Vista, getting off the 5 north, coming from the San Ysidro border crossing, winding through the neighborhoods, stoplights,  off the South Bay community, shortly after the sun set, across the horizon.  

Maybe the driver had that feeling, that intuition, the reflexes and instincts that may come with driving nondescript cars with dozens of kilos of cocaine stuffed into hidden compartments.  Nondescript cars under the surveillance of investigators on a task force.  The surveillance team watched as the Mercury pulled into a storage facility in Chula Vista, just before 7:00 PM. 

It was there they made the arrest, dismantled the car, and found a somewhat odd mixture of bundled drug shipments.  The key was the 30 kilos of cocaine, worth 20,000 or so in Tijuana, but there was also just over a half pound of brown heroin, 25 pounds of highly compressed marijuana, and about 24 pounds of crystal meth.  

In all the shipment is worth close to 650,000.  News reports, based on law enforcement briefings, have put it at 1.1 million, which I think is a stretch.  The crystal isn't worth more then 35,000 or so, the marijuana is worth even less, at about 300 a pound X 24.  The heroin is barely 5,000 dollars. You'd have to estimate the cocaine at almost 30,000 to reach 1.1 million.  

Often drug shipments are bundled together, mostly seeing crystal with cocaine, and heroin and crystal together.  Rarely are all three in the same, smaller shipment, even less, 24 pounds of marijuana, and 0.68 pounds of heroin.  There are reasons for this.  This may have been a very specific shipment for an individual or likelier a distribution group, operating in the San Diego area, or anywhere up the corridor, to Los Angeles. 

The individual was not named, and was booked into the county jail, on narcotics charges.  This case is likely linked to an ongoing investigation, and the group tied to the narcotics will be revealed, when the indictment is unsealed.  If the owners were unknown, it would be less likely the driver would have been detained, before he reached his final destination.  Also, it's common for runners to be switched out, along with the car, as they move further north.  The fact it was a storage facility, may lend credence to the theory, that was the drugs final stop however. 

Most major seizures are not accidents, and many are linked to major investigations, that may go unknown to anyone but the authorities and those charged.  Just last week Ricardo Lujan, 42, a San Ysidro native pled guilty to transporting 90 kilos of cocaine, and 68 kilos of crystal, and intending to transfer the shipment to another person.  The load was seized in Oceanside, last November, in very similar circumstances to last nights seizure in Chula Vista.

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2016/11/san-diego-90-kilos-of-cocaine-seized-in.html 

Sources:  UT San Diego 
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Money laundering: From the Sinaloa Cartel to LA’s fashion district

March 3, 2017, 5:42 pm
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Original article available at YouTube
Posted by El Wachito

In September 2014, more than 1,000 federal and local agents raided 75 different locations in Los Angeles’ fashion district. They seized around $90 million dollars, most of it in bulk cash, from the Sinaloa Cartel. Authorities claim it was the biggest money seizure in U.S. history. Correspondent Mike Kirsch examined the issue in this feature documentary for Americas Now.


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CJNG the winner in the war between narcos

March 6, 2017, 7:07 am
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Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from an El Debate article

Subject Matter: Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required



There is a Federal intelligence report that analyzed the involvement of the most dangerous cartel of the last six years, as the most dangerous in 2016.

The document affirms that in the last year the criminal group led by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, El Mencho, and the Gonzalez Valencia family, who go by the nickname Los Cuinis, have consolidated a meteoric rise in the strategy of expansion, where they control almost totally six coastal states of the country, Colima, Jalisco, Michoacan, Guerrero and the two of Baja California, and are exercising power in zones that were historically in the hands of other groups.

The other zones are the states of Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Morelos, Puebla, Quintana Roo and Mexico state. The organizations that, according to the document have been resisting the advance of the CJNG are; The Pacific Cartel, The Cartel del Golfo, Los Zetas, The Knights Templar and La Familia Michoacana.




The lecture gave a perturbing conclusion, that the CJNG was the big winner in the last ten years of war between the cartels.

In 2015 the criminal group led by El Mencho were ambushing and confronting the state forces. Between March and May of this year, sicarios of the CJNG confronted the Gendarmeria with five agents dead, the Fuerza Unica Regional with 15 elements killed and elements of the 32nd Battalion of Infantry with four elements dead.


In May of this year, in the middle of an operation to capture its leader, the cartel sicarios unleashed violence in 15 distinct points in Jalisco, during which the set fire to property and vehicles, had gun battles and narco blockades.

According to the Federal intelligence source interviewed by this writer, in 2016 the CJNG modified its strategy; abandoning the war against Forces, Federal, State and Municipals, to strengthen its structure against antagonistic groups with which it was contesting control of territories and illicit activities.

At the same time it established alliances of convenience in territories where there had been detentions or deaths of leaders of other criminal organizations.


Between these two strategies, the CJNG had incursions definitively into 15 states of the country. It has augmented its operations like no other criminal organization to date, said the document.

The authorities confirm that the cartel of El Mencho has the opportunity to control the majority  of plazas along the Mexican Pacific, because it is here that see the arrival of precursor chemicals for the production of synthetic drugs, and shipments of cocaine from South American countries.

As well as rabid cleaning of plazas from rival organizations, this criminal group has completely taken over Jalisco. According to the document, has tried to lower its profile in the state, to avoid confrontations during operation Jalisco. The document reviews, however, that the organization is responsible for kidnappings, extortion, disappearances, homicides in the state.

The CJNG its also attributes to gasoline theft in one of the states of the country with the majority of clandestine pipeline tapping's.

The document also signalled that Jalisco is the principal bastion of the cartel for money laundering and production of synthetic drugs. Here they stockpile the drugs created in Michoacan, Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas, whose destination also is the United States. Here they take in the precursor chemicals and ship out the drugs to the ports.

The cartels that have functioned for a decade have been in the most part pulverized. And around those territories in ruins have been born the CJNG. As if the countries war on drugs has only served to give birth to and strengthen the CJNG.

In areas that were once in the possession of the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas, La Familia Michoacana or the Knight Templar, only the name of the executioner has changed.

Original article in Spanish at El Debate
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He Livestreamed About the Cartels—Until He Was Shot Dead

March 6, 2017, 8:51 pm
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By: Andrea Noel Republished from The Daily Beast




TIJUANA—After a long day of driving and livestream reporting from the narco hotbed of Guerrero state, Cecilio Pineda Birto took his dusty car to a local carwash in the sleepy little riverside town of Pungarabato on Thursday evening.

There, while Pineda was resting in a hammock and waiting for his newly washed car, two men opened fire on him then fled the scene on a motorcycle with the murder weapon in hand.

But the closest witnesses to the attack—the carwash attendants—were not questioned by authorities, as they immediately went into hiding, state attorney general Xavier Olea Peláez said.

First responders were unable to revive the journalist, who had reported for local and national media outlets like La Voz de Tierra Caliente and El Universal. He was soon after pronounced dead, just past 7:30 p.m.

Pineda covered the crime beat and had made a name for himself as a fearless journalist working to keep his community informed, often livestreaming on-the-scene reporting to his more than 31,000 Facebook followers, as he did on Thursday, just hours before his death.

That afternoon, while driving along a Guerrero highway, cellphone in hand, he complained in a livestream about the local and state government’s inaction, corruption, and collusion with dangerous and organized criminals—as he so often did.

His target in what would be his final video was Raybel Jacobo de Almonte, a criminal more commonly known as El Tequilero—the subject of an ongoing, statewide, months-long, failed manhunt. More specifically, he spoke out against the authorities and public officials who are believed to grant Almonte official protection and collude with his criminal underlings.

“Even the hitmen for El Tequilero … have revealed his location,” Pineda said, referring to the feared criminal organization known as Los Tequileros. “The government does not want to arrest them, even though they know exactly where they are.”

“They know where El Tequilero is. They know who El Tequilero is with right this moment. And the hitmen are informing on where the safe houses are. But, still, no, even with that information they are refusing to go after them,” he said while driving, sharing a combination of common knowledge and news he had gathered in the course of his reporting.

“I understand,” he said, expressing sympathy for some of the authorities who were refusing to act. “Only those of us who have survived attacks or kidnappings and have been threatened understand the situation.”

The former mayor of Pungarabato, where Pineda was murdered, was ambushed on a highway and executed last July after announcing that he had been threatened repeatedly by organized crime. His driver and one other civilian were killed in the ambush, and two federal police escorts also were injured.

Pineda often denounced threats of violence against him and his family. And, in fact, had himself narrowly escaped with his life a year and a half ago when armed men broke into his home, threatening his pregnant wife and young son while the reporter happened to be away.

In the nearby city of Taxco de Alarcón, the journalist Francisco Pacheco Beltrán was gunned down in front of his home on a Monday morning last April. He too had gone after authorities and criminals alike.

In Pineda’s final reports, he reminded the guerrerenses of the widespread collusion of state authorities with El Tequilero, which has created an atmosphere of crisis. Nearly 100 schools closed their doors last week across the state, joining dozens that have remained shuttered for weeks, in protest against the impunity the authorities have allowed El Tequilero and the violence affecting daily life in Guerrero.

“I’m just telling you what I know, and what I’ve heard, and the information that I’ve gathered,” Pineda said, while reminding his audience that local mayor-turned-state-congressman Saúl Beltrán Orozco of Mexico’s ruling PRI, or Institutional Revolution Party, has personal and provable ties to El Tequilero.

The prominent politician was among those in attendance at the party for El Tequilero’s son’s baptism, Pineda reminded his viewers, referring to a video filmed in 2014 during the celebration in San Miguel Totolapan.

In the video, Orozco, who at the time was the town mayor, can be seen seated at a table with El Tequilero chatting with one of the state’s most wanted men. 

A half-dozen men stood guard holding machine guns—cuernos de chiva, or “goat’s horns” as they are known colloquially because of the curved magazines of the AK-47s. The mayor-turned-congressman grabbed the microphone, as the video shows, to personally thank the wanted man, whom he called “my friend El Tequi.”

Yet, despite this irrefutable evidence, Orozco still insists that he does not know the drug gang leader, and he continues to enjoy political protection while claiming he’s the one being persecuted.

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On the coast of Guerrero state in the once internationally popular resort of Acapulco, which has been declared among Mexico’s five most violent cities year after year, dozens of journalists and community members held a protest Friday to mourn Pineda’s loss and demand increased safety in the state. They pinned a large black ribbon—the symbol of loss—on the door of the prosecutor’s office.

But as Pineda’s corpse was delivered to the city of Iguala on Friday, the country at large was reminded of the complicated reality of life in Guerrero—and indeed life in several of Mexico’s most drug-war-torn states.

Iguala made international headlines in 2014 as the site of the disappearance and all but certain mass-execution of 43 rural teaching students, bringing Guerrero into the spotlight as a state where officials of the highest authority—from local and state police, to the mayor and the governor’s office—have been proved to be allies of organized crime.

The scandals surrounding the failed investigation into what happened to the students, who the government claims were mass-incinerated in a garbage dump—an investigation which independent forensic specialists resoundingly declared had been “sabotaged” by the Mexican government—have not yet faded from memory.

But the tragedy has left no real lasting impact on the country’s political class, and has become little more than a minor blemish—one of many—on President Enrique Peña Nieto’s record.

In Guerrero, in the final weeks of 2016 as the supposed manhunt for El Tequilero was under way, autodefensas or self-defense militias formed to combat the Tequileros. Such groups have become common in other central Mexican cartel hotbeds, like neighboring Michoacan, where hundreds of citizens have taken up arms in recent years to combat two faces of the same criminal coin: the authorities, and the cartels.

In January, during a march through the town of San Miguel Totolapan, community members dressed in white and with covered faces demanded peace, lambasting the authorities’ protection of and collusion with El Tequilero.

The names of the wanted criminals and the cities in conflict often change, but this story stays the same, and continues to play out predictably, over and over again, in Mexico—a country that human rights observers and activists have labeled a failed “narco state.”

And unfortunately for those tasked with informing the public, their enemies clearly will stop at nothing to silence them. Last year became the most dangerous on record for journalists in Mexico since the start of its decade-long drug war in 2006, with an average of one journalist killed each month over the course of the year.

But this is not a new phenomenon, and, in fact, since 2006 more than 80 journalists have been killed in direct retaliation for their important work in Mexico.

Dozens more also disappeared or were killed, but press protection organizations often count only those whose murder can be directly, unequivocally, linked to their work.

Two weeks ago, a reporter in Colima, Carlos Alberto García, was ambushed by armed men and peppered with bullets, taking three fatal shots to the chest. He, for example, will not be included in this year’s final tally, which will likely follow the same upward trend observed in recent years—a trend toward impunity and official inaction.

Juan Vázquez, a spokesman for press freedom organization Article 19, lamented Pineda’s “reproachable” murder in a telephone interview on Friday, as well as that of the Colima journalist his organization will not be able to include in the tally, as there is no clear line between his reporting and his death.

“These cases cannot continue to be met with more impunity,” Vázquez said. “We will continue to demand that the government take action to guarantee the safety of journalists in Mexico, and to work to improve the conditions that make Mexico one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist.”

“Mexico—unlike Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, which are also very dangerous countries for journalists—is not a country that recognizes that it is engaged in any official war,” Vázquez noted. “But our situation is very unique, in that we are certainly at war, however unrecognized.”

“The pillar of democracy, the right to a free press, is being denied in Mexico,” Vázquez said. “When a journalist is killed, it silences the truth. And the more journalists are killed, the less free truth can be.”

“This leaves the country’s people uninformed about their reality. And without that information, Mexico becomes a silence zone, with an uninformed public that stops asking questions and demanding their rights,” Vázquez noted.

Noticias Tierra Caliente lamented the loss of their fallen colleague after reporting on the news, and said they will “always remember” Pineda.

“Even if it was dangerous, he kept the people informed,” the outlet wrote in a statement. “He was the best journalist in Tierra Caliente.”

“May he rest in peace.”

Source: The Daily Beast
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Juan Carlos Sierra Santana, leader of Los Viagras shot dead in confrontation

March 7, 2017, 2:35 am
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Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Proceso article

Subject Matter: Los Viagras, Michoacan
Recommendation:See linkto article by Chivis on Juan Carlos Sierra Santana


Reporter: Francisco J Castellanos
Juan Carlos Sierra Santana, La Sopa, one of the seven brothers that heads the criminal organization Los Viagras ( Otis: also see Fuerzas Rurales Michoacan), lead by El Gordo Santana, was taken down Sunday afternoon during a confrontation with antagonistic groups in the limits of this town and Buenavista, informed sources from the SSP and the Army.

La Sopa was killed by wounds sustained by bullets. The confrontation was reported by the authorities, but the local Police did not intervene. At the site of the confrontation hundreds of rounds, rifle magazines, rifles, 40 mm grenades and tactical equipment was confiscated.





As a result of this incident, elements of the Army and the Michoacan Police carried out extra patrols and vigilance in the zone, indicated an official communication from the Secretary of Public Security.

In relation to this incident, the State dependency gave out a press release:

"Elements of Sedena (the Army) and the SSP confiscated hundreds of rounds of ammunition, rigle magazines and tactical equipment in this town, and maintained vigilance patrols in the region to guarantee the security of the villagers.

"After initiating an operation to verify that there had been a confrontation between armed civilians in the community of Pena Colorada, uniformed officers localized and confiscated 200 plus round of ammunition in .308 calibre, 7.62 x 39 mm and .223."

"Also 32 rifle magazines, 12 x 40mm grenades, a 40mm grenade launcher, which were put at the disposition of the competent authorities."

"Previous versions of these events had resulted in the wounding of an alleged criminal leader,, the surrounding hospitals have been searched for suspects but the results have been negative."

"Tne Secretary of Public Security are in coordination with local authorities both State and Federal to maintain a vigil in all of the Tierra Caliente region to assure the security of the local population."

The history of Los Viagras goes back to when the Sierra Santana brothers were in high school and because of the way they combed their hair with it sticking straight up, their class mates called them Viagra.

Some time later, because of their fondness for cock fighting, several of the Sierra Santana brothers flocked to the Palenques and their rivals said " Here come Los Viagras".

Original article in Spanish at Proceso


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El Lucifer, head of Sicarios for Fuerzas Especiales del Damaso arrested in BCS

March 7, 2017, 7:03 am
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Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Zetatijuana article with additional picture from the Borderland Beat archive

Subject Matter: El Lucifer, Las Fuerzas Especiales de Los Damaso
Recommendation:See Linkto article on El Lucifer



On Monday afternoon, March 6, in the streets of San José del Cabo, Los Cabos municipality, in Baja California Sur, "El Lucifer", an alleged plaza leader and chief of Sicarios for the Dámaso Special Forces (FED), was arrested. 

According to data obtained by ZETA, a surprise operation was carried out to identify the occupants of vehicles with tinted windows, to find arms and drugs that are flooding the conflict zone, in calles Batalla de Puebla and Eduardo Rodriguez in the El Zacatal colonia. They stopped a particular vehicle and captured the Jefe de Plaza in La Paz and Los Cabos, together with two women of approximately 18 years of age.







El Lucifer had in his possession an AK47 firearm, two magazines and twenty spare rounds of ammunition. Two nylon bags were also in his possession with a green colored substance inside which showed the properties of marijuana. He was detained driving a grey colored Sentra with BCS plates.

According to the criminal map elaborated by intelligence sources, El Lucifer is allegedly link to criminal events such as: drug trafficking, use of firearms for exclusive use of the Army, also in the collaboration and commission of homicides, and kidnapping amongst others.

According to the investigation, since the month of July of 2015, the detained was considered as the successor to Melissa Margarita Calderon Ojeda aka "La China".
The Lieutenant headed a criminal cell that has been occupied with a war in Los Cabos against members of the CJNG and Los Chapitos of the Sinaloa Cartel.



El Lucifer was known in the underworld for the cruelty with which he treated his victims, from rival groups when extracting information about plaza bosses. After the detention the alleged Jefe de Sicarios for Fuerzas Especiales de Damaso, authorities are hoping for a reduction in the violence created in the fight for control of the narco trafficking plaza in Los Cabos and La Paz, according to Police sources.

Original article in Spanish at Zetatijuana
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"El Kevin" Executed in Culiacan

March 7, 2017, 9:48 pm
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Original article available at ZETA
Translated by El Wachito

Julio Oscar Ortiz Vega, alias "El Kevin" was found dead -encobijado- last Sunday, in the parking lot of a mall in Navolato, Sinaloa, his body -had signs of bullet wounds- has already been claimed by his family, according to Denise Maerker. This information was also confirmed by the local newspaper El Noroeste.



"El Kevin" was rescue by an armed commando of 50 sicarios, last September 30th, after ambushing a military convoy that was protecting an ambulance of the Mexican Red Cross, in Culiacan. El Kevin was medically treated by military personnel in an hospital of Badiraguato, after a firefight.



"In this image, we can see how El Kevin was being medically assisted by elements of the Mexican Military in an hospital of Badiraguato, later on, this Military Personnel died during a firefight against criminals who attack them while they rescue El Kevin", said a Commander of the Novena Zona Military, Rogelio Teran Contreras.


"After saving the life of the criminal Julio Cesar Ortiz Vega, our brother in arms was executed by members of the criminal organization that we were assisting", claimed Teran Contreras.



During the ambush, 5 marines died and 10 more were wounded. According to sources of journalist Carlos Loret de Mola, "El Kevin" is not a high ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel, "but he is a key piece, because he knows a lot about the criminal organization, and that's why the operation to rescue him was violent".


According to Newspaper Reforma, the Mexican Army confessed that the Municipal Police of Culiacan is at the service of the Sinaloa Cartel, because they "halconean" for the Sinaloa Cartel regarding (warned/spied) members of the Mexican Military, due to the fact that they were listening to their radio frequencies, and even though there are cameras around the city, they never warned them of the 50 sicarios that were traveling in 15 armored vehicles to attack them.

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The Santa Fe, Veracruz Grave

March 8, 2017, 9:00 am
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The latest report of the exhumation work in the collective grave of Colinas de Santa Fe in Veracruz highlights that most of the remains found in the grave are of young high school and college aged men and women.  The search groups narrate that they haven’t walked through half of the land and they don’t stop from discovering corpses.  People continue to disappear in Veracruz, in the context of the war declared by the delinquency against the local government.  240 bodies from 170 clandestine graves have been exhumed.

By: Ignacio Carvajal García | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat

Mexico City/Veracruz, March 7, 2017— Blogexpediente had access to the latest report on exhumation work in the collective graves of Colinas de Santa Fe, and what stands out the most of the 240 bodies exhumed so far is that they mostly consist of young people.

The last cutoff on the works in the collective graves of Colinas de Santa Fe state that 240 bodies from 117 clandestine graves have been exhumed.

And in the middle of the cluster of bodies, the mothers of the collective Solecito, who are actively working in this grave, what has surprised them is the high number of young people among the victims.

“Most of them are young people, women and guys, although people with gray hairs have also been found, despite the advanced state of decomposition, that detail has been observed,” said a source close to the work on the grave, at the request of anonymity.

Among the findings of the various graves, which show the slaughter of young people; clothing, footwear, and intimate clothing corresponding to the ages of 14 and 25 are also abundant.

The information that this medium accessed shows that the finding of bodies far from diminishing increases, and these graves are not even half of the terrain.

The last cutoff on the works in the collective graves of Colinas de Santa Fe state that 240 bodies from 117 clandestine graves have been exhumed. Photo: Cuartoscuro Archive
They consist of 125 graves located until the beginning of March, of which 177 have been worked on, which have resulted in the findings of 240 skulls, which is equal to the number of victims, more than half, correspond to boys who were high school or college aged.


However, the number of victims could be much higher, as some bodies are being removed without a head, only limbs or legs.

Usually, most of these corpses are being removed whole and it is atypical that they appear dismembered.

“A lot of clothes has been found, credentials of all kinds, shoes, both men as well as young women,” said the source.

According to the progress of this search, there is at least 60% of land that needs to be analyzed by experts and search dogs for more graves, hence, in a few months, Colinas could be one of the worst clandestine graves found in Latin America.

Beyond the massacres in Coahuila and the graves of Tetelcingo, Morelos [with 117 victims] or the massacres of Tamaulipas, Colinas de Santa Fe is one of the worst violations of human rights, beyond those that occurred in the dictatorships of Chile, Guatemala, and Argentina, where the armed forces were evidenced to having implemented public policies to exterminate people.


Usually, most of these corpses are being removed whole and it is atypical that they appear dismembered. Photo: Cuartoscuro Archive
Javier Duarte de Ochoa and Arturo Bermúdez, accomplices of the responsible criminals, would pass to a level equal to that of the PRI perpetrators of the massacres of Agua Blancas, El Halconazo (The Corpus Christi Massacre) and El 68 (Tlatelolco Massacre), in which dozens of young people disappeared and nothing else was known from them.

To hunt and kill the youth is a dynamic that doesn’t stop and that has been displayed with the five boys of Playa Vicente who were assassinated in Tierra Blanca, the missing ones of Papantla at the hands of municipal [police]; the case of Génesis Urrutia, deprived of her liberty in Veracruz with five other youths, found dead, among six other bodies, dismembered, in October 2016, the same month in which the bodies of five other boys were also found between San Andrés and Santiago Tuxtla.

Data from the National Registry of Lost or Missing Persons indicates that from 2010 to date, there are 722 reports of missing persons in Veracruz, most of them are in the Veracruz-Boca del Río area, where it converges with the graves of Colina de Santa Fe.

Regarding the recognition of the victims, it has only been possible to establish the identity of the former agent of Public Prosecutor Pedro Huesca; the clothing and credentials found in the same graves are expected to help identify the victims who are reported as missing.

Source: Sin Embargo
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Sinaloa Cartel Sicario arrested in Tijuana

March 9, 2017, 7:37 pm
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Original article available at El Mexicano
Translated by El Wachito


Elements of the Preventive State Police (PEP) captured Sicario that had links to the Sinaloa Cartel. He was found in possession of a modern assault rifle that had capabilities to perforate armored vehicles of the highest bulletproof grade. 


He was detained in Colonia Planetario, delegacion San Antonio de los Buenos.

At the moment of his arrest, he was traveling at high speeds. The gun was of caliber 5.56 and attached a grenade launcher.

According to the PEP, at the moment of the arrest, the Sicario was heading to a location where he would locate a Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion(CNJG) member to execute him.

According to ZETA, the Sicario is identified as Rafael "N', 25 years old, and arrived to Tijuana a month ago from Sinaloa.
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La China will return to Baja California Sur

March 10, 2017, 5:17 am
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Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Zetatijuana article

Subject Matter: La China, Melissa Calderon Ojeda
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required

The transfer of Melisa Calderon Ojeda aka La China, to a Federal penitentiary in the State of Morelos was illegal, estimates a Judge of La Paz district, who conceded an amparo and ordered that she be returned to the penitentiary from which she was transferred in March of 2016.


Reporter: Luis Carlos Sainz
Due to penitentiary authorities in Baja California Sur illegaly moving the ex Jefa de Sicarios of the Las Fuerzas Especiales de Damaso, Meliso Calderon Ojeda, a Federal Judge conceded an amparo and ordered her return to La Paz penitentiary.

Melisa Margarita Calderon Ojeda is currently imprisoned in Cefereso No. 16 Femenil in Caotlan del Rio, in the State of Morelos, however, her return to her former penitentiary will depend on resolving the revision that was put before the Public Ministry of the Federation.

Her original transfer was agreed to because she required special forms of security or vigilance, so the authorities in BCS solicited a space for her in the Morelos Maximum Security Prison, and commissioned the OADPRS with base in Mexico City to authorise her transfer, which they did on 23rd of March 2016.




According to the petition, La China, intended to carry out actions aimed at violating and destabilizing the order, discipline and security of the detention centre and endanger the life of the other inmates, those that visit and work at the establishment.

Prison executives say that the pressing situation represented an exception to article 18 of the Constitution, which states that those deprived of liberty will be held in prisons closest to their home, a provision that does not apply in cases of organized crime and of inmates who require special security measures. ( Otis: seems there is a case here for Dr Mireles to appeal his current situation).

In addition, the first paragraph of article 194 of the law on execution of sanctions and security measures for the State of Baja California Sur was invoked, justifying the local government to authorize the transfer of defendants in cases that " endanger the life or physical integrity of the inmates or the security and order of the establishment, and must notify the Judicial authorities on the next business day."

Through her legal defense, La China filed a petition for indirect amparo (345/2016) before the First District Court in the State of Baja California Sur, demanding an order of incommunicado detention and its execution, as well as the transfer order that took her to the Federal prison in Cuernavaca.

La China pointed out that the authorities responsible for her prison transfer to the Director General of Ceferesos in the State of Baja California Sur, the Commissioner of OADPRS, and the Director General of Cefereso No.16.

In analyzing the matter, the amparo Judge recalled that as of the criminal reform act of 2008, the discretion of administrative authorities regarding the handling of defendants and sentenced persons was ended, leaving this power to the judicial authorities in the supervision of all events of juridical importance of the convicted.

In spite of the justification of prison authorities, the judge found no evidence in the administrative file of the inmate, nor in the reports rendered to the amparo trial, that he had been notified of the transfer on the next business day, which violate the right of legal security of the complainant, as it is an act devoid of judicial control established by the law for said act.

For the above, the First District Judge in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Javier Loyola Zosa, ranted the amparo requested by Melisa Margarita Calderon Ojeda, so that the OADPRS commissioner orders the necessary actions to return Calderon Ojeda the amparo plaintiff to the La Paz Femenil prison.

The amparo judgment is not yet firmly established, as both the Director General of the OADPRS of BCS as well as the agent of the Federal Public Prosecutors Office, filed an appeal for review, which requires that the records of the amparo trial are sent to the Collegiate Court of the 26th District with residence in La Paz.

"La China" Calderón Ojeda was arrested on September 19, 2015 at an airfield in Cabo San Lucas, when she intended to leave the State aboard an aircraft. Investigative agents notified her that they had an arrest warrant for the crime of homicide. 


That afternoon , the woman, designated as chief Sicario of the Furezas Especiales de Damaso of the Cartel of Sinaloa, was in the waiting room of the small air terminal, accompanied by a young pregnant woman of 17 years. When approached by her captors she did not resist, because she had neither guns nor gunmen.

 Melisa had escaped on six previous occasions when police were about to catch her, but the complicity of some police elements allowed her to know the " pitazos " and flee in time. 
To date, Melisa Margarita is prosecuted in case 17/2015 for her probable responsibility in the commission of the crime of homicide qualified with treachery to the degree of complicity in torturing Humberto Juárez León "Don Maleno", 54 years old.
 
The crime charged to the woman and her criminal clan occurred on January 16, 2015 in a residence on Bernardo Maldonado Street, between Luis Barajas and Enrique Von Borstel, in the colony Revolution, when they confused "Don Maleno" with his son, José Humberto Juárez Mora "El Pollón". 

According to preliminary investigation LPZ / 007 / homicides / 2015, "La China" and her ex-partner Eduardo Martín Alvarado "El Kumi" were ordered to assassinate "El Pollón", and their brother José Carlos "El Pala" and Jonathan Omar "El John", by the internal fight between the cells of the FED: "The Pepillos" and "The 28's". However, while trying to comply with the order and enter the house, they shot the father of El Pollon. 

Calderón, 30, is linked to the execution of several people in a war of criminal factions that in Baja California Sur has caused almost two hundred fatalities in recent times, and she is an interested party in at least twenty previous inquiries.


Original article in Spanish at Zetatijuana
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Duarte’s wife found abundance she craved

March 10, 2017, 6:25 am
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Posted by DD republished from Mexico News Daily

Karime Macias;  "I deserve abundance"
The wife of former Veracruz governor Javier Duarte was a tireless shopper, spending 8 million pesos on clothes, personal articles and luxury hotels during her husband’s first 14 months in office, according to documents obtained by the newspaper Reforma.

Karime Macías Tubilla, who disappeared with her husband last October, spent US $511,740 in the United States, 1.27 million pesos in Mexico and 51,000 pesos in a jewelry store in Brazil between December 2010 and January 2012, a credit card statement revealed.

Macías, believed to be the person who copied the phrase “I deserve abundance” 45 times in a notebook discovered last month in the city of Córdoba, went on shopping sprees in which she spent an average of 675,000 pesos a month, nine times the monthly salary of her husband, now wanted on corruption charges.

The credit card purchases were racked up on an American Express Platinum card in the name of Moisés Mansur Cysneiros, a close friend of Duarte and a presumed accomplice in his alleged embezzlement of public funds.

Among Macías’ credit card charges:

• In a single day, April 25, 2011, $80,978 at Bergdorf Goodman in New York.
 
• On another New York trip, between July 22 and 26, she spent $159,185 in the city, $111,000 of it at Bergdorf Goodman.

• During the July trip, charges by the Hotel The Peninsula totaled $9,820 and those of a limousine company, $8,796.

• A month later, Macías spent $37,373 at the Neiman Marcus store in The Galleria shopping center in Houston, Texas.

• In October she visited the Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale and spent $81,725. In a single day Duarte’s wife made 22 purchases worth $22,607 for clothes, shoes and designer accessories.

• She was back in Scottsdale a month later, as well as New York and the winter resort destinations of Vail and Beaver Creek, in Colorado. The bill: $45,789.

• In Mexico, Macías’ favorite store appeared to be Saks Fifth Avenue. On February 8, 2011 she made a 447,444-peso purchase.

• In November she made purchases costing 165,000 pesos at Hermés and Max Mara in Mexico City.

Source: Reforma (sp)

DD; I understand and agree with her sentiment that "I deserve abundance", but she just didn't finish the thought.  She should have added "for being married to such a low life slob."   And it certainly should not have been paid for at the expense of the people of Veracruz.
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The US government is worried 'El Chapo' Guzman's legal team may have cartel infiltrators

March 10, 2017, 12:59 pm
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Posted via forum by Mica, and republished with the permission of the author Christopher woody. For Business Insider

 
Guzman, right, and defense attorneys Michael Schneider, center right, and Michelle Gelernt, center left, in a court sketch, January 20, 2017.REUTERS/Christine Cornell

 Former Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has pleaded not guilty to the array of charges against him and his next court date is May 5.

But the legal wrangling around the Mexican capo has not slacked.

In the most recent development, US prosecutors slated to face Guzman in an Eastern District of New York courtroom have asked that US authorities investigate any foreigners added to Guzman's legal team.

US Attorney Robert Capers and Arthur Wyatt, Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section chief for the Justice Department's Criminal Division, argued that, based on their experience, an unvetted member of the defense team could compromise the case brought by the government.

"If a foreign lawyer or investigator that also was a member of the Sinaloa cartel was united with the defense team, [they] could travel to the United States, review the evidence that is protected, and travel later out of the United States with that knowledge," Capers and Wyatt wrote in a letter to Eastern District judge Brian Cogan.

"If a member of the cartel traveled to the United States and found out the identity of a cooperating Mexican witness, [they] could later travel to Mexico with this information and give the name of the witness to other members of the Sinaloa cartel who could kidnap or kill the family of that witness," the letter added
Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman arrives at Long Island MacArthur airport in New York, January 19, 2017, after his extradition from Mexico.Reuters
The letter was confirmed to Univision by Jose Refugio Rodriguez, one of three Mexican lawyers who represented Guzman in his home country.

He said that while they are not allowed to act as lawyers on Guzman's behalf in the US, they had been advising his current legal team and could visit him in the future.

Refugio Rodriguez said it was the right of prosecutors to look into the background of members of the defense team, but he said he took issue with this specific request as it seemed to cast Guzman's Mexican lawyers as complicit with the kingpin, which he said violated the presumption of innocence

Guzman's defense attorneys, Michael Schneider and Michelle Gelernt outside the federal courthouse in the Brooklyn, New York, January 20, 2017. Reuters / Joe Penney
 In their letter, Capers and Wyatt denied that they did not trust Guzman's Mexican lawyers, but said that in the past "foreign professionals," including lawyers, had used their status to commit crimes and bribe officials.

Guzman's US lawyers — Michael Schneider and Michelle Gelernt, two court-appointed public defenders — criticized the request as a "prohibition" on foreigners joining the defense and said the prosecutors' letter did not offer legal arguments for why "the citizens of other countries are less trustworthy than Americans."

According to Refugio Rodriguez, Guzman's US lawyers have already brought a motion against the request, "because lawyers cannot be treated like criminals."
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Arturo Beltran Leyva, the life, the death of "El Barbas" part 3 "The final stand of Don Arturo"

March 11, 2017, 7:14 am
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Arturo Beltran Leyva, the life, the death of "El Barbas" part 3 "The final stand of Don Arturo"

Written for Borderland Beat by Otis B Fly-Wheel, with additional material and photos the BB archive.

Subject Matter: Arturo Beltran Leyva, El Barbas, El Fantasma, El Botas Blancas, La Muerte
Recommendation: Read Part 1 of this article here see link
                              Read Part 2 of this article here see link




Born in the cradle of narco's, La Palma ,Badiraguato Sinaloa in December of 1954,though some put his birth day as September 1961. Arutro Beltran Leyva also known by the nicknames, "El Barbas", El Botas Blancas, El Fantasma and La Muerte, he worked with small time poppy growers and learnt his trade from Amado Carrillo Fuentes , and later became known as Jefe de Jefes, boss of bosses. His life was characterized by the extreme violence he visited upon anyone who stood in his way. He was eventually cornered and killed by Mexican Marines with the ELINT intelligence help of the US 7th Special Forces group in Cuernavaca, leading to a power vacuum and the "Hydra Effect".  

Big thanks go out to Chivis and BB's friend Narcomics, for the images. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram @narcomicscorp

Reporter: Otis B Fly-Wheel

An alliance with the Executioner
As Don Arturo made his plans to take what he saw as rightfully his from the Sinaloa Federation, he realized that he would not be able to do it with the personnel available to him in the BLO. Despite the large amount of crews in his organization ( see crews section in Arturo Beltran Leyva part 2 ), he saw common ground with Los Zetas.

Los Zetas were unhappy at this time with Osiel Cardenas Guillen from the Cartel del Golfo and were making their own plans to split from their parent organization and seize power for themselves. Leading Los Zetas at this time were Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, "The Executioner" and Miguel Trevino "El Z-40". Los Zetas also found common ground with Arturo in his willingness to resort to horrific violence to achieve his aims as a first resort.

Arturo arranged a meeting with the heads of Los Zetas in Torreon, Coahuila. At this meeting it was agreed that three cities were key to their plans for domination. Torreon, Acapulco and Aguascaliente. Torreon was a strategic city for drug trafficking and was previously dominated by the Sinaloa Federation.

The war for Torreon was defined when Los Zetas/BLO alliance attacked Carlos Herrera Araluce in Gomez Palacio, Durango, who was key for the Federation in the city. By some miracle Herrera Araluce and his wife survived the attack, and immediately left the country for Spain. Los Zetas then delivered an ultimatum to Lawyer Alberto Romero, who later disappeared in the form of a letter and a video showing the torture of a Police commander of Coahuila, Enrique Ruiz Arevalo.

The Federation and the Juarez cartel retreated from Torreon, next was Acapulco, and another campaign of be-headings, kidnapping, and executions saw the Federation driven from the town. Lastly was Aguascalientes, which suffered the same fate as the other two cities with the Federation being driven out and BLO/Zetas sharing the plaza.

To dethrone the Federation, El Chapo and El Mayo must die

Don Arturo knew that if he was going to kill "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, currently languishing in prison in the USA, that first he would have to get rid of the people protecting him. As Arturo had been in charge of paying off bribes to those in power high up in the Army, PGR and Mexican Government he was uniquely placed to know exactly who to kill. Indeed the Sinaloa Federation had relied on the extravagance of Arturo and his brothers to charm, or bend the arms of those in power so the Federation could continue its drug production, logistics and sales without interference.

Arturo knew that on while El Chapo had holistic protection, to get close, he had to kill those protecting him locally, the Municipal and State Police in Culiacan and the surrounding regions, who were in the position to tip off  El Chapo to any upcoming threats to him or his immediate family.

Arturo also knew that the men of El Chapo were hunting him too, he was moving between Morelos, Cuernavaca and Guerrero, and on the 7th of May he was nearly captured by the Federal Police. El Barbas had been in Cuernavaca,Morelos and was travelling in a convoy along the Autopista del Sol ( Interstate 95D) towards the State of Guerrero.

A patrol of Federal Police had noticed the convoy with its element of a number of support vehicles with heavily armed Sicario's in front and behind a vehicle that they identified might be carrying El Botas Blancas himself. They reported the incident to headquarters and were given orders to apprehend and detain him.

The Federal Police decided to make their move at the intersection of the 95D with Alpuyeca.


Arturo's escort of four vehicles accelerated and left the 95D and sped off down the 21 towards Xoxocotla, after a three kilometre chase that took them into the outskirts of Xoxocotla the Federals caught up with the rearguard vehicles of Arturo's convoy. A confrontation took place and one of Arturo's gunmen Jose Sanchez was killed and one Federal Policeman was also mortally wounded, but the escorts did their job and Arturo escaped.

After finding out who had authorised his capture he set about carrying out revenge. It had been the Chief of Federal Police in Mexico City Edgar Milan and Arturo was going to teach him the error of his ways.

Arturo set to killing with impunity, he first went for two high ranking Police in Mexico City, one being Edgar Milan, who was killed within hours of the attack on Arturo by the Federals, he was killed by Alejandro Ramirez, and the head of the Organized Crime Division of the Public Security Ministry, Roberto Velasco Bravo, this alarmed Mexican high society.

Alejandro Ramirez
Felipe Calderon was infuriated by these assassinations and publicly condemned them, once they were dead he went after the Culiacan Police force with a vengeance and by the end of May of 2008 had killed 116 people that month including 24 Police officers, most of them attributed to Arturo and his Fuerzas Especiales de Arturo among other crews.

The body toll was getting higher and higher, and all sides were rounding on the BLO/Zeta alliance as the other cartels were using their politicians and links to the army and police forces to launch an all out offensive against the BLO. Arturo had over stepped the mark, and the Federation had as much information on the BLO locations as did the BLO on the Federation.

Likely haunts of the BLO were passed onto the Army, Federal Police, PEP, and the Marines as well as the Public Ministry. Two particular locations were earmarked for raiding. Despite being on a war footing, the BLO leadership were carrying on as though it was business as usual, and for the BLO this meant extravagant parties, with bands, prostitutes, cocaine and lots of booze.

The net tightens

The US 7th Special Forces Group had for some time been giving extensive training to the Mexican Marines that tracked down Don Arturo, as confirmed in a WikiLeaks cable, they had had boots on the ground in Mexico and had been giving small unit and electronic intelligence gathering training to the Marines. With the information given up by the Sinaloa Federation Capos, the Marines had found out that on the 10th of December, El Barbas had returned to Cuernavaca from a baptism at Puebla.

His convoy was large and had raised the attention of Ministerial Police and there was a brief firefight  in Hidalgo Avenue and Forjadores Boulevard in which two Judicial Police were injured and one Municipal Policeman was killed, while civilians in the vicinity threw themselves onto the floor and crawled behind what cover they could as the sicarios and Police exchanged fire. El Barbas left five  sicarios and 11 vehicles at the scene.

The five sicarios left behind after the firefight

El Barbas fled by helicopter from the Villa Florida hotel, according to the DEA and Anthony Placido, Don Arturo had been injured in the firefight. The secretary of the Marina later denied that the Don had been injured and said that the following night he had resurfaced in the Los Limeneros sub division, just outside Tepoztlan.

Manuel Briones had joined the BLO from the Metropolitan Police as the successor to El Borrado, and was in charge of security. Briones depended for the Dons safety on the army of halcones that were watching the state forces, and Briones decided as an example he would kill 40 members of his own cartel that were deemed "less than committed".

Manuel Briones
The sicarios that were left behind at Puebla were flown to SEIDO headquarters to be interrogated. One version given up was that Don Arturo had been seen visiting a plastic surgeon at Angeles hospital in Puebla. With all the information gathered from the various sources contributing to the manhunt, the Security Cabinet decided to send the collated information to Admiral Jose Luis Figueroa of the Marines.

Around two in the morning of the 10th of December the Marines arrived as Los Limoneros where the BLO party was in full swing with Don Arturo and La Barbie in attendance, there were Norteno bands and singers including Ramon Ayala, prostitutes, Police Chiefs, Politicians, booze and cocaine flowing freely.

The house in Los Limoneros Fraccionamiento
The three tiers of security surrounding El Botas Blancas had picked up the Marines and were only waiting to be sure of their destination before they warned those at the party. Orders were given and the Don's security detail stood to and awaited the Marines, the ensuing gun battle lasted two hours. By the time of the first engagement, Don Arturo had already left in a Toyota with La Barbie, the remaining Sicario's with orders to delay the Marines for as long as possible.

During the firefight, elements of the Municipal Police and SEIDO of the PGR attended when the gun battle was at its fiercest but declined to join in and retired from the area. The Marines arrested forty people, including eleven Sicarios. The rest were prostitutes and musicians.

In the house itself during the subsequent search, authorities found $280,000.00, 10 weapons, and 1,700 rounds of ammunition. There were three dead resulting from the firefight including someone from a neighbouring house.

The vehicle in which Don Arturo escaped in was found in Cuernavaca. There was traces of blood on the passenger seat door handle and on the seat. One version of events says that El Barbas was again traced by the DEA after receiving medical treatment at a Morelos hospital and that he had actually left his address at the hospital as an apartment that he lived at in the Altitude condominium. Though I find this hard to believe, and that his location at the condominium had been given up by other sources, and some suspect La Barbie of doing just that.


With information of a location in hand, on December the 16th members of the Cabinet for Public Security were informed that in 20 minutes the Marines were going to storm the Altitude apartment complex and arrest Arturo Beltran Leyva. The Marines knew that Don Arturo had paid off members in the 3 levels of Government and that they could not release the information of their plans until the very last moment before launching the operation, if the Don were not to escape their clutches again as he had at Los Limoneros.

The Army had been given a secondary objective of securing a perimeter around the apartment block and the job had gone to infantry of the 24th Military Zone and General Leopoldo Diaz. Ironically the man trusted with the perimeter defence, was due to have dinner with Don Arturo that very day, according to reporter Ricardo Ravelo.

Los Zafiros, who were Don Arturo's outer ring of protection, were giving radio chatter about strange movements in the street. The Marines and most probably 7th SFG radio intercept specialists were monitoring his chatter, and according to the Navy, El Botas Blancas knew about the operation from about 1pm. Around 5pm, a helicopter started over-flying the Altitude apartment complex, about four hours before the shooting started.

A radio call was made for reinforcements for the Don, at around 6pm, "El Guason" and Ricardo Antonio Perez Soto and his bodyguard "El Tuntun", jumped into a vehicle and sped towards their arms stash house at Tepoztlan, they gathered up as many weapons and grenades as they could carry and set off for Cuernavaca. Their plan was to rescue El Barbas and get him to safety.



Also on the radio at that time was Jesus Basilio Araujo "El Pollo" the most bloodthirsty Sciario that the BLO had in Morelos and Guerrero. They arrived next to the Altitude apartments, they could see the impenetrable ring of soldiers, both from the 24th Infantry in the outer ring, and the Marines forming up to storm the building, they changed their plans seeing the number of soldiers on the ground and the formidable arsenal of weapons they had brought with them, deciding instead on taking some of the heat, and to create a diversion which could have let El Barbas escape from the complex, and from a red cross building started launching grenades at the Marines on the ground which signified the start of " the battle of Cuernavaca".

He had 6 Sicarios with him including Jesus Nava Romero "El Rojo" and Gonzalo Octavio Araujo Zazueto " Chaulito Araujo" son of Gonzalo Araujo Payan "El Chalo", La Barbie had disappeared from the apartment and did not respond to radio calls for support to the Don during the upcoming firefight, and many have speculated that this was when the penny had dropped and the Don had realized that La Barbie had given him up. Certainly La Barbie was not involved in the final shootout at the apartment. This certainly would have infuriated Don Arturo into making the decision to make his final stand.



At nine pm the Marines had 200 elements in place surrounding the building, and had evicted all of the inhabitants of Altitude, they knew this would not be pleasant and that given previous dealings with BLO sicarios that they would go down shooting.

The order to storm the apartment was given and the Marines in the helicopters opened up with their 7.62 machine guns, on the ground Marines opened up with machine guns from their armored personnel carriers, while still further Marines on foot hailed Don Arturo's men urging them to give up the fight, the Marines on the ground were attacked by two Sicarios and returned fire killing the two men, while Don Arturo and his men opened up from the window in apartment 201 with AK 47's and hand grenades.

The battle had been raging for nearly four hours before the marines managed to gain an entry into the stairwell leading to the Don's apartment. Sicarios had been at the top of the stairs firing burst after burst of well aimed automatic fire down the stairwell while throwing fragmentation grenades down the stairwell too.



One Marine was grievously injured by the fragmentation grenades and dragged off, while his squad members furiously fired up the stairwell, hurling insults at the sicarios, who, despite their low numbers had the advantage of height in the engagement, which means a lot. Marines had also rappelled down onto the roof of their apartment block and were making their way down the stairwells to take some of the heat off their comrades working their way up from the ground floor.

Don Arturo's bodyguards could not withstand the amount of incoming fire forever, running short of ammo and grenades in the stairwell, the Marines began to gain ground, pepper potting up the stairs while getting covering fire from their comrades below. They got to the landing of flat 201 and shot two of the Sicario's that had kept them at bay for three hours.


The Marines were now faced with breaching El Barbas apartment itself, those left  inside, Chalito Araujo and two other Sicario's were all that were between the Don and the Marines who were bent on revenge. As the Marines stacked up to breach, and the signal was given they breached the door to the apartment and received a hail of fire from inside, two of the Sicario's fell in the return fire, and Chalito Araujo jumped out of the apartment window, and was shot in mid air in the back as he fell to his death on the ground below.


Don Arturo was now alone, for all the money and power and men at his disposal, he now faced his own demise but had not given up, he had a pile of fragmentation grenades and was throwing them out of the apartment door, the Marines that had stacked up for the breach had to retreat to the stair well, and Don Arturo saw his chance and made a break for the lift.

The Marines piled back onto the landing and opened fire, hitting El Barbas in the shoulder, head and chest at close range, Don Arturo fell backwards with the impact of the bullets, dead before he hit the floor in amongst a pile of fragmentation grenade pins. It was over.

The Marine assault had turned Don Arturo's apartment into swiss cheese, every wall showing the pockmarks of bullet strikes that had come from the air and the ground forces. Large blood stained patches on the floors where his Sicario's had been shot and bled out.


Sicario lays dead on the floor of apartment 201
What happened next would have consequences for the Marines, and in my opinion was not worthy of a professional organization like the Mexican Marines. They dragged Arturo's body back into the apartment and in an effort to humiliate him, pulled down his pants, and adorned his body with bank notes and gold. Society had deemed that Don Arturo had to die and that in itself is justice, what the Marines did smacked of revenge which is a dangerous motive. Once the Don was dead, he had paid his dues to society with the ultimate sanction, and was once again square with the house. I have not put pictures of Don Arturo's dead body in this article because of this reason.




The Aftermath
As I said in the previous chapter, when the Marines tried to humiliate the corpse of Don Arturo, that would have consequences, and since that incident and its aftermath, the Marines when taking out a high ranking narco have pretty much acted more professionally and not indulged in their baser instincts when their blood is up.

The Marine that died in the "battle of Cuernavaca" was Navy Master Melquisedec Angulo Cordoba, after his funeral the day after the battle, Zeta associates of the Beltran Leyva Organization tracked down the family of the Soldier and slaughtered them, his mother, sister, brother and another family member.


Navy Master Melquisedec Angulo Cordoba

The Zetas that were responsible for coordinating the death of the Navy Masters family were caught and duly imprisoned for their murders.


Saying farewell to Don Arturo
Don Arturo's funeral was held shortly after his body had been claimed by his family members, there was a huge funeral cortege with many in the narco world sending flowers, the press were there as they usually are, and a large amount of undercover police disguised as press hoping to nab another narco or two that attended the funeral to pay their final respects.

Funeral cortege of the Don

There was a further twist, when Don Arturo was finally laid to rest in his mausoleum a decapitated head was left on the steps, many have speculated why this food worker was killed and decapitated but I have not seen a reason published. His body was left on another grave 150 yards from his head.









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International coaine trafficker of the Comorra Mafia in Napoli arrested in Tamaulipas

March 11, 2017, 11:15 pm
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Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Milenio article

Subject Matter: La Cosa Nostra, Italian Mafia, Tamaulipas
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required

Giulio Perrone, alleged member of the Italian Mafia from Napoli, has been sought by law enforcement for 10 years for his probable responsibility in international cocaine trafficking.

Giulio Perrone, alleged leader of the Italian mafia in Napoli, was detained by elements of the PGR in Tamaulipas, for his alleged involvement in international cocaine trafficking.

The detainee, 64 years of age, originally from the province of Gragnano, Italy, had a red notification in Interpol and a sentence of 20 years, 11 months and eight days in prison, handed down by the Napoli court.

Perrone, who has been for 10 years in the list of most sought after fugitives by the Italian Government, delivered by the authorities of his country.




He is considered by Italian authorities as a top level member of the Comorra crime family ( Italian Mafia of Napoli ), of the Mazzarella, Nuvoletta, Formicola and Tonornelli families.

In a communication, the PGR detailed that the migratory situation of Giulio Perrone in Mexico was irregular, at the moment of his detention in the town of Ciudad Madero, Tamaulipas, he had two false identities on him that both had photos on them showing the characteristics of this individual

Original article in Spanish at Milenio
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Border Patrol Tunnel Rats

March 12, 2017, 1:08 pm
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By Javier,  Guest reporter Borderland Beat
They are called "tunnel rats", when referring to the U.S. Border Patrol agents who descend  into underground Narco Tunnel that have appeared along the U.S., Mexico border over the past 20 years.  What may appear clear above ground, could have border patrol on duty below the surface.

Sinaloa Cartel  capo Chapo Guzmán, is credited as the innovator behind the drug tunnels, used primarily to traffic drugs.  But the most infamous usage of the Guzmán tunnels, which increasingly have become very sophisticated over the years, was on  the night of July 11, 2015, when chapo disappeared into the underside of his prison cell shower, descending a ladder,  to the tunnel, hopped on a motorbike and exited to freedom.  Albeit, for only six months.

Arguably, the greatest factor of Sinaloa’s trafficking success, are the tunnels. It provides  the ability to transport drugs, in bulk,  to its number one customer, the United States.


The tunnel is equipped with a rail system and electricity, used to move massive loads of drugs.  It is critical to Sinaloa for high risk transports.

In the San Diego area alone, in the past 10 years more than 30 tunnels have been discovered.

The tunnels are the last great frontier for drug trafficking.  Tunnel detection is usually by happenstance. 

It is rumored and reported in Mexico, that some of Mexico’s finest geologists, engineers, and architects have designed the tunnels and also the underground labs.  Not always by choice. And not with a happy ending for the professional coerced into the project.
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Silvestre Piolo Blas: From Professional Soccer Player to Heroin Trafficker

March 12, 2017, 7:00 pm
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An Original Borderland Beat Story written by Chuck B Almada

***Note From Chuck: Hi to all Borderland followers and fans, I had to take a brief hiatus from contributing to the blog due to professional and educational reasons, but now I am happy to be back full of energy and eager to report on important stories and issues that matter to all of us. For the past few days, I have been working on this story, a story that perhaps none of you have heard about. This story is by far an exclusive to Borderland Beat and I hope you all enjoy it. This story was possible thanks to information received from reliable sources and also with information obtained through the Open Records Act that helped corroborate some of those facts***


ATLANTA, GA- Early this month, several Spanish language outlets, including Univision, ESPN Deportes, El Debate, and even the Official Twitter account of Monarcas Morelia announced the death of former professional soccer player, Silvestre Blas Fierros better known as “Piolo.”  Up until today, the details surrounding the death of the 23 year old were unknown. Univision originally reported:


“Through social media, Monarcas Morelia revealed that their former player, Silvestre Blas Fierros died this past Wednesday from unknown causes in the United States. Blas Fierros lived in the United States after leaving Monarcas Morelia, the team in which he debuted in 2014 against Necaxa when he was 20 years old. As of right now, there has been no information regarding the death of the soccer player. In their Twitter message, Monarcas Morelia limited their information to only sending their condolences to the family of the soccer player" (Univision, 2017)
After conducting extensive research throughout the web, all news outlets contained similar information as the above statement, with none mentioning details surrounding the soccer player’s death. Through several reliable sources, Borderland Beat received exclusive information regarding the death of Piolo and his activities in the United States prior to his death.




Piolo was found dead on February 26, 2017 in an upscale Atlanta apartment. According to sources, a lock smith was hired by two other unidentified Hispanic men and requested that he unlock the door to the apartment where Piolo would be found deceased. Once the locksmith unlocked the door, he immediately saw Piolo obviously dead on the floor. The locksmith asked the two unidentified men that hired him if they were going to contact police and they told him that they would. The locksmith immediately left the location and contacted police to let them know what he had just witnessed. The police arrived to the Atlanta apartment to find Piolo still on the floor and no one else inside. Piolo did not show any signs of trauma and a death investigation immediately started.


While Investigators were carrying out the death investigation, they located large quantities of narcotics to include over 30 pounds of Heroin, over 1 pound of pure Fentanyl, and several other items associated with large scale drug trafficking. 
The death of Piolo appeared to be that of an accidental overdose as it appeared that he possibly confused the Fentanyl as cocaine and instantly overdosed after taking a hit.

According to a Fusion TV Network Documentary titled, Death by Fentanyl, “Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin. It’s so potent that an amount the size of three grains of sugar is lethal to an adult. First synthesized in the 1960’s by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Fentanyl was initially used as a general anesthetic during surgery. Its only acceptable, “on-label” use is for reduction of severe pain in cancer-sufferers. Today, the drug has two main sources: the prescription drug industry, and Mexican drug cartels" (Fusion, 2016).
Additionally, a trafficker told Fusion that “there’s almost nobody making pure heroin anymore, because El Diablito (fentanyl lazed heroin) is so much stronger.

 A Cleveland Ohio Fox8 news report indicated that February 2017 was the highest month for deadly heroin, fentanyl overdoses in Cuyahoga County’s history. “At least 60 died from heroin, fentanyl, or a combination of the two, bringing this year’s total to 109" (Fox8, 2017). News such as this one are becoming a common occurrence throughout our country; with more and more people dying from heroin and fentanyl related overdoses.
The loss of life is always a tragedy, but with the death of Piolo, perhaps many innocent lives were saved. The quantity of heroin and fentanyl found in Piolo’s apartment, which was described as a straight up stash house, was in indication that Piolo and his associates were big time suppliers to the Atlanta area and to the East Coast.

According to a Department of Justice report titled ‘Atlanta High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area:’
“Mexican DTOs (Drug Trafficking Organizations) use the Atlanta region as the leading drug distribution center and bulk cash consolidation center in the eastern United States. They are the principal wholesale drug distributors in the region, supplying most other mid-level and retail-level traffickers in the region.

Mexican DTOs operating in the Atlanta region consists of local independent distribution cells that typically use their familial connections in Mexico to obtain wholesale quantities of drugs and distribution cells that are part of drug cartels operating in Mexico, which include cartel-connected bulk cash coordinators. Independent distribution cells, comprising most of the Mexican DTOs operating in the Atlanta region, are not affiliated with any specific cartel in Mexico. As long as members of independent distribution cells receive sufficient supplies of drugs, they are not concerned with which cartel in Mexico supplies the drugs. Nonetheless, several Mexican cartels operate in the region as evidenced by Project Coronado, a 2 year federal investigation that targeted members of La Familia Michoacana" (US-DOJ, 2010).

According to his ligamx.net profile, Piolo Blas is a native of Huetamo, Michoacan Mexico. Borderland Beat has published numerous articles regarding incidents in Huetamo including several battles between antagonist groups that fight for the control of the area. Among the news stories published by Borderland Beat is one about the arrest of the Huetamo mayor, Dalia Santana Pineda in 2014 for extortion and murder. There are several groups operating in Huetamo and Michoacan in general so it is hard to tell what group Piolo was specifically working for.


 As I know that his family is probably suffering for their loss, many would-be-victims got a second chance at life as his heroin and fentanyl won’t be able to poison their lives. I understand that many argue that addicts deserve to die because it is their choice in the first place and I admit that I was one of them, but the more I have seen the more I admit that addiction is something that I will never understand. Addiction is a serious issue that sometimes starts by accident in the form of a legal prescription. We need to wake up and acknowledge that oftentimes our very doctors that we trust with our medical conditions are the gateway to addiction as they prescribe opiates as if they were candy. We see how our veterans return from combat and easily become addicts as doctors take the easy way out and prescribe them opiates instead finding the root of the problem and treating it. Once you go down the slippery slope of opiate addiction, it is almost impossible to survive.
It is not known how long Piolo had been living in Atlanta, but through our sources, we learned that Piolo leased the upscale two thousand dollar per month apartment less than a month prior to this death. Our sources also indicate that Piolo lived in Houston prior to coming to Atlanta. Our sources has indicated that there are more details to Piolo’s death including the items found and seized and the actions of the two unidentified men once they found Piolo’s body and the reason that prompted them to check on him; however, those details will not be released at this time.

 The death of Piolo is an example of the consequences of “don’t get high on your own supply.” In this case, the consequences led to his immediate death and I’m sure that the ripple effect of his death is still being felt all the way in Mexico with the real “owners” of the large quantity of narcotics. As it is common with this industry, heads will roll and by now, a new person has filled the void created by Piolo.
El Corrido del Piolo by Unicos de la Tuba
References:

Fox8. (2017). February was highest month for deadly heroin, fentanyl overdoses in Cuyahoga County history. Retrieved 2017, from http://fox8.com/2017/03/03/february-was-highest-month-for-overdoses-in-cuyahoga-county-history/

Fusion. (2016). Death by Fentanyl. Retrieved from http://interactive.fusion.net/death-by-fentanyl/

Univision (2017). Falleció exfutbolista de Monarcas Morelia en Estados Unidos. Retrieved from http://www.univision.com/deportes/futbol/liga-mx/fallecio-exfutbolista-de-monarcas-morelia-en-estados-unidos

US-DOJ. (2010). Atlanta High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs40/40382/40382p.pdf


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Small Wars Journal: Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #29

March 13, 2017, 12:58 am
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Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #29: By Robert J. Bunker and Marisa Mendoza

Vehicular Ramps Used to Bypass Border Fencing, "As borders tighten, smugglers raise their game"

  Photos from Border Patrol-Campo Ca
…Ongoing measures to erect 670 miles of new fence on the border are credited with helping to cut arrests to some 870,000 last year from 1.1 million. Nevertheless, smugglers are trying and, in many cases succeeding, in breaching every kind of barrier thrown in their paths.

Sturdy steel posts have been sunk in the ground in many areas to stop vehicles crossing north, although drug traffickers have responded by building elaborate vehicle ramps to drive cars over the top, border police say.

“It’s like the old show ‘The Dukes of Hazzard,’ cars flying through the air,” said James Jacques, a supervisory Border Patrol in San Diego, Calif.

Illegal border crossers are also routinely beating pedestrian barriers using ladders tailor-made in clandestine Mexican workshops, border police say, while others have used screwdrivers to try to clamber over new 14-foot tall, steel-mesh barriers designed to deny handholds.

One such attempt was foiled. “It took the man a while, and by the time he got to the top, we were waiting for him,” said Andrew Patterson, a Border Patrol agent in Yuma, Arizona…

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. — The recent use of a large folding ramp to allow drug-carrying vehicles to leapfrog the border fence goes to show the ingenuity of the smugglers, says a Mexican police chief in this city. And Federal Preventative Police Commander Gaston Loaiza says drug traffickers will only get more sophisticated and ingenious in their methods of moving their product into the United States and on to users. His comments came days after Border Patrol agents on patrol in the Barry M. Goldwater Range east of Yuma discovered the folding ramp extending over the border fence from a large truck parked on the Mexican side. Agents found the ramp while chasing a Jeep Cherokee that apparently had just used the ramp to carry across 1,000 pounds of marijuana. “We believe that the ramp could have been used previously,” Loiza said, “but it is a sign that there is a lot of drug smuggling activity in that area.” The area is so heavily used by traffickers, he added, that the day after the discovery, Mexican federal police officers arrested two people as they were preparing to cross on foot in same location with a total of 20 kilos of marijuana strapped to their backs. The fence is part of the U.S. government’s efforts over the past decade to fortify the border against alien and drug smuggling through the use of added barriers and surveillance technology and more agents. But Loaiza said the ramp is proof traffickers will not be stopped by the fence and will always seek ways to carry contraband across the border…
Below: “Suspected smugglers in Jeep try to jump border, but fence wins.” 

It was what appeared to be a midnight smuggling run pitting a Jeep Cherokee versus the 14-foot border fence. The fence won. Suspected smugglers on Tuesday tried to go up and over the barrier at California’s Imperial Sand Dunes on a makeshift ramp, not an uncommon tactic employed by Mexican smugglers since border fencing was erected in the area in recent years. But the Jeep high-centered on the way down, leaving the rear wheels spinning in the air. When U.S. Border Patrol agents arrived minutes later, the vehicle was hanging from the barrier, suspended between Mexico and California. The hatchback of the Jeep was open, leading authorities to believe the suspected smugglers may have somehow retrieved the drugs before fleeing. Their ramp, U.S. Border Patrol authorities said in a statement, was “not quite up to the task.”
 Below:“U.S. seeks answers on border security; reporting in Mexico.” Tucson Sentinel. 
Yuma Sector agents pursued a Chevy Tahoe that used ramps to cross a shallow portion of the Colorado River at the U.S.-Mexico border. The two suspects, unable to get the vehicle back over the barrier once they turned back, abandoned it and fled into Mexico on foot. Officers discovered 23 tightly wrapped bricks of marijuana (281 pounds) in the vehicle and followed tire tracks to a second vehicle that was transporting heavy metal ramps like those used to get the Chevy Tahoe over the border barrier.
Who: Although official credit is not being given to any particular cartel for these incidents, the locations and time frames where these modified vehicles and vehicular ramps were found are consistent with Sinaloa Cartel drug trafficking territory.

What: The use of ramps to allow cartel vehicles to scale the U.S. border fence with Mexico.

When: The modified vehicles and ramps were found on multiple occasions between March 2008 and October 2012.

Where: All of the modified vehicles were found on the Mexican side of the border with ramps extended into the U.S. The first truck found in 2008 was located a few yards south of the border near Campo, California. The second truck (2011) was found east of Yuma, Arizona. The Jeep (2012) was abandoned west of the Arizona-California state line in sand dune desert land.

Why: As heightened border control efforts successfully stop more drug loads at high-traffic border crossing checkpoints and additional physical barriers are erected to stop vehicles from driving through the border via the vast desert land, traffickers have had to become more creative. When utilized in areas with less frequent border patrolling, the ramp assists prove to be an at times effective means of delivering truckloads of drugs into the United States undetected.

Analysis: The United States Border Patrol first found a modified pickup truck with elaborate folding ramps by at least March 2008. Once extended, the ramps were used to lift vehicles packed with bales of marijuana over the top of border fencing. When the modified truck was found, the customized extendable ramp was resting on the United States side of the border fence. In April 2011, while chasing a Jeep Cherokee carrying 1,000 pounds of marijuana, Border Patrol agents discovered another modified pick-up truck. The truck’s ramp was extended over the border fence from the Mexican side. The Jeep Cherokee was believed to have just used the ramp to be lifted over the border into the United States. More recently, in October 2012, drug smugglers tried to use a temporary bridge-like structure with extended ramps to lift a Jeep truck over a 14-foot-high border fence just after midnight. The vehicle high-centered on the way down, leaving the rear wheels spinning in the air. Smugglers abandoned the vehicle and fled back into Mexico when agents approached. The truck got stuck on a floating fence that moves with the sand dunes. Each of the modified trucks and their extendable ramps were not overly sophisticated from an engineering perspective. The fielding of these ramps, however, speaks to the creative and innovative thinking of the Sinaloa Cartel that seeks to traffic drugs into the United States. The ramp assists spotlight the weaknesses of border fencing and physical barriers that are either not patrolled or under remote surveillance by U.S. border patrol personnel. With only three vehicles found since 2008, however, the ramp assist method appears to be a little used technique to deliver drug loads undetected into the United States. The opportunity cost of utilizing this method vis-à-vis other more effective over, through, and under the border trafficking methods suggests that is has for the most part been superseded. Note—A variant on this trafficking approach took place in April 2013 when a Chevy Tahoe and another vehicle utilized heavy ramps to cross a fording area of the Colorado River at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Significance: Drug Trafficking, Innovative Technology Use, Over the Border Smuggling, Sinaloa Cartel, U.S.-Mexico Border Fence, Vehicle Ramps


References

Tim Gaynor, “As border tightens, smugglers raise their game.” Reuters. 10 March 2008, 

Rich Marosi, “Suspected smugglers in Jeep try to jump border, but fence wins.” Los Angeles Times. 31 October 2012,

Cesar Neyoy, “Truckramp shows ingenuity of drug smugglers: police official.” Yuma Sun. 16 April 2011,

Rebekah Zemansky, “U.S.seeks answers on border security; reporting in Mexico.” Tucson Sentinel. 15 April 2013,


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Tijuana: 5 executed in Zona Norte

March 13, 2017, 4:31 pm
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5 executed in Zona Norte

In a small room between Primera and Miguel F. Martinez streets in Zona Norte, a grim stash house of sorts, a man clings to life.  His associates, friends, perhaps family lay dead, between the floor, and and the bleak furnishings, a few battered couches.  Blood leaked from their wounds, all head shots, one or two apiece, spreading out onto the floor.  

Three women and two men, executed, ambushed, likely betrayed.  All 9mm shells, no signs of heavy weapons, long rifles.  They were part of a narco retail cell operating in La Zona.  The kind of group that bears both the blame, and burden for many of the constant killings and mutilations, severed limbs, and bullet holes, weaving in and out of flesh, hot bullet shells dancing across victims insides.

These killings were different then the public executions, shootouts in bars, clubs, mariscos stands, these people saw their killers, and interacted with them before they were killed.  Single shots mostly, no signs of torture, or bounding have been reported.  More then one, to retrain, and to kill 5 people, without problems. At least 3. 

They may have thought they were going to leave.  They were either surprised, lured, or betrayed. They may have begged, pleaded, confessed. They may have stood defiant to the end.  They may have anticipated the shot, as the deafening crack of gunshots echoed across the room, flinched before the bullet pierced their skin, into the back of their skull. 


The retail cells are many, tentacles of larger cells, dispersed all through Tijuana, esp in La Zona.  The family and group of the fallen El Mono, Manuel Luis Toscano, known as Los Iqualos, still maintains a presence.  The people of Los Aquiles have a certain degree of control.  The people of CTNG, formerly under 'El Gross' operate.   It is simply the largest retail market in the city.

The Red Light district attracts sex tourism from San Diego, and internationally, sending hundreds to the bars and brothels that line the area.  Meth and heroin are sold at a retail level to the desperate addicts of Zona Norte, whose addiction consume them, fuel blood and violence across the city. "Globitos" small quantities of crystal and heroin are packaged, labeled, and sold by the retail cells, who in turn pay plaza, and buy product from a larger group.  

Most all of us, are more then what we do, more then what we have done, or will do, and complexity and humanity lays behind the killings and brutality.  There are very truly evil people.  It is undeniable though that in death, what we live behind can represent us, our desperation, our fears, our failures. 

-Maria Guadelupe Ramos Navarro, was 22, bullets struck her neck, and left shoulder.  "Gabriel' was tattooed above her left breast.  

-Unknown male victim, single shot behind the ear, another to the jaw, three skulls tattooed on his forearm.

-Unknown male victim, 30-35 years, single shot behind the ear, "Margarita" tattooed on his left breast. 

-Unknown female, 40-45 years, single shot to the head. 

-Unknown female, 30-35  years, single bullet to the head, behind her ear. "Suerte Puta" tattooed on her chest.  

Sources: AFN Tijuana 


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El Cuini to be extradited to the USA

March 14, 2017, 2:39 am
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Translated  by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Milenio article

The SRE concedes the extradition of Abigael Gonzalez Valencia, identified as number 2 in the CJNG, but he will be extradited when amparo he promoted finishes.


Reporter: Ruben Mosso
The Secretary for Exterior Relations conceded an extradition to the USA of capo Abigael Gonzalez Valencia, El Cuini, identified as number 2 in the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion, the exchange will be realized when the amparo he promoted terminates.

According to Judicial registers, Gonzalez Valencia was approved for extradition on 21st of December of 2016, a resolution that the complainant contested, was the motive for the stay of disposition of a Judge of the 12th District in Penal Matters of Amparo in City of Mexico, which refers to his personal liberty, in a place where he is imprisoned, and at the disposition of the authority that carries out the procedure of extradition.

In April of 2015, a Judge of the 16th District of Federal Penal Processes of the North Preventative Prison, in City of Mexico, ordered the provisional detention with end of extradition of El Cuini.




In the USA, a Federal Court of District of Colombia solicited the detention of Gonzalez Valencia for crimes of criminal organization, crimes against health and money laundering.

Valencia obtained a definitive suspension, which was authorized by a Judge of the 12th District of Amparo, a measure that prevents for the moment his delivery; in the case the petitioner is denied the amparo, the capo may promote an appeal for review, to review the decision in the first instance.

El Cuini was captured on March 28th 2015 in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, during and operation carried out by Federal forces, where three South Americans and one Mexican were also captured.

According to PGR investigations, Gonzalez Valencia was the leader of a cell called Los Cuinis, in charge of money laundering for the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion.

The CJNG participated, on May 1st of 2015, in the violent events in the Guadalajara metropolitan area, which left eight soldiers dead and Federal policeman after a downing of a helicopter of the Mexican Air Force.

Original article in Spanish at Milenio
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El Chapo does not see the light of the Sun, according to his Lawyers

March 15, 2017, 11:40 am
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Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from an Informador.Mx article

Subject Matter: El Chapo Guzman, incarceration conditions
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required


The Lawyers of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman officially solicited, this Monday to Judge Brian Cogan that the "finish or modify immediately the imprisonment conditions in which the capo lives since he was extradited to the USA on the 19th of January.

In a 24 page letter to which we had access, the defence solicited that they finish that severe isolation in which the ex leader of the Sinaloa Cartel lives, without outside contact to anyone other than his three Lawyers and a translator, with only one hour outside his cell, Monday to Friday.

"We solicit the Court to free Mr Guzman and put him in the general prison population. As an alternative, the Court might modify certain sections and dispositions of the special administration applied to Guzman Loera because of his dangerousness and history that his defence lawyers consider unconstitutional, specially communication restrictions.




As a primary measure we solicit that he is permitted to talk to his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, in person or by telephone, so that he may convey his wishes in order to have private counsel for his defence, his current lawyers are public state of New York, as well as to determine which of his assets to use for that purpose. The authorities refuse to do so to "prevent committing, soliciting or conspiring to commit additional criminal activities." The only time he has seen them since the extradition was at a hearing on February the 3rd, when Coronel Aispuro went to witness it.

According to his defence, the prison situation of Guzman Loera violates the rights of the first amendment of the US Constitution, freedom of expression, the fifth, a right to a fair trial, and the sixth, right to an effective defence.

According to his Lawyers this is a day in the life of Guzman Loera

The capo is confined in a small cell with no windows
23 hours a day he is alone
An hour a day he is let out to exercise
Exercise is not allowed on weekends
The only occasion that he briefly sees the light of day is through a small window on the way to visit his Lawyers or the exercise room
Food is served through a slot in the door
The cell lights are always on and the air conditioning is always running
His clock was confiscated without reason which was bought in the jail, taking away from him the ability to discern night from day.

Original article in Spanish at Informador.Mx
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