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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2008 
Mexican Soldiers Make Huge Drug Gang Arms Seizure
 Chris Aspin - Reuters
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| | Mexican soldiers stand behind a haul of weapons that was seized after a gun battle in the border town of Tijuana March 7, 2008. Soldiers seized over 90 weapons, almost 50,000 rounds of ammunition and over 400kg of marijuana and made 3 arrests, local media reported. (Reuters/Jorge Duenes) | | |
Tijuana, Mexico - Soldiers made one of the biggest ever arms seizures in Mexico after raiding a house in this border city, uncovering grenade launchers, machine guns and other weapons encrusted with gold figures of skulls.
Major Justo Buenaventura Jaime Villareal told Reuters on Friday the haul - 91 weapons, 50,000 rounds of ammunition, grenades and explosives, together with a half tonne of marijuana - were found after a tip-off and gunfight.
Three suspected members of the Tijuana cartel, run by the Arellano Felix family, were arrested after a two-hour shootout on Thursday night at the house they were guarding.
"This is the biggest ever confiscation that has been made against the Arellano Felix organization," said Jaime Villareal.
Drug gang members often like to personalize their weapons with expensive details. Some weapons found in the haul had white and yellow gold encrustations of skulls and others had cowboy-themed figures.
Separately, soldiers caught six local police chiefs red-handed at a gas station sporting luxury watches and carrying envelopes stuffed with wads of cash, the army said.
Soldiers in the northern state of Tamaulipas rushed to the gas station after a tip-off that members of the powerful Gulf drug Cartel were there. They detained six men who turned out to be municipal police commanders for suspicious activity, the army said.
Searches of the men produced six envelopes filled with thousands of dollars each as well as Rolex and Cartier watches, priced far beyond the means of police officers' salaries, the army said.
The police bosses, from various local forces in Tamaulipas, said the cash was either wages, expense payments or their own savings. The soldiers turned them over to federal investigators.
Mexican police, especially in northern states riddled with drug traffickers, are widely seen as corrupt and prone to top up their meager wages with cash bribes from drug gangs that smuggle cocaine across the border to the United States.
Tens of thousands of troops sent by President Felipe Calderon to crack down on the cartels have disarmed entire police forces in Tijuana, across the border from California, and other towns on suspicion officers were in the pay of drug gangs.
(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Tijuana and Noel Randewich in Mexico City, editing by Todd Eastham) |
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