| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2009 
Police: Drug Turf Battles Near Mexico's Capital
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
go to original
| | Police officers guard five suspected members of a crime gang allegedly operating in the outskirts of Mexico City, while being shown to the press in Mexico City, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009. Drug cartels that have waged bloody turf battles across northern and western Mexico have now brought their fight to the outskirts of Mexico City, federal police said Thursday in announcing the arrest of 10 members of a heavily-armed hit squad. (AP/Eduardo Verdugo) | |
Mexico City – Drug cartels that have waged bloody turf battles across Mexico's border region have now brought their fight to the outskirts of Mexico City, federal police said Thursday in announcing the arrest of 10 alleged members of an armed hit squad.
The eight men and two women arrested Wednesday were allegedly working for the Sinaloa-based Beltran Leyva cartel and had been hired to attack the rival La Familia cartel, which has allegedly moved into the capital from the nearby state of Michoacan.
"It is clear that these two gangs, the two cartels, are already on the outskirts of Mexico City," said acting federal police Commissioner Rodrigo Esparza, adding "there is a war between these two criminal gangs for the territory."
The 10 suspects were arrested in the township of Tultitlan, on the northern outskirts of one of the world's largest cities. They worked for Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "Barbie," the reputed chief hit man for the Beltran Leyva cartel, Esparza said. Earlier, police had arrested 13 heavily armed members of the La Familia cartel in the same area.
The two gangs are apparently fighting for control of trafficking routes as well as local drug sales, he said.
While cartel hitmen have carried out selective assassinations in Mexico City and some cartel operators have been arrested here, the city has been largely spared the raging gunbattles that claimed the lives of more than 6,000 people in Mexico last year.
The bodies of 24 men were found bound with duct tape and shot in the head last year in a rural area outside Mexico City. Authorities believe the killings stemmed from a territorial dispute between cartels. Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina has said at least 17 of the victims were identified as bricklayers who had been recruited into drug dealing.
Also Thursday, a Mexican judge ordered a former federal police official to stand trial on charges that he protected drug traffickers.
The judge found enough evidence to proceed with the case against former regional police coordinator Javier Herrera, who was arrested earlier this month on organized-crime and drug charges, the Attorney General's Office said in a statement.
Herrera allegedly received $35,000 twice a month from traffickers in the northern state of Tamaulipas and helped smugglers in southern Guerrero state, where he was in charge of the federal police, authorities said.
Last year, Herrera accused top federal police officials of incompetence and mismanagement and had since been dismissed. He is being held in a federal prison in western Nayarit state. |
|
| |
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us