Mexican police investigate possible new drug gang

ACAPULCO, Mexico - Mexican authorities are investigating the possible emergence of a new drug gang that appeared to take credit for six killings through a message left with the bodies Monday, officials said.

The six men were found inside a car in the southwestern city of Chilpancingo, Guerrero state police said in a statement. Next to them lay a message reading: "This will happen to all rapists, extortionists and kidnappers. Attentively, the New Cartel of the Sierra."

Authorities are investigating the authenticity of the gang, said an official with the state prosecutors office, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. The official said authorities had no previous knowledge of such an organized crime group.

The car was reported stolen hours before the bodies were found, according to the police statement. The owner told police that armed men intercepted him on a highway and forced him out of the car.

One body was found stuffed inside a black bag and the rest were tied up.

At least seven major drug trafficking cartels operate in Mexico, but there are many smaller gangs throughout the country, often affiliated with one of the bigger groups.

The cartels have increasingly splintered since President Felipe Calderon launched an intensified crackdown after taking office in late 2006, deploying thousands of troops and federal police across Mexico.

Mexican authorities have blamed the infighting for a surge of gang violence that has killed nearly 25,000 people in less than four years.

Most recently, a fight for control of the Beltran Leyva cartel has increased violence in central and southwestern Mexico, including Guerrero state, which is home to the resort city of Acapulco.

The Beltran Leyva cartel splintered after its leader, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a gunbattle with Mexican marines in December. That split occurred only a year after the Beltran Leyva gang broke with the Sinaloa cartel, which remains one of the world's most powerful drug trafficking organizations.

Violence has also surged this year along Mexico's northeastern border with the U.S. since the Gulf cartel split with its former gang of enforcers, the Zetas.

In that region, the bodies of four men were found dumped in a plaza Monday in Nuevo Laredo, a city across the border from Laredo, Texas, the Tamaulipas state police said in statement. The bodies had signs of torture and were found with the remains of a dog and a cat and several threatening messages.

In the city of Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City, state investigators found the burned bodies of three men near a major highway. The victims had been bound before being burned. Painted on a nearby wall were the letters "CPS," an apparent reference to the Southern Pacific drug cartel.

Mexico: Prison guards let killers out, lent guns

MEXICO CITY - Guards and officials at a prison in northern Mexico allegedly let inmates out, lent them guns and allowed them to use official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings, including the massacre of 17 people last week, prosecutors said Sunday.

After carrying out the killings the inmates would return to their cells, the Attorney General's Office said in a revelation that was shocking even for a country wearied by years of drug violence and corruption.

"According to witnesses, the inmates were allowed to leave with authorization of the prison director ... to carry out instructions for revenge attacks using official vehicles and using guards' weapons for executions," office spokesman Ricardo Najera said at a news conference.

The director of the prison in Gomez Palacio in Durango state and three other officials were placed under a form of house arrest pending further investigation. No charges have yet been filed.

Prosecutors said the prison-based hit squad is suspected in three mass shootings, including the July 18 attack on a party in the city of Torreon, which is near Gomez Palacio. In that incident, gunmen fired indiscriminately into a crowd of mainly young people in a rented hall, killing 17 people, including women.

Police found more than 120 bullet casings at the scene, and Najera said tests matched those casings to four assault rifles assigned to guards at the prison.

Similar ballistics tests linked the guns to earlier killings at two bars in Torreon, the capital of northern Coahuila state, he said. At least 16 people were killed in those attacks on Feb. 1 and May 15, local media reported.

Najera blamed the killings on disputes between rival drug cartels. "Unfortunately, the criminals also carried out cowardly killings of innocent civilians, only to return to their cells," he said.

Coahuila and neighboring Durango are among several northern states that have seen a spike in drug-related violence that authorities attribute to a fight between the Gulf cartel and its former enforcers, known as the Zetas.

Mexico has long had a problem with investigating crimes, catching criminals and convicting people. Reports estimate less than 2 percent of crimes in Mexico result in prison sentences. But Sunday's revelation suggests that even putting cartel gunmen in prison may not prevent them from continuing to commit crimes.

Interior Secretary Francisco Blake said the revelation "can only be seen as a wake-up call for authorities to address, once again, the state of deterioration in many local law enforcement institutions ... we cannot allow this kind of thing to happen again."

Also Sunday, Mexican federal police announced the arrest of an alleged leading member of a drug gang blamed in recent killings and a car-bombing in the violence-ridden border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.

Police described Luis Vazquez Barragan, 39, as a top member of La Linea gang, the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel, saying he received orders directly from cartel boss Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

Vazquez Barragan allegedly organized payments, moved drugs and oversaw a system of safe houses in and around Ciudad Juarez.

Police said he held the same rank as fugitive gang leader Juan Pablo Ledezma, though Vazquez Barragan is not named on reward or most-wanted lists published by the Attorney General's Office, as Ledezma is.

La Linea has been blamed for a car bomb that killed three people July 15 in Ciudad Juarez and for two separate shootings March 13 that killed a U.S. consular employee and two other people connected to the consulate.

Police did not say when they caught Vazquez Barragan, but he was allegedly in possession of about a half-kilogram (pound) of cocaine and two guns.

His arrest led to a raid on a safe house where authorities detained four suspects and freed a kidnap victim.

Also Sunday, the Attorney General's Office said soldiers on patrol in Ciudad Madero in the border state of Tamaulipas seized an arsenal of about three dozen guns, 17 grenades and thousands of bullets in a house.

Elsewhere in Tamaulipas, police and prosecutors raided a lot full of truck-pulled tankers in the border city of Reynosa and seized two loaded with oil of a type sometimes stolen from the pipelines of the state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos. More than a dozen other tankers and freight containers were also seized.

Mexican drug cartels have allegedly become involved in increasingly sophisticated thefts of fuel and oil from Mexico's pipelines.

In the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, authorities reported Sunday they had found the bullet-ridden bodies of six men dumped in various locations, including three in or around the resort of Acapulco. Two of the dead men were identified as people kidnapped earlier in the month.

-Associated Press

Mexican president replaces top security official

Caption: Mexico's new Interior Minister Francisco Blake, left, Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, center, and Mexico's outgoing Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont, gesture during a ceremony at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City, Wednesday, July 14. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's president accepted the resignation Wednesday of his top domestic security official, Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont, and named a former congressman with experience in fighting drug cartels to replace him.

President Felipe Calderon praised the hands-on experience the new federal interior secretary, Jose Francisco Blake, gained serving in the same post at the state level in Baja California, a border state plagued by drug violence.

"In that position, he has played a fundamental role in confronting in a decisive way the problems of violence in that state," Calderon said of Blake, who will oversee the multi-agency national security council.

"The knowledge he has of crime, and the good relations he managed to build between the police and army in the fight against crime in Baja California, will without doubt be of great value in strengthening the fight for public safety," Calderon said.

Mexico's federal police and the army have played the leading roles in a war against drug cartels that has cost more than 22,700 lives since Calderon announced an anti-drug offensive in late 2006.

But in many regions, the army has voiced mistrust of corruption-ridden local police forces.

The Interior Department that Blake will head plays a key role in coordinating efforts between the forces and intelligence gathering. It also recently began promoting a series of social programs it said are aimed at reducing the poverty and unemployment that contribute to the drug problem.

One of the challenges facing the new interior secretary will be gaining approval for a government proposal to combine scattered, ill-equipped and poorly supervised city police forces into single, statewide forces.

Calderon praised Gomez Mont, but more for his efforts at political reforms since assuming the post in November 2008 than for any hands-on involvement in the war against drug cartels.

Gomez Mont's most famous moment in the drug war was an undignified moment in the drug-plagued border city of Ciudad Juarez when a heckler slapped him in the back of the head.

Calderon suggested that Gomez, a prominent lawyer and gifted orator with little or no law enforcement experience, would return to private practice.

The leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, welcomed Gomez Mont's resignation.

In a statement, the PRD said his exit "puts an end to a period of constant confrontation between the former head of domestic policy and the opposition parties, who he always treated with disrespect."

The resignation came after a highly publicized dispute between Gomez Mont and Calderon over the advisability of forming electoral alliances with leftist parties like the PRD to prevent a predicted wave of victories by the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Gomez Mont heatedly opposed such alliances, and resigned from Calderon's conservative National Action Party in February to protest the pacts, which some party members said placed in doubt the party's ideological underpinnings.

However, the alliances helped coalition candidates wrest two important governorships from the PRI in the country's July 4th elections.

He also angered the opposition by overseeing the liquidation of a state-owned electrical power company whose militant union had been a constant thorn in the side of the government.

The new interior secretary, Blake, stressed his commitment to human rights and press freedoms, and promised "a democratic security policy, supported not only by the forces of law and order, but also by the three branches of government, and society as a whole."

"We will have to specially direct our efforts in meeting the challenges to public safety and the fight against organized crime," Blake said in accepting the post.

Gomez Mont was also hurt by the antics of his brother Miguel - the former head of the country's tourism investment fund - who was involved in an embarrassing scuffle at the soccer World Cup in June, and later resigned.

Calderon also announced the appointment of Bruno Ferrari, the former head of the country's investment promotion agency, as economy secretary, to replace Gerardo Ruiz Mateos, who will move on to become Calderon's chief-of-staff.

Ferrari said Mexico has "been promoting a responsible and profound transformation," and pledged to continue that work.

But while it has passed tax and regulatory reforms, Calderon's administration has made little headway on its biggest challenge - reforming the country's antiquated labor laws and opening the state-controlled oil sector to greater private participation.

Ferrari said he would continue to make Mexico more investment-friendly, more competitive and productive, and pledged greater economic growth and job creation, but did not say what specific reforms he would pursue in the two years left in the administration.

-Associated Press

7 gunmen, 1 soldier dead in clashes in Mexico

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - The Mexican army says seven gunmen and one soldier have died this week in gunbattles in two cities bordering Texas.

According to army statements, the first shootout killed a soldier in Reynosa on Sunday. Four gunmen died Tuesday in the same city, and another three were killed in Nuevo Laredo.

The army also said Wednesday that it's investigating an altercation between soldiers and journalists covering the Nuevo Laredo shootout. A video posted online shows soldiers pushing two reporters. The army said it was trying to remove the journalists for their own safety.

Northeastern Mexico has seen increased violence due to a turf battle between the Gulf drug cartel and its former ally, the Zetas drug gang.

-Associated Press

3 bodies found hanging from bridges in Mexico

CUERNAVACA, Mexico - Three dead bodies were found Tuesday hanging from pedestrian bridges in the central Mexican city of Cuernavaca

Morelos state prosecutors' spokesman Efrain Vega said the victims were shot to death. The bodies were accompanied by threatening notes signed by a drug gang.

Vega said the three men escaped from a state prison last month.

The message accused them of working for Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a U.S.-born enforcer known as "La Barbie." It was attributed to the Southern Pacific cartel, believed to have formed from the remnants of the Beltran Leyva cartel.

Authorities say more than 120 people have died this year in a turf war between Valdez Villareal and Hector Beltran Leyva.

Also Tuesday, gunmen killed three state police officers in two ambush-style attacks in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Another officer was seriously wounded.

Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for prosecutors in the northern state of Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juarez is located, said the first attack occurred on a busy avenue, killing both agents in a patrol vehicle; a second patrol car was attacked 15 minutes later elsewhere on the same avenue, killing one officer and wounding another.

Ciudad Juarez has been hit by over 1,400 drug-related killings so far in 2010, and over 2,600 in 2009. There was no immediate information on the identity of the assailants or motive in the Tuesday attack.

Also Tuesday, Mexico's Defense Department reported that three assailants died Monday in a shootout with soldiers in the border city of Reynosa. The soldiers reportedly came under fire while on patrol, returned fire and seized three rifles at the scene.

-Associated Press

Mexican marines grab alleged drug gang lieutenant

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's navy says marines raided a house in the Pacific resort of Acapulco and captured a suspected regional chief of a drug gang involved in a bloody turf war in the center and south of Mexico.

A statement Sunday from the navy says troops detained Gamaliel Aguirre Tavira on Saturday, along with two women and another man. It says the marines found six rifles, five pistols, 41 magazines, 2,000 bullets, a grenade launcher and eight grenades.

Authorities say the 35-year-old Aguirre Tavira is a close ally of Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a Texas-born gang boss known as "La Barbie" who leads one of the two factions fighting over control of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel.

-Associated Press