Fox News:Soldiers stand guard around a presentation of arms captured in arrest of Jaime Gonzalez Duran, alias 'El Hummer' in Mexico City in November, 2008.
They were armed to the teeth. Their arsenal ranged
from semi-automatic rifles to rocket-propelled grenades. When the smoke finally
cleared and the government had prevailed, Mexican federal agents captured 540
assault rifles, more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 150 grenades, 14
cartridges of dynamite, 98 fragmentation grenades, 67 bulletproof vests, seven
Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifles and a Light Anti Tank (LAW) rocket.
A drug gang kidnapped and
killed six people near a town in the U.S.-Mexican border region Tuesday,
prompting a series of gunbattles with soldiers that left 15 others dead. The
violence started when gunmen kidnapped nine alleged members of a rival drug gang
in Villa Ahumada and later executed six of them along the PanAmerican highway
outside of the town, 80 miles south of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El
Paso, Texas, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for a joint military-police
operation in Chihuahua state. Assailants later released three of the men,
although their whereabouts was not immediately known, Torres said. Soldiers
later caught up with the gunmen and a series of shootouts ensued, leaving 14
alleged gunmen and one soldier dead Tuesday, Torres said. Another soldier was
wounded. Mexico's has been besieged by drug violence amid a two-year government
crackdown. President Felipe Calderon said Monday that more than 6,000 people
have died in drug-related violence. Villa Ahumada, a town of 1,500 people, was
virtually taken over by drug gangs last year when gangs killed two consecutive
police chiefs, and two officers. The rest of the 20-member force resigned in
fear, forcing the Mexican military to take over for months until the town was
able to recruit new officers. The town's mayor, Fidel Chavez, fled to the state
capital for his own safety.
Times: Mexican Man Admits Using Acid on Bodies, Army Says
MEXICO CITY — Pozole is a popular Mexican stew that can feature
pork, hominy and an array of vegetables and seasonings. But the name of the
delicacy has taken on a sinister new meaning: Mexican authorities have detained
a man linked to hundreds of deaths in the drug war who is being called the
Pozole Maker.
The man, Santiago Meza López, known as “el Pozolero” in the
Mexican news media, has confessed to dissolving the remains of 300 people in
acid while working for a top drug trafficker, the Mexican Army said Friday.
Dissolving bodies is gaining increasing popularity in the internecine killings
between rival traffickers that is playing out here, and the practice has become
known as making pozole (pronounced poh-ZOH-leh).
Mr. Meza, 45, confessed to
receiving $600 a week to dispose of bodies for Teodoro García Simental, a drug
kingpin who broke with the Tijuana-based Arellano Félix cartel and is said to be
at war with Fernando Sánchez Arellano, his former boss, the authorities said.
Soldiers and police officers paraded Mr. Meza before reporters on Friday in
a remote area on the outskirts of Tijuana, where he was accused of dumping
bodies into pits over the last decade, pouring acid on them and letting them
dissolve underground.
Mr. Meza admitted as much as the authorities
surrounded him and ordered him to speak up to the press. “I ask for forgiveness
from the families of these people,” he said, according to the newspaper Reforma.
In September, the police found three barrels of acid containing human
remains outside a seafood restaurant with a note attached that said, “We’re
going to make pozole” of those who work with the engineer, a reference to Mr.
Sánchez Arellano’s nickname.
The authorities suspect that Mr. García is
behind those killings and others in which mutilated bodies have turned up on
Tijuana’s streets. The military nearly arrested Mr. García on Thursday,
officials said.
I think I will be praying quite earnestly about this trip!
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