DEA Knew Mexican Drug Lord Had Escape Plan

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the DEA knew of the Mexican drug lord Guzman's escape plans and warned Mexican authorities.

WASHINGTON - The weekend disappearance of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman from a maximum security prison should have come as little surprise to Mexican authorities: The Drug Enforcement Administration had alerted them 16 months ago about several plans to escape.

Mexico's most notorious drug trafficker began plotting to break out almost immediately after his recapture at a seaside resort in February 2014. Internal DEA documents obtained by the Associated Press revealed that drug agents first got information in March 2014 that various Guzman family members and drug-world associates were considering "potential operations to free Guzman."

Mexico's Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said late yesterday that authorities were never informed "in that respect," referring to previous escape plans. He added that U.S. counterparts also said they didn't know where the escape information in the AP story came from.

But a U.S. official briefed on the investigation confirmed to the AP that the Mexican authorities were alerted about the plots. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose details.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20150714_DEA_knew_drug_lord_had_escape_plan.html  

An Unexpected Place For Lessons To Fight Mexico's Mafia: Italy

Robert Saviano, author of Gomorrah, offers his views on how to combat Mexican organized crime at Reuters.com.

At this moment, the fiercest, most powerful criminal organizations in the world are located in Mexico. Recent events should leave no one with any doubts.

On Sept. 26, 43 trainee teachers in the southwestern city of Iguala were abducted by the police and, according to the government, were most likely murdered by drug traffickers. Their deaths, which are the latest in a long list of bloody gang-related murders, sparked widespread riots in Mexico City. According to Amnesty International, 136,100 people were killed by Mexican cartels between December 2006 and May 2014 alone.

So how is Mexico to deal with this formidable problem? Perhaps it could look to Italy for lessons on how a deeply entrenched mafia.

Why Italy?

Italy is the country with the oldest mafia in the world—indeed, the very word mafia has Italian origins. But ever since the 1980s and early 1990s, when the Italian mafia was planting bombs on highways to kill state magistrates, mafia-related homicides have nose-dived. Between 1992 and 2012, murders related to organized crime dropped around 80 percent, according to the United Nations.

According to one mafia expert, the “radical and painful” changes seen in the decline of mafia groups in southern Italy “are the best proof of the effectiveness of anti-mafia law enforcement.”

Some might counter that Mexico does not have a mafia problem. After all, the Mexican cartels are often simply referred to as “drug traffickers.”

However, the most recent report of the U.S. State Department has estimated that the amount of money laundered annually in Mexico is between $19 and $29 billion. Such data suggests that continuing to merely call them drug traffickers is neither accurate nor, indeed, responsible.

To launder that amount of money, one has to be a mafia organization. These groups do more than merely produce and sell drugs — they reinvest profits in real estate, businesses and stocks. In addition, the groups also have a pyramid structure and employ financial consultants and accountants, which is typical of mafia organizations.

To date, Mexico has primarily used military crackdowns to fight its mafia. This has not resolved the situation, and, in some cases, has even worsened it by leading to a significant increase in ferocity and defections.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/12/04/an-unexpected-place-for-lessons-to-fight-mexicos-mafia-italy/

Zetas Cartel Leader Known For 'Stewing' Enemies Captured In Dramatic Helicopter Arrest; Found With $2 Million In Cash

The New York Post offers a piece on the arrrest of the Zetas cartel leader.

MEXICO CITY — Mexican Marines have made a dramatic highway arrest of notorious Zetas cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, the brutal drug lord known for burning enemies alive in barrels of oil and orchestrating the beheading of hundreds of people in turf wars that have ravaged the country.

Morales, 40, was captured before dawn Monday by Marines who intercepted a pickup truck with $2 million in cash on a dirt road in the countryside outside the border city of Nuevo Laredo, which has long served as the Zetas' base of operations. The truck was halted by a Marine helicopter and Trevino Morales was taken into custody along with a bodyguard and an accountant and eight guns, government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez told reporters.

It was the first major blow against an organized crime leader by a Mexican administration struggling to drive down persistently high levels of violence. Experts on the Zetas said that the arrest, at least the eighth capture or killing of a high-ranking Zeta since 2011, could leave behind a series of cells scattered across northern Mexico without a central command but with the same appetite for kidnapping, extortion and other crimes against innocent people.

"It's another link in the destruction of the Zetas as a coherent, identifiable organization," said Alejandro Hope, a former member of Mexico's domestic intelligence service. "There will still be people who call themselves Zetas, bands of individuals who maintain the same modus operandi. There will be fights over illegal networks." 

You can read the rest of the story and watch a video clip via the below link:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/mexican_marines_take_down_notorious_auR2FYaOieh7mhA13gpSeL