Over 200 Americans killed in Mexico since '04

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Doberman

Doberman

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MSNBC.com

Over 200 Americans killed in Mexico since '04
State Dept.: More lives lost than in any other country outside combat zones
msnbc.com news services
updated 7:26 a.m. PT, Mon., Feb. 9, 2009
HOUSTON - More than 200 American citizens have been killed since 2004 in Mexico's escalating wave of violence, amounting to the highest number of unnatural deaths in any foreign country outside military combat zones, according to the U.S. State Department.

The deaths included a 22-year-old Houston man and his 16-year-old friend who were hauled out of a minivan and shot execution style. They also included a 65-year-old nurse from Brownsville found floating in the Rio Grande after visiting a Mexican beauty salon and a retiree stabbed to death while camping on a Baja beach, reported the Houston Chronicle in a story published Sunday, which examined hundreds of records related to the deaths.

The State Department tracks most American homicides abroad but releases few details about the deaths. Most, however, occurred in border cities, including Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo, where violence has spiked with drug cartel feuds in recent years.

The Chronicle analysis showed some American homicide victims were involved in organized crime. At least two dozen American victims were labeled as cartel hitmen, drug dealers, smugglers or gang members. Others were drug users or wanted for crimes in the United States.

But in at least 70 other cases, the Americans were killed in Mexico while there on seemingly innocent business: visiting family, vacationing or living and working there.

Mexican Congressman Juan Francisco Rivera Bedoya of Nuevo Leon said he believes most American victims get killed after crossing the border for illegal activities or venturing into unsafe areas.

"Tourists visiting cathedrals, museums and other cultural centers are not at risk," he said.

'Travel alerts' for border communities
The State Department last year issued "travel alerts" for several border communities, warning that dozens of U.S. citizens had been kidnapped or killed in Tijuana, though it gave no details.

"We're not trying to scare anybody off, but we sure as heck want people to be aware of the dangerous conditions that they might encounter in certain parts of the country," said former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza in an interview before he left his post.

Meanwhile, Mexico said over the weekend that 100 more federal police officers had been assigned to the capital's airport following a series of assaults on travelers who exchanged money.

Five of the victims have been foreigners, including a French scientist who was killed.

Federal Police official Brig. Gen. Alfredo Fregoso said the reinforcement brings to 500 the number of federal officers patrolling the airport.

Prosecutors say at least 18 people who were recently robbed outside the airport were apparently followed after exchanging money inside.

The French scientist was shot in the head last month after assailants intercepted his car and stole $6,336.

Fregoso's announcement Saturday came a day after a Colombian man became the 18th reported victim.

Gruesome deaths
Across Mexico, more than 5,000 people were killed last year, authorities report. Some of the deaths of police and other public officials have been public and gruesome, with bodies posed in public places.

The Chronicle found that among the American deaths, at least 40 were killed and had their bodies dumped in the methods favored by drug cartels.

Few of the killers are caught.

Only about 20 percent of homicides in Mexico result in arrests, the Chronicle found in its analysis of data from the Citizens' Safety Institute. The Mexico City-based nonprofit surveys prosecutors across Mexico.

Records from the prosecutor in Baja California Norte, home to Tijuana, show none of the cases from 2004 to 2006 have been closed. More than 90 Americans have been killed in the state south of San Diego since 2003.

More on Mexico

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29095730/


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Gas One

Gas One

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May 24, 2006
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Downtown, Pittsburg. Southeast Dago.
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tijuana is real bad right now. i wouldnt go there to hang out or to 'sightsee'. but with that said theres oppurtunity. i just would keep your head fucking down and dont talk to anyone. if you buy anything in tijuana illegal you better have a plan of where it-and you....are going waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before you leave wherever youre at.

and if you see a van pull up with masked men and gloves with automatic rifles, run

fast
 
Dhadnot

Dhadnot

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#7
Feb 7, 2006
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how can we be scared of mexico when we live in N. Mexico? Honestly i mean it seems scary but Im not that frightened after being in Chiapas with the EZLN fighting the government.
 
The Duke of Earl

The Duke of Earl

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Apr 25, 2002
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Mr. Rictus said:
I love how scared Cali people are of Mexico. I think people that know what's up create all these little urban legends to scare off the squares.
Click to expand...
mexico ain't no joke. seriously i know people who go visit they know when you've lived or stayed out in america for a while but at the same time many of them don't speak english out their cuz theirs a chance they could be kidnapped n held for ransome
 
THIZZHARD

THIZZHARD

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Mar 22, 2006
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#10
Mr. Rictus said:
I love how scared Cali people are of Mexico. I think people that know what's up create all these little urban legends to scare off the squares.
Click to expand...
READ THIS THERES MORE THAN SURFBOARDS AND SKATEBOARDS OUT HERE YOU FUCKING SQUARE
straight from todays newspaper signonsandiego.com

DRUG VIOLENCE SPILLS INTO US FROM MEXICO

Just as government officials had feared, the drug violence raging in Mexico is spilling over into the United States.
U.S. authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels. And to some policymakers' surprise, much of the violence is happening not in towns along the border, where it was assumed the bloodshed would spread, but a considerable distance away, in places such as Phoenix and Atlanta.
Investigators fear the violence could erupt elsewhere around the country because the Mexican cartels are believed to have set up drug-dealing operations all over the U.S., in such far-flung places as Anchorage, Alaska; Boston; and Sioux Falls, S.D.
"The violence follows the drugs," said David Cuthbertson, agent in charge of El Paso's FBI office.
The violence takes many forms: Drug customers who owe money are kidnapped until they pay up. Cartel employees who don't deliver the goods or turn over the profits are disciplined through beatings, kidnappings or worse. And drug smugglers kidnap illegal immigrants in clashes with human smugglers over the use of secret routes from Mexico.
So far, the violence is nowhere near as grisly as the mayhem in Mexico, which has witnessed beheadings, assassinations of police officers and soldiers, and mass killings in which the bodies were arranged to send a message. But law enforcement officials worry the violence on this side could escalate.
"They are capable of doing about anything," said Rusty Payne, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in Washington. "When you are willing to chop heads off, put them in an ice chest and drop them off at a police precinct, or roll a head into a disco, put beheadings on YouTube as a warning," very little is off limits.
In an apartment near Birmingham, Ala., police found five men with their throats slit in August. They had apparently been tortured with electric shocks before being killed in a murder-for-hire orchestrated by a Mexican drug organization over a drug debt of about $400,000.
In Phoenix, 150 miles north of the Mexican border, police have reported a sharp increase in kidnappings and home invasions, with about 350 each year for the last two years, and say the majority were committed at the behest of the Mexican drug gangs.
In June, heavily armed men stormed a Phoenix house and fired randomly, killing one person. Police believe it was the work of Mexican drug organizations.
Authorities in Atlanta are also seeing an increase in drug-related kidnappings tied to Mexican cartels. Estimates of how many such crimes are being committed are hard to come by because many victims are connected to the cartels and unwilling to go to the police, said Rodney G. Benson, DEA agent in charge in Atlanta.
Agents said they have rarely seen such brutality in the U.S. since the "Miami Vice" years of the 1980s, when Colombian cartels had the corner on the cocaine market in Florida.
Last summer, Atlanta-area police found a Dominican man who had been beaten, bound, gagged and chained to a wall in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in Lilburn, Ga. The 31-year-old Rhode Island resident owed $300,000 to Mexico's Gulf Cartel, Benson said. The Gulf Cartel, based in Matamoros just south of the Texas border, is one of the most ruthless of the Mexican organizations that deal drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin.
"He was shackled to a wall and one suspect had an AK-47. The guy was in bad shape," Benson said. "I have no doubt in my mind if that ransom wasn't paid, he was going to be killed."
In July, Atlanta-area police shot and killed a suspected kidnapper while he was trying to pick up a $2 million ransom owed to his cartel bosses, Benson said.
State and federal governments have sent millions of dollars to local law enforcement along the Mexican border to help fend off spillover drug crime. But investigators believe Arizona and Atlanta are seeing the worst of the violence because they are major drug distribution hubs thanks to their webs of interstate highways.
In fact, drug officials have dubbed Atlanta "the new Southwest border," said Jack Killorin, a former federal drug agent and director of the Atlanta region's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force.
El Paso, population 600,000, is only a quarter-mile away from Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, which has seen open gun battles and 1,700 murders in the last year. But El Paso remains one of America's safest cities, something Cuthbertson said is probably a result of the huge law enforcement presence in town, including thousands of Border Patrol and customs agents.
In the past year, more than 5,000 people have been killed across Mexico in a power struggle among Mexico's drug cartels and ferocious fighting between them and the Mexican government. The cartels have established operations in at least 230 U.S. cities, according to the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.
Payne said the U.S. and Mexico are working together to pressure the warring cartels. Payne cited the extradition of high-level drug suspects – four members of the Arellano Felix cartel in Tijuana were brought to the U.S. in December – and the capture or killings of several other top cartel leaders across Mexico in the past year.
"We have to make sure that we attack these criminal organizations at every level so that we are safer not only in Mexico and on the Southwest border, but here in the rest of the country," Payne said.
While some Americans may feel victimized by the spillover of violence, others are contributing to it. Americans provide 95 percent of the weapons used by the cartel, according to U.S. authorities. And Americans are the cartels' best customers, sending an estimated $28.5 billion in drug-sale proceeds across the Mexico border each year.
 
THIZZHARD

THIZZHARD

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Mar 22, 2006
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heres another one from this week

Drug gangs threaten Tijuana cops on radio, then kill them
11:21 a.m. February 6, 2009

TIJUANA — Mexican drug gangs are breaking into Tijuana police radio frequencies to issue chilling death threats to cops which they then carry out, demoralizing security forces in a worsening drug war.
“You're next, bastard ... We're going to get you,” an unidentified drug gang member said over the police radio in the city of Tijuana after naming a policeman.
The man also threatened a second cop by name and played foot-stomping “narcocorrido” music, popular with drug cartels, over the airwaves.
“No one can help them,” an officer named Jorge said of his threatened colleagues as he heard the threats in his patrol car.
Sure enough, two hours later the dead bodies of the two named policemen were found dumped on the edge of the city, their hands tied and bullet wounds in their heads.
Cartels killed some 530 police in Mexico last year, some of them corrupt officers who were working for rival gangs. Others were killed in shoot-outs or murdered for working against the gangs or refusing to turn a blind eye to drug shipments.
Violence has hit shocking levels in Tijuana, over the border from San Diego, since President Felipe Calderon launched an army crackdown on traffickers in late 2006, stirring up new wars between rival cartels over smuggling routes.
The drug war is scaring tourists and investors away from northern Mexico, forcing some businesses to shutter just as the country heads into recession this year.
Badly-paid Tijuana municipal police, often accused of collaborating with rival wings of the local Arellano Felix cartel, are badly demoralized, senior officers say.
“These death threats are part of the psychological warfare that organized crime is using against officers,” said Tijuana police chief Gustavo Huerta.
“Before, the gangs began infiltrating the radio after a police execution, which was bad enough, but now they are doing it beforehand and the force feels terrorized,” he said.
 
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