MEXICO | Using antiterrorist law against the cartels. In the wake of the Casino Royale arson attack in late August, President Felipe Calderón labelled those responsible, already assumed to be connected with one or another of the drug cartels, as terrorists. ‘It is evident,’ he said, ‘that we are not confronted by common criminals. We are confronted by true terrorists who have overstepped every boundary, not only of the law, but also of basic common sense and respect for life.’ Calderón’s government had previously resisted calling the cartels terrorists or insurgents.
Arturo Sarukhan, Mexican ambassador to the US, put the position in the following terms: ‘The transnational criminal organisations that operate in Mexico and the US, and in the whole hemisphere, are not terrorist organisations. They do not have political motivations or an ideological agenda; they are only trying to defend their illegal business.’
Shortly after Calderón’s address, a judge in Veracruz filed charges of terrorism and sabotage against two people who caused panic by broadcasting through the online social network Twitter unverified rumours of shootings, some in schools.
Then it turned out that the Mexican authorities had been resorting frequently to antiterrorist legislation to try cartel hitmen charged with using grenades or bombs. The news agency The Associated Press found out, using freedom of information legislation, that since 2007 — Calderón’s first full year in office — at least 86 investigations into alleged terrorist acts were launched, and 26 people were committed to trial on charges of terrorism. Unlike the broader US definition, Mexican antiterrorism legislation penalises people who use explosives, toxic substances, firearms or other means for the purpose of causing alarm or terror.
MEXICO-US | Consulate-linked killings solved. Two members of the Barrio Azteca gang, both from El Paso, pled guilty on 22 September in an El Paso court to the March 2010 murders of Leslie Redelfs, an employee of the US consulate in Ciudad Juárez, her husband Arthur, employed at the El Paso Sheriff’s office, and Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, husband of another employee of the Juárez consulate. They also pled guilty to criminal conspiracy and extortion.
Barrio Azteca is a gang founded in a Texas prison in 1986, whose influence has spread in West Texas and across the border in Juárez. It has had connections in the past, successively, with the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels. More recently it is said to have been working for Los Zetas. One of the two defendants, Jesús Espino, was given a 30-year sentence; the other, Lorenzo Espino, was given life. Their guilty pleas mean there will be no trial, and therefore no clarification of the motives for the killings, which at the time puzzled investigators [SSR-10-03].
MEXICO | New kidnap modality. On 31 August the office of Mexico City’s chief prosecutor presented a gang of 13 people accused of having developed a new modality of kidnapping. Their baits were properly registered taxis and their targets were women. The taxi that picked them up was hemmed in by two other cars manned by accomplices, whose passengers boarded the taxi and severely beat the victim, stealing her bank cards and then reporting the success of the ‘operation’ by radio to accomplices. After about a year of carrying out this type of ‘express’ kidnapping, the gang took to demanding ransom ( typically between M$30,000 and M$50,000; US$2,000 to US$3,600) from relatives of the victims. In a number of cases they raped the victims.
The members of the gang have been charged with 25 ‘express’ kidnappings, three aggravated kidnappings and 16 cases of sexual assault. All of these took place over a period of a year and a half.
