Thread: Mexico extradites senior Zetas drug cartel member to U.S

Posted: Tuesday, 11 September 2012 11:09PM
Reuters

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico extradited to the United States on Tuesday one of the founders of the brutal Zetas drug cartel who had been linked to the killing of a U.S. customs agent last year.

The Mexican attorney general's office said that former soldier Jesus Rejon, known as Z-7, was handed over to face trial at a federal court in Washington on drug-trafficking charges.

Rejon was captured in July 2011 after being sought in connection with the roadside shooting of two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, one of whom died.

The attorney general's office did not mention the February 2011 killing in its statement on the extradition.

The shooting of the ICE agents sparked anger in the United States and prompted a round of finger-pointing between Mexican and U.S. politicians over the failure to curb drug-related violence that has plagued Mexico in recent years.

The Zetas have been blamed for some of the worst atrocities to hit Mexico during this period. Turf wars between drug gangs and their clashes with security forces have claimed more than 55,000 lives over the past six years.

Rejon was a founding member of the Zetas, a gang made up originally of army deserters at the end of the 1990s and initially worked as enforcers for the Gulf Cartel, before splitting from their employers in 2010.

President Felipe Calderon's government has tried to turn up the heat on the Zetas and recent in-fighting among gang members suggests it may be rupturing, threatening a new wave of bloodletting.

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Mexico Extradites Alleged Hezbollah Member to US

insightcrime.com

• Written by Victoria Rossi
• Wednesday, 12 September 2012

Alleged Hezbollah operative Rafic Labboun


Mexican police arrested and extradited a US citizen who has been accused of ties to Hezbollah, raising questions about the militant group's presence in Latin America.

Alleged Hezbollah operative Rafic Labboun was arrested on September 8 during a police raid in Merida, Yucatan along withtwo other men, reported El Universal. He is suspected of violating the terms of his probation.

Labboun ran a mosque in San Jose, California before being convicted of credit card fraud in 2010. Authorities suspected that the money Labboun stole from several credit card companies was linked to a Hezbollah money laundering operation, though prosecutors were not able to prove these accusations and they were dropped because of a lack of evidence, reported CBS. He was released from jail in June after serving his 27 month sentence.

Labboun, a dual citizen of Lebanon and the US, handed Mexican authorities a false passport from Belize at the time of his arrest, according to El Universal. Fox News Latino reported that the two men accompanying him were wanted in the US for credit card fraud, while CBS reported that, according to the FBI, they were known Hezbollah members.
InSight Crime Analysis

The arrest of three alleged Hezbollah members in Mexico is likely to increase speculation about the Lebanese militant group’s presence in Latin America. Evidence of a substantial presence, however, remains low.

The most prominent such claim concerned the so-called “Iran-Zetas plot” which alleged that Iran, which has strong ties to Hezbollah, had joined with the powerful Mexican Zetas drug gang in October 2011 to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. As InSight Crime reported, however, ties between Mexican gangs and Iran and Hezbollah are highly implausible, and the allegations stem from a poor understanding of the Mexican underworld.

According to the fact-checking website Politifact, which cites a US Congressional report, various Latin American enterprises send millions of dollars to Hezbollah each year. Furthermore, the US State Department confirmed that there are no known Hezbollah cells operating in the Western Hemisphere, Politifact reported.


Mexico Extradites Alleged Hezbollah Member to US - InSight Crime | Organized Crime in the Américas