Thread: Mexico police fire on US embassy staff

U.S. Embassy Workers Recovering After Shooting in Mexico

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Posted: Aug 24, 2012 8:50 PM
Updated: Aug 25, 2012 12:29 PM

TRES MARIAS, Mexico - Two men assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico are recovering from gunshot wounds after an ambush attack Friday south of Mexico City.

Mexican officials said the men were riding in an armored vehicle with diplomatic license plates. They said the triggermen were federal police agents.

The two men and a Mexican Navy officer were traveling to a military base in the area.

According to a statement from the Mexican government, federal police were in pursuit of criminals when they fired at the vehicle and only later realized it belonged to the U.S. Embassy.

The U.S. Embassy, however, issued a statement saying the men were ambushed.

Earlier this summer federal police shot and killed three fellow officers at the Mexico City international airport. Investigators say the cops involved in the shooting were part of a South American cocaine smuggling ring.

This week authorities replaced all the federal police at the airport with officers who had been specially vetted.

The U.S. Embassy has not commented on Friday's shooting. The injured men did not work for the DEA, FBI or Immigration and customs enforcement. All have agents assigned to the embassy.

The U.S. government is training Mexican military and federal law enforcement involved in the drug war. And Mexican marines have captured several high level drug cartel bosses.

The officers who fired the shots have been detained for questioning.

U.S. Embassy Workers Recovering After Shooting in Mexico | KRGV.com | CHANNEL 5 NEWS | Breaking News Breaking Stories

RELATED

http://www.alipac.us/f12/12-mexican-...sy-suv-263186/

I think that the stories that have been released are reeking with cover-up. The current administration has been accused of cover-ups on more than one occasion and it wouldn't look good for Mexican officials to attack US government employees in a gangland assault this close to the elections. I believe that the administration can't afford any more scandals than they are dealing with now and the media has been, in the past, seemingly compliant.

Official: Mexico agents who shot US car were probing a kidnapping

Associated PressAssociated Press
Posted: 09/02/2012 03:50:08 PM MDT


MEXICO CITY (AP) - A Mexican official says that the 12 agents under arrest for shooting at a U.S. Embassy vehicle and wounding two U.S. employees inside were investigating a kidnapping.

Federal Police regional security chief Luis Cardenas Palomino says the kidnapping occurred hours before the agents fired at the SUV that was carrying the two Americans and a Mexican navy captain.

The Mexican navy said the three were headed to a navy training site in a rural area south of Mexico City.

Palomino made the comments Sunday after announcing the detention of David Rosales, whom he said was leader of the Gulf drug cartel in the northern state of Nuevo Leon.
Palomino said Rosales is known as "Commander Devil" and coordinated attacks on bars in the city of Monterrey that killed several people.

Official: Mexico agents who shot US car were probing a kidnapping - El Paso Times

RELATED

http://www.alipac.us/f12/border-patr...-texas-263465/

Mexico: Attack on US embassy car was an accident

By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN and OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ | Associated Press – 1 hr 24 mins ago

MEXICO CITY (AP) — High-ranking Mexican security officials are portraying the shooting of two CIA agents by Mexican federal police as a well-intentioned mishap rather than a deliberate attack.

A series of military and law-enforcement officials have emphasized in public statements over the last three days that the group of 12 federal police was investigating a kidnapping when they encountered the two U.S. agents and a Mexican marine captain and opened fire on their armored sport-utility vehicle.

U.S. and Mexican statements released on the day of the shooting contained few details, excluding mention of the kidnapping probe. As a result, they left open the possibility that it could have been a deliberate attack on the Americans by corrupt officers or a gross error by well-intentioned but trigger-happy police conducting legitimate work in a dangerous rural area outside the city of Cuernavaca.

Mexican officials declined to elaborate for more than a week after the shooting, but now appear to be trying to be making a case for the accidental scenario.

Navy Secretary Mariano Francisco Saynez told reporters after President Felipe Calderon's last state-of-the-union address on Monday that the attack "was an error and not a malicious act." The statement carried particular significance coming from the highest-ranking officer in the navy, the military branch that includes the marines.

Interior Minister Alejandro Poire said Tuesday that federal police officials were investigating a kidnapping that had taken place a day earlier near the scene of the shooting. He wouldn't give any other details Tuesday "out of respect for the kidnapping victim." The assertion that the officers were investigating a specific crime around the village of Tres Marias would appear to undercut the idea suggested by some experts that they had gone there knowingly targeting the U.S. agents and marine captain.

Federal Police regional security chief Luis Cardenas Palomino also told reporters over the weekend that agents were investigating a kidnapping before the shooting. A lawyer for two of the police has said they were looking for the kidnappers of a businessman, thought the diplomatic car was involved, and the shooting erupted after the agents refused to obey a federal police order to halt.

In the official U.S. account of the attack, released hours after the shooting, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said the diplomatic vehicle was "ambushed by a group of individuals," a term that implies that the federal police were lying in wait for the agents and marine captain. U.S. Embassy officials declined to comment Tuesday, saying only that the U.S. was cooperating with Mexico in the investigation of the shooting.

The federal police officers were ordered detained under a form of house arrest for 40 days on suspicion of abusing their authority. That charge can entail both criminal wrongdoing and extreme negligence.

Mexico: Attack on US embassy car was an accident - Yahoo! News

61 Days to Fight!

Go here:

http://www.alipac.us/f8/61-days-figh...7/#post1302020

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http://www.alipac.us/content.php?r=9...-embassy-staff

The US media already pinpointed the paradox that these days more Americans are killed in Mexico than in Afghanistan.

http://www.alipac.us/f12/mexican-dru...-jails-263774/

Mexican Official Accuses CIA Of 'Managing' Not 'Fighting' The Drug Trade

Michael Kelley | Jul. 24, 2012


A Mexican state government spokesman told Al Jazeera that the CIA and other international security forces "don't fight drug traffickers" as much as "try to manage the drug trade," Chris Arsenault reports."It's like pest control companies, they only control," Chihuahua spokesman Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva told Al Jazeera. "If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs."
Chihuahua, one of Mexico's most violent states, borders on Texas.

Arsenault quickly notes that Villanueva is not a high ranking official and that the mayor of Juarez, Chihuahua, dismissed the accusations as "baloney."
Nevertheless, a government official going on the record with such claims is rare.
And a mid-level official with the Secretariat Gobernacion in Juarez (i.e. Mexico's equivalent to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) told Al Jazeera the allegations were true based on discussions he's had with U.S. officials working in Juarez.
Arsenault highlights that the defense attorneys for Jesús Zambada Niebla – a leading trafficker from the Sinaloa cartel currently awaiting trial in Chicago – stated, as part of his defense, that "United States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel."
Other high-level members of the Sinaloa cartel – Mexico's oldest trafficking organization – have made similar claims that Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the Sinaloa cartel leader and one of the world's most wanted men, works closely with U.S. authorities.
Upwards of 55,000 people have died from drug-related violence in Mexico since 2006.

Read more: Mexican Official Accuses CIA Of 'Managing' Not 'Fighting' The Drug Trade - Business Insider