Thread: Mexico sending more troops to the border

Mexico sending more troops to zone next to Texas

Published November 24, 2010
Associated Press

Nov. 19: Mexican soldiers inspect a home as residents flee border towns up and down the Rio Grande valley.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico will send more troops and federal police to try to control drug violence that has spiraled into warfare in parts of the northeast along the U.S. border, the government said Wednesday.

The goal of "Coordinated Operation Northeast" is to reinforce government authority in the two states most heavily affected by a surge in violence following a split between the Gulf and Zetas drug gangs, federal police spokesman Alejandro Poire said.

The new effort also aims to keep the two cartels from regrouping after the takedown of key leaders, he said. But in a media briefing with all federal security officials and governors of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, the affected states, Poire provided no details or numbers of reinforcements and answered no questions.

Intense cartel violence has plagued the industrial city of Monterrey in Nuevo Leon and all of Tamaulipas, where cartel firefights and violence this month sent residents fleeing the once-picturesque tourist town of Ciudad Mier and where 72 migrants were found slaughtered earlier this year.

Tamaulipas shares 560 miles (900 kilometers) of Texas border, with some of the busiest border crossings in the world — Nuevo Laredo across from Laredo, Reynosa across from McAllen and Matamoros across from Brownsville.

Gov. Eugenio Hernandez said his state has been a major transit corridor for organized crime since Prohibition, when the U.S. outlawed alcohol in the 1920s into the early '30s.

"But the situation has recently become much more complicated," Hernandez said. "It's greatly affected the dynamic of our state."

Poire touted recent government blows against the two cartels, including the killing earlier this month of Gulf cartel leader Antonio "Tony Tormenta" Cardenas Guillen and the 2008 capture of a founding member of the Zetas, Jaime "The Hummer" Gonzalez Duran, who was sentenced for money laundering and weapons possession earlier this year.

The government already has similar operations in other parts of Mexico, including Chihuahua state, where the border city of Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas, is considered one of the most violent cities in the world. Such efforts so far have failed to quell drug violence, which has killed 28,000 people since President Felipe Calderon launched his offensive on organized crime in late 2006.

An opinion poll released this week said 49 percent of Mexicans believe the government's drug war has been a failure, compared to 33 percent who said it has been a success.

The splintering of other Mexican gangs has added to the bloodshed.

Earlier Wednesday, federal police said they captured the new leader of a drug gang formerly led by jailed U.S.-born suspect Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez Villarreal, in a blow to a cartel fighting to control the region south of Mexico City to the Pacific resort of Acapulco.

Carlos Montemayor was arrested in Mexico City on Tuesday with the help of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and with information obtained after Valdez's arrest on Aug. 30, said Ramon Pequeno, the federal police anti-narcotics chief.

Montemayor, whose daughter is married to Valdez, took over his faction the splintered Beltran Leyva cartel after "La Barbie" was caught, Pequeno said.

Authorities say Valdez, a Texas native who faces possible extradition to the United States, tried to seize control of the gang after boss Arturo Beltran Leyva died in a December shootout with marines.

The battle within the cartel was marked by decapitations, bodies hung from bridges and shootouts in the area from Acapulco to the picturesque city of Cuernavaca.

Montemayor also told police that his faction was responsible for kidnapping and killing 20 Mexican tourists in Acapulco, mistaking them for members of the rival La Familia cartel, Pequeno said.

The group of men, many of them mechanics and some of them related to each other, were kidnapped in September while traveling in cars with license plates from their home state of Michoacan — the birthplace of La Familia.

The bodies of the men were found in a mass grave outside Acapulco earlier this month.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/11/24 ... -arrested/

February 01, 2010

Australia deports US man convicted in wife's death

Published November 24, 2010
Associated Press

CANBERRA, Australia – An American man convicted of manslaughter in his wife's honeymoon death was deported Thursday from Australia to the United States, where he is likely to face murder charges for the 2003 drowning.

Gabe Watson, 33, boarded a flight from Melbourne accompanied by Immigration Department staff and Queensland state police officers, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said.

Watson had been in immigration custody since completing an 18-month prison sentence earlier this month. Australia, a stanch opponent of capital punishment, delayed his deportation until it received a pledge from the U.S. government that it would not seek the death penalty against Watson.

Prosecutors in Alabama, Watson's home and a pro-death penalty state, want to try him again over his wife's death, and are expected to seek murder charges.

Bowen said Watson returned voluntarily after both Alabama and U.S. federal authorities guaranteed that he would not face the death penalty.

"The Australian government received assurances from the United States government that should Gabe Watson be returned to the U.S., the death penalty would not be sought, imposed or carried out in relation to this crime," Bowen said.

Under Australia's Extradition Act, a person cannot be deported to face prosecution on a capital charge unless there is an assurance the death penalty will not be imposed.

Watson's lawyer, Adrian Braithwaite, said his client was happy to go.

"He's looking forward to returning home and successfully defending himself if there's a trial there," Braithwaite told The Associated Press.

Watson was dubbed the "Honeymoon Killer" by the Australian media after his wife of 11 days, 26-year-old Tina Watson, drowned during a 2003 scuba diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef with her husband, an accomplished diver.

In 2008, the Queensland state coroner found there was sufficient evidence to charge Watson with her death, and he was officially charged with murder a few months later.

In 2009, Watson — who had remarried — traveled to Australia to face trial.

Officials in Queensland state argued he killed his wife by turning off her air supply and holding her underwater. When Watson pleaded guilty to the lesser manslaughter charge last year, he was sentenced to 18 months — a punishment Tina Watson's family and Alabama authorities slammed as far too lenient.

Queensland Coroner David Glasgow said a possible motive for the killing was Tina Watson's modest life insurance policy.

Alabama Attorney General Troy King has said he believes Watson devised a plot in Alabama to kill his wife on their honeymoon, which would give the U.S. state jurisdiction to charge him. King has argued there are no international standards on double jeopardy that prevent Alabama from trying Watson again over the death.

Bowen said it was not an issue for Australia whether there was a new prosecution.

"My role has been to ensure that we fulfill our treaty obligations, we've done that," Bowen told reporters in Canberra. "Double jeopardy is not covered by our treaty obligations."

"There is various speculation about what Mr. Watson may or may not be charged with — I've seen some speculation that they would be different charges to what he's been charged with in Australia — but that is not a matter the Australian government has a role in," he said.
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Associated Press writer Tanalee Smith contributed to this report from Adelaide.

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