Thread: Nuevo Laredo gets hit by terrorists

A Nuevo Laredo newspaper office got hit last night by two terrorists. I found out the news this morning and will wait for an american translation to post here. The office was overtaken by two terrorists last night. A reporter is in critical condition after receiving five gunshot wounds. A grenade was detonated right before the heavily armed suspects leave the scene. This is right accross the border from Laredo, Texas. I will keep you guys posted.

Holy Crap!

Here is the sotry I found. I am moving this to the news section.

8 February 2006

Journalist seriously injured in shooting attack on Nuevo Laredo newspaper

Reporters Without Borders voiced deep shock today at a attack by two gunmen on the headquarters of the El Mañana daily in Nuevo Laredo (in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas) on 6 February in which crime reporter Jaime Orozco Tey was shot five times, in the chest and spine, and is now in a serious condition.

“The care that El Mañana took in its coverage of a region in the grip of violence and drug cartels was not enough to prevent it from being the target of this new attempt to silence the press,â€

This story also just in

Laredo hires PR firm to dispel images

Good news lost in flood of reports about border crime, officials say

12:00 AM CST on Wednesday, February 8, 2006

By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News

SAN ANTONIO – As daylight shootouts continue to plague its neighbor across the Rio Grande, Laredo felt it was time "to change the subject."

Late last year, the city of Laredo signed a three-month, $100,000 contract with a San Antonio public relations firm to get out the positive news: Unemployment is low. Economic development is high.

And the crime wave in Mexico hasn't spilled across the border "to any great extent," according to a release from the firm, KGB Texas Public Relations/Advertising.

"We wanted to be proactive, to let people know about the good things going on in the city," Laredo City Manager Larry Dovalina said. "We were tired of seeing our city portrayed as a violent part of a violent border in the media."

Yet in a very public news conference last week, customs investigators announced the seizure in Laredo of grenades, pipe bombs and material to make improvised explosive devices, a sign that the violence among warring drug cartels continues to escalate along the U.S.-Mexico border. And it might already be seeping across, law enforcement officials say.

Laredo law enforcement officials called the weapons' discovery a worrisome development.

Laredo, population 175,576, has long used public relations firms to advertise itself as a center of international trade and a tourist shopping mecca along the border. There was strong sentiment on the City Council to use the same techniques to counter bad publicity.

Rather than gunfire and drug dealers, Laredo would like the media to focus on its ranking as the largest land port in the Western Hemisphere, at the heart of North America's primary trade route with Mexico.

Whether good news will overwhelm the bad remains to be seen.

But that's KGB Texas' game plan. The Laredo City Council approved using city tourism development funds to hire the firm in November. The final contract was approved in December.

The San Antonio firm will aim at state and national media, as well as Hispanic media, to tell the news about Laredo's thriving economy, its 4.8 percent unemployment rate and its position as a gateway for trade with Mexico.

"We want to focus on the 'other Laredo' by helping the city tell its positive stories and let people get a better feel for a growing and vital city," said Nelda Carrizales Skevington, the KGB Texas account representative.

Officials say the bad news has all been across the river in Nuevo Laredo, a thriving city of about 500,000 residents that has been ravaged by the violence stemming from a bloody turf battle between rival Mexican drug trafficking organizations.

News of brazen daylight shootouts between police and drug dealers and a mounting death toll has spread across the world, raising concerns about the security of tourists and residents alike. Monday, gunmen staged an assault on a Nuevo Laredo newspaper with assault rifles and grenades, severely wounding a veteran reporter.

"When people hear about the violence in Nuevo Laredo, they just hear 'Laredo,' " Mr. Dovalina said. "What affects them affects us. But the violence hasn't spilled over. We're OK."

A few years ago, the Milken Institute, an economic research group, ranked Laredo among the 10 best-performing cities in the U.S., Mr. Dovalina said. "That kind of thing gets lost in the coverage of the violence."

E-mail dmclemore@dallasnews.com

www.dallasnews.com

Of course the so called compassionate conservative in the White House will say nothing and his crony lawyer Chertoff will say the report is overblown.

Notice a trend developing here? Whenever there's a problem with the border, they hire a Public Relations firm to get out the "real" story.

Related articles.

https://www.alipac.us/ftopict-16774.html

https://www.alipac.us/ftopict-16820.html

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/3643677.html

Feb. 8, 2006, 12:11AM

ON THE BORDER
Paper attack draws Fox's wrath
Mexican leader vows not to yield to drug cartels, but editors plan to back off more
By JAMES PINKERTON
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO - Mexican President Vicente Fox said Tuesday the "despicable" grenade attack on a Nuevo Laredo newspaper would not break his determination to pursue the nation's ever-powerful drug gangs.

But at El Mañana newspaper headquarters, riddled with bullets from Monday night's attack, editors weren't quite as eager, saying they planned to back off even further from any hard-hitting reporting on the drug cartels that are battling for control of their city.

"We are going to be prudent," said one editor, speaking anonymously for fear of retribution. "This is a war, but if we are alone there is little we can do, especially if the authorities are not able to guarantee public safety."

The paper also urged the United States to rethink its drug enforcement policies, open free rehabilitation centers for addicts and "legalize those drugs that aren't so addictive or dangerous."

At least two gunmen swept into the newspaper's office about 7:45 p.m. Monday, firing more than 30 rounds and lobbing a fragmentation grenade into the building.

Reporter Jaime Orozco Tey, severely injured in the attack, was in critical condition Tuesday at a Nuevo Laredo hospital. He had bullet wounds to the chest and abdomen, and a bullet was lodged in his spine, his colleagues said.

Newspaper executives said the paper had nothing to do with traffickers' "crazed" fight for control of the city and they had no idea who was responsible for the attack.

"It could have been anyone. They're ghosts," the paper said in an editorial.

One band of traffickers may have attacked the newspaper to force authorities to crack down on another group operating in the town, the paper said.

Whatever the case, an editor at the paper said, "We will not have aggressive reporting about organized crime."

The Committee to Protect Journalists in New York and the Inter American Press Association in Miami both urged Mexican authorities to find those responsible for the incident.

"This has shaken the foundation of press freedom in your country," the IAPA said in a letter to Fox, "and we demand that stronger measures and efforts be made so that this attack does not go unpunished."

Less than two weeks earlier, the IAPA held a conference called "Drug Trafficking: Investigating and Reporting" in Nuevo Laredo. More than 120 reporters, editors and photographers, most of them from northern Mexico, attended. Many expressed concerns about the inability of Mexican officials to get organized crime under control. And they called on authorities to do a better job prosecuting crimes against journalists.

Fox, speaking to reporters in the Pacific state of Sinaloa on Tuesday, said he has sent federal agents to Nuevo Laredo to investigate.

''I say again to organized crime: You will not make the people of Mexico yield," he said. "You will not make the federal government yield."

Back at El Mañana, the mood was somber as staffers worked to put out another day's paper.

"I feel anger more than anything," said a sportswriter quietly, asking that his name be withheld. "The danger is not what happened last night. It has always existed. The simple act of living here is dangerous."

A receptionist just inside the newspaper office's front door, guarded by two uniformed federal police carrying automatic weapons, put her hand to her forehead, closed her eyes and shuddered. Suddenly, the phone rang and she answered politely, masking her jitters.

Nearby, along the narrow hallway leading from the reception area to the newsroom, workers patched seven holes in the wall where reporter Orozco was struck down.

Gunmen who shot Orozco also hurled a grenade outside the office of assistant news director Daniel Rosas. He dived under his desk as gunfire pierced the wall and door and shattered a plate glass window.

U.S. law enforcement agents who monitor drug-related violence in Nuevo Laredo said the attack was almost certainly intended to discourage news coverage of traffickers' turf battles.

"It's definitely part of the drug cartel war," said one U.S. agent on condition of anonymity. "El Mañana is a very good newspaper, and they are doing a good job. And the cartels don't like that."

"When you go in and shoot up the place, that's a warning to the paper," another veteran U.S. agent said.

If traffickers had intended to kill a specific reporter, he said, they probably would "have shot him in front of his house," not at the newspaper.

In March 2004, the newspaper's editorial director, Roberto Mora Garcia, was stabbed to death. And although police did not tie the crime to drug trafficking, the editors said after Mora's killing they decided to begin censoring themselves.

"We saw that the authorities were overwhelmed by organized crime and that there was no protection for journalists," the paper explained in a Tuesday editorial.

Smugglers are warring over Nuevo Laredo, the editorial added, because it is a key transit point for illicit drugs heading for the American market.

U.S. authorities ought to begin treating drug trafficking as a "health problem," not a crime, the paper said.

james.pinkerton@chron.com