U.S. and Mexican Forces, Sharing Patrols for the First Time, Take on Drugs, Migration In a politically sensitive operation at the Arizona-Mexico border, U.S. Border Patrol agents and Mexican federal police officers are training together, sharing intelligence and coordinating patrols for the first time. The goal of the historic partnership: a systematic joint attack on northbound flows of drugs and migrants, and southbound shipments of guns and cash. It is part of a major, unannounced crackdown started in recent months involving hundreds of U.S. and Mexican officers in the border's busiest smuggling corridor. [continues 1190 words]
The Complaint Against 3 Men -- the First of Its Kind -- Portrays Northwest Africa As a New Danger Zone. Three men alleged to be Al Qaeda associates were charged Friday with conspiring to smuggle cocaine through Africa -- the first U.S. prosecution linking the terrorist group directly to drug trafficking. The three suspects, who were charged in federal court in New York, are believed to be from Mali and were arrested in Ghana during a Drug Enforcement Administration sting. Although U.S. authorities have alleged that Al Qaeda and the Taliban profit from Afghanistan's heroin trade, the case is the first in which suspects linked to Al Qaeda have been charged under severe narco-terrorism laws, federal officials said. [continues 951 words]
Peers Say He'd Never Help Mexican Cartels. His Trial Starts Monday. Around here, the grim joke goes, most people work for the government or the mafias. Or both. Richard Padilla Cramer apparently had bested the temptations that come with the territory. During three decades in border law enforcement, he made the most of his pitch-perfect Spanish and talent for undercover work. He locked up corrupt officials, racked up drug busts and rose through the ranks. He retired after a coveted stint as a U.S. attache for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Mexico, the land he had left as a child. [continues 1765 words]
Few people understand the Mexican border like Alan Bersin. Now posed to lead Customs, he thinks the terrain can be tamed. Alan Bersin is back at the border and on the move. On the third day of a sprint through Texas and Arizona, a law enforcement convoy zooms into Nogales. Riding in a sport utility vehicle, Bersin scans a dusty landscape that he knows well: this desert town of 20,000 with its fast-food joints and discount shops facing the pastel facades and helter-skelter skyline of Nogales, Mexico, a city of 300,000 just south of the fence. [continues 1677 words]
The Shift In Smuggling Routes To Europe Has Law Enforcement Officials Worried MADRID -- A landmark shift in trafficking routes has transformed West Africa into a hub for cocaine smuggled from South America to a booming European market, anti-drug officials on three continents say. Traffickers have established a haven and transit area along the Gulf of Guinea to elude aggressive efforts to seize cocaine headed to Europe. Anti-drug officials fear the new route will worsen lawlessness in African countries already overwhelmed by crime, poverty and instability. [continues 1337 words]
Extremists Look To Organized Crime MADRID, Spain -- The odd crew of longtime extremists and radicalized gangsters accused of committing the March train bombings nourished their holy war with holy water. And hashish. The water came from Mecca. The conspirators drank it during purification rituals at a barbershop that was an after-hours prayer hall for disciples of Takfir wal Hijra, a secretive Islamic sect active in the criminal underworld of Europe and North Africa. The hashish came from Morocco. The ideologues of the terror cell justified selling drugs as a weapon of jihad. The Moroccan dealer who financed the plot traded a load of hashish for the dynamite that slaughtered 191 people aboard commuter trains on March 11. The drug trafficker led the cell along with a Tunisian economics student, a duo whose disparity reflects the evolving nature of Islamic terrorism. Both blew themselves up after a standoff with police last month. [continues 284 words]
Muslim Extremists Who Attacked Madrid Funded The Plot By Selling Drugs, Investigators Say. MADRID - The odd crew of longtime extremists and radicalized gangsters accused of carrying out the March train bombings here nourished their holy war with holy water. And hashish. The water came from Mecca, the Muslim holy city in Saudi Arabia. The conspirators drank it during purification rituals at a barbershop that was an after-hours prayer hall for adherents of Takfir wal Hijra, a secretive Islamic sect allegedly active in the criminal underworld of Europe and North Africa. [continues 2060 words]
Latin America: Arrest in Venezuela ends eight months on the run for Vladimiro Montesinos. Officials say the FBI played a key role in the capture of Lima's longtime power broker. CARACAS, Venezuela--Former Peruvian intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos, the mysterious spymaster who was the power behind Peru's throne for a decade, was arrested here after a desperate eight months on the run, Venezuelan officials announced Sunday. Venezuelan military intelligence agents captured Montesinos at 10:30 p.m. Saturday at a safe house in a Caracas slum, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said. The arrest took place as the fugitive prepared to move to another hide-out with the help of accomplices, authorities said. [continues 1211 words]
Attack: The U.S. Defends Program In Peru, But It Was Aware That Smugglers, Evangelists Fly Same Routes. BUENOS AIRES--U.S. and Peruvian anti-drug officials knew all along that missionaries and drug smugglers fly the same routes over the Peruvian jungle, and they had worried about just such an incident as Friday's inadvertent downing of a plane carrying an American missionary family, former officials of the U.S. Embassy in Lima said Monday. "Our worst fear was: 'What if we shoot down [some] missionaries.' " said one former embassy official involved in anti-drug efforts. "You don't know how much we talked about that at the embassy. We went through all kinds of pains to put the right sequence of protocols in place so that couldn't happen." [continues 847 words]
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Even Though A Missionary And Her Baby Died, The Drug-War Policy Apparently Is Too Effective To Give Up Antidrug warriors involved in a U.S.- Peruvian airborne interdiction effort that has slashed the South American nation's cocaine production had a warning for smugglers: "You fly, you die." That warlike motto governed the zone of low-intensity conflict into which a Cessna seaplane carrying American Baptist missionaries flew last week with disastrous results: A Peruvian air force jet assisted by a CIA surveillance plane shot down the Cessna, killing a mother and her infant daughter. [continues 730 words]
LIMA, Peru--U.S. and Peruvian investigators Saturday were trying to unravel the perplexing circumstances in which an American missionary and her infant daughter died when a Peruvian air force anti-drug plane shot down their Cessna--an incident that also involved a U.S. surveillance aircraft. As part of an anti-drug program in which U.S. aircraft help interdict smuggling flights, an unarmed U.S. surveillance plane was providing support Friday morning when the Peruvian A-37B jet shot down a private seaplane carrying five people, U.S. Embassy officials here revealed Saturday. [continues 1035 words]
Crime: Before Fleeing Into The Jungle, Boss Showed Entrepreneurial Vision, Cunning--And Cruelty. RIO DE JANEIRO--Weakened by bullet wounds, his empire crumbling, Luiz Fernando da Costa has spent weeks fleeing a military strike force in the jungles of eastern Colombia. But the Brazilian drug lord, nicknamed Fernandinho Beira Mar (Freddy Seashore) for the coastal slum near Rio where he was born, is still dangerous. During the years when he became a new breed of crime boss, forging an unprecedented alliance with Colombian guerrillas, the only weapon Da Costa needed was a telephone. He allegedly used just that to supervise the torture-slaying here of a young man who had a romance with one of the drug lord's girlfriends. [continues 1336 words]
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay -- This small, quiet, slow-moving nation doesn't make much news. That's part of being a small, quiet, slow-moving nation. But Uruguayan President Jorge Batlle has figured out a way to get headlines. He has become the first head of state in the region, and one of the few anywhere, to call for the decriminalization of illicit drugs. Batlle, a blunt free-market reformer, questions the costs and effectiveness of a drug war whose primary theater of battle is Latin America. [continues 640 words]
He became the first head of state in the region to do so. He says traffickers would lose their economic incentive. MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay - This small, quiet, slow-moving nation does not make much news. But Uruguayan President Jorge Batlle has figured out a way to get headlines. He has become the first head of state in the region - and one of the few anywhere - to call for the decriminalization of illicit drugs. Batlle, a blunt free-market reformer, questions the costs and effectiveness of a drug war whose primary theater of battle is Latin America. [continues 877 words]
Investigators' Findings On The Nation's Fugitive Former Spy Chief Cast A Negative Light On U.S. Depictions Of The Country As A Law Enforcement Success Story. LIMA, Peru--During the decade that his leadership of Peru's spy agency won U.S. praise and support, Vladimiro Montesinos built a billion-dollar criminal empire based on drug trafficking, arms dealing and judicial and political corruption, Peruvian investigators alleged Thursday. Describing the progress of a three-month mega-investigation of the regime of former President Alberto Fujimori, a special prosecutor painted a sadly illustrative picture of how globalization and gangsterism have intertwined in Latin America. [continues 1055 words]
Narcotics: President Says His Stance Is Aimed At Provoking Debate. But Critics Contend That He's Playing With Fire. MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay -- This small, quiet, slow-moving nation doesn't make much news. That's part of being a small, quiet, slow-moving nation. But Uruguayan President Jorge Batlle has figured out a way to make headlines. He has become the first head of state in the region, and one of the few anywhere, to call for the decriminalization of illicit drugs. Batlle, a blunt free-market reformer, questions the costs and effectiveness of a drug war whose primary theater of battle is Latin America. [continues 1212 words]
Manhunt: As Nation Enters A Hopeful New Chapter, The Government Inherits The Job Of Capturing Montesinos. LIMA, Peru--Vladimiro Montesinos is hiding on a military base here protected by renegade officers. Or he's holed up on a ranch in Bolivia. Or he's in Moscow hanging out with the Russian mob. Or he's dead. In descending order of probability, those are some of the theories circulating among well-informed Peruvians. Mystery and myth envelop Montesinos, the fugitive former spy chief whose defiant return from exile a month ago brought about the downfall this week of President Alberto Fujimori. [continues 1547 words]
Officially Abolished, The Spy Agency Known As The Sin Remains A Force--And A Reminder Of Its Fugitive Master, Montesinos. LIMA, Peru--The raiders struck before dawn, 10 well-armed agents of the Peruvian intelligence service descending on a house here. The target was not a terrorists' hide-out. It was a secret "intelligence house" operated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration with approval of the Peruvian government. The military judge leading the raid threatened to arrest the U.S.-trained Peruvian police officers inside who were using high-tech equipment to intercept communications by drug traffickers. [continues 2362 words]
Montesinos Allegedly Hid Away $50 Million -- Prosecution Vowed Buenos Aires -- Swiss authorities froze about $50 million yesterday in Swiss bank accounts that they believe belong to Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's fugitive ex-spy chief, and President Alberto Fujimori responded by promising to bring his former right-hand man to justice. The Peruvian president issued his first unabashed condemnation of Montesinos since ousting the all-powerful adviser and calling for early elections seven weeks ago amid a political crisis. ``This money is surely illicit,'' Fujimori told reporters. ``I want to emphasize and clarify that I knew absolutely nothing about an act of corruption of this nature.'' [continues 308 words]
