MEXICO CITY - U.S. anti-drug czar Barry McCaffrey on Thursday flew to southern Mexico to tour Mexican operations aimed at halting the flow of cocaine from Colombia. The White House's chief of anti-drug policy was due to visit the southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas and the southeastern state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan peninsula, where Mexican law enforcement and the army are focusing efforts to stop drugs coming from Colombia. "This is the central purpose of my trip," McCaffrey told reporters before leaving Mexico City. [continues 431 words]
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - U.S. anti-drug czar Barry McCaffrey said on Wednesday that $500 million a year in drug money is going to rebels in Colombia and fueling ``unbelievable'' violence and ``enormous'' suffering. McCaffrey, a retired general who heads the White House anti-drug effort, was in Mexico where he defended the Clinton administration budget request to Congress for $1.3 billion in military assistance to help fund a two-year campaign against the drug trade and its allies in southern Colombia. [continues 386 words]
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexican police could be involved in suspected drug cartel murders which have come to light with the discovery of at least six corpses buried near the U.S. border, a prosecutor said on Thursday. "There is possible involvement of members of security units, both at state level and federal level," Arturo Gonzalez Rascon, prosecutor for the northern state of Chihuahua, told reporters. Speaking outside a ranch near the dusty border city of Ciudad Juarez, where the remains of six people have been found piled on top of each other, Rascon said state, municipal and federal authorities were cooperating with the U.S. FBI in the search for victims of the notorious Juarez cocaine cartel. [continues 498 words]
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican police may have scored a rare victory with the arrest of a well-known television personality accused of killing his co-star in a conspiracy hatched in prison by a top drug lord. But doubts lingered Saturday, stemming from authorities' inability in the past to solve high-profile murders, and some questioned if Mario Bezares and five others really took part in the June 7 hit on variety show host Francisco "Paco" Stanley. "Whilst in the past, probes into crimes that enraged public opinion...remained unclarified or were carried out in an irregular manner, the investigation of the murder of Francisco Stanley has dug up substantial facts and quickly identified the presumed plotters," praised La Jornada daily in an editorial. [continues 353 words]
GUATEMALA CITY, March 10 (Reuters) - Central American nations on Wednesday joined forces to seek more U.S. funding for the war against the flow of drugs through their lands and seas to the United States. In a meeting with U.S. anti-drugs officials in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Belize said they would also press together for an improved exchange of intelligence to bolster their lines of defence against the narcotics trade. "What we want is that the region, with one voice, can ask the United States and also Europe for the help we so badly need," Guatemala's deputy interior minister, Salvador Gandara, told Reuters after an anti-drug meeting coinciding with a tour through Central America by President Bill Clinton. [continues 415 words]
CHETUMAL, Mexico, - The outgoing governor of Mexico's top tourism state, Quintana Roo, said on Friday he was prepared to stand trial but was entirely innocent of allegations linking him to Mexico's most fearsome drug cartels. Mario Villanueva, whose state goes to the polls on Sunday, told Reuters it would be "ridiculous" if the United States paid heed to what he called "lies" about his drug ties in deciding whether to recertify Mexico as an ally in the war on narcotics. [continues 522 words]
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's disgraced former anti-drug czar, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was sentenced Tuesday to almost 14 years in prison for illegally hoarding weapons, court officials said. Judge Armando Baez said in the city of Toluca, to the west of Mexico City, that he had jailed the former head of the country's anti-drug efforts for 13 years, nine months and two days on the charges. Rebollo faces two more trials on other charges. Rebollo sparked a crisis in U.S.-Mexican relations when he was arrested in early 1997 and accused of protecting the late drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes. Until his untimely death under a plastic surgeon's knife last July, Carrillo Fuentes was one of Mexico's most feared drug barons and ran the notorious Juarez cartel across the border from Texas. [continues 299 words]
