Gulf Drug Cartel Forced U.S. Citizen to Smuggle Heroin

by Sergio Chapa
valleycentral.com

 

A Rio Grande Valley man is behind bars where he claims he was forced to smuggle more than $52,000 dollars worth of heroin by men he met at a bar in Reynosa.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers arrested 18-year-old Carlos Galaviz on a federal drug charge on Sunday.

Court records released Tuesday show that Galaviz came up from Mexico at the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge where he allegedly appeared nervous.

Customs officers sent him to secondary inspection where authorities found a package with 1.64 pounds of heroin hidden in the crotch area under his clothes.

Authorities told Action 4 News that they believe the heroin is worth about $54,480 dollars on the streets.

Galaviz told invsetigators that he met a group of men at a bar in Reynosa on Saturday night.

They asked him to smuggle drugs but he declined. The men allegedly replied that they know where his family lived and something would happen to them if he didn’t.

The alleged drug smugglers told Galaviz to meet them on a shopping center on the American side of the border where they would give him money.

Galaviz appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dorina Ramos in McAllen on Monday morning.

Investigators identified Galaviz as an American citizen but did not say which city he lived in.

Judge Ramos denied bond for Galaviz until a Thursday morning hearing.

 
Link to Article

DEA Ordered Out of Honduras After 4 Innocent Civilians Die in Wild Shootout

ajc.com

-
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Bullets flew as U.S. helicopters swooped toward a river boat. Honduran national police rappelled to the ground and locals scattered after loading close to 1,000 pounds of cocaine. Now reverberations from a drug raid that locals say killed four innocent people are being felt from the sultry jungles of Central America to Capitol Hill.

Last week’s DEA-supported predawn raid on the banks of a remote Honduran river began when U.S. drug agents and Honduran national police tracked an airplane loaded with cocaine as it entered the country from South America, Honduras National Police Chief Ricardo Ramirez del Cid said in an interview Thursday.

Ramirez said his officers were in four helicopters when they came under fire from the boat. They fired back and then descended on ropes to the river after the shooting stopped. By the time they got there, they only found a boat full of cocaine. He said they didn’t know if anyone died. There were no people, dead, alive or injured.

Numerous local officials, including Mayor Lucio Vaquedano of the coastal town of Ahuas, said four people, including two pregnant women, were killed. He insisted they were diving for lobster and shellfish when were killed and that they were not involved with drug trafficking.

Congressman Howard Berman said Thursday that if the reports that innocent people were killed are true, the U.S. should review this part of its assistance to Honduras.

“I have consistently expressed deep concerns regarding the danger of pouring U.S. security assistance into a situation where Honduran security forces are involved in serious human rights violations,” said the California Democrat. “The problems are getting worse, not better, making such a review all the more urgent.”

There were many versions of what happened in the early morning May 11 and by the end of the day Thursday, the DEA wouldn’t confirm many details.

 
Full Article

Two Boys and one Woman Sacrificed in ‘Santa Muerte’ Rituals

DeadlineLive.info
5/21/2012

Sonora, Mexico –  Two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman were murdered in ritual offerings to “Santa Muerte.” Eight members of a cult have been arrested for taking part in at least three of these rituals.

According to the Associated Press, the Sonora State Prosecutor has formally charged eight people in relation to these cult slayings. Sonora state prosecutors’ office spokesman Jose Larrinaga said the eight will face murder, conspiracy, and illegal burial charges among others.

The suspects confessed to participating in Santa Muerte ritual offerings since 2009 in the town of Nacozari. ‘Santa Muerte,’ or the ‘Saint of Death’ is an idol who’s worshiped by many drug cartel members. They believe that if they offer a human sacrifice to Santa Muerte, then the Angel of Death won’t come for them.

If convicted, the suspects may receive sentences of up to 50 years in prison. Although these rituals are common practice by drug cartel members, the suspects in this case have not been yet linked to these criminal organizations.

EXCLUSIVE: CIA cocaine supplier behind border town massacre

 

DeadlineLive.info
Monday, May 14, 2012

-
The alleged leader of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka “El Chapo”, has claimed responsibility for the beheading of fourteen suspected members of Los Zetas in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. Shortly after the massacre that took place during the previous week, Guzman sent threatening messages to the local authorities, telling them to stop denying the presence of his criminal organization in the area.

Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman is known for being listed by Forbes among the most influential and wealthy people in the world. He’s also known for supplying cocaine to CIA rendition aircraft being used for smuggling purposes, particularly during the October of 2007 scandal in Yucatan, where two of these aircraft were discovered with almost 4 tons of cocaine onboard. The cocaine belonged to ‘El Chapo’ and the Sinaloa Cartel. The aircraft, according to their flight schedules, which were obtained by the Mexican newspaper El Universal, were being used for CIA renditions.

According to reports from a private intelligence agency, Stratfor, Guzman has expressed frustration because his allies from the Gulf Drug Cartel have not been able to re-take the border town of Nuevo Laredo from Los Zetas. As a result, he has ordered fighters from the Sinaloa Cartel, and the Jalisco Drug Cartel –home of the death squad known as ‘Los Matazetas’ which translates to ‘Killers of Zetas’- to re-take that border town.

Last Friday, May 4th, local police found the decapitated bodies of fourteen people in a vehicle in front of the Customs Officers’ Association, located in the north side of Nuevo Laredo. The bodies were inside black plastic bags. This was apparently, retaliation against Los Zetas for killing and hanging members of the Gulf Drug Cartel from a bridge just hours earlier.

Soon after the discovery of the mutilated bodies, fourteen heads were also found inside ice coolers near another government building, which authorities believe belong to the victims found previously.

Near the crime scenes, banners were found, allegedly written by the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, calling for the mayor and local police to stop saying that El Chapo’s people do not operate in Nuevo Laredo. The threat to the authorities said “if you don’t stop using the official statement, saying that the Sinaloa Cartel is not in Nuevo Laredo, more of your friends’ heads will roll. Do you want more proof that we’re here? Do you want more Zeta heads, or perhaps yours to roll?”

The banners or ‘narco-mantas’ also threatened President Felipe Calderon. One statement said: “Mr. President, do you want to continue giving us the same candy-coated statements, mentioning that nothing is happening here as you finish your term? Keep doing that, and more heads will roll.”

In this narco-political war, in which former governors of the border State of Tamaulipas are currently being prosecuted for collecting drug money from both Los Zetas and the Gulf Drug Cartel, the town of Nuevo Laredo is the latest battleground. Nuevo Laredo is one of the biggest and most important border crossing points with the U.S. If los Zetas lose this stronghold, they can become more financially vulnerable, and they may lose the war against the Sinaloa and Gulf Drug Cartels.

Last weekend, Los Zetas launched a counterattack and killed 49 members of the Gulf Drug Cartel. Their mutilated bodies were found on a nearby highway that leads to the border with Texas.

Army probes US troops’ drug use and ‘distribution’ after deaths in Afghanistan

morningstaronline.co.uk

-
The US army has investigated 56 soldiers in Afghanistan on suspicion of using or distributing heroin, morphine or other opiates during 2010 and 2011, according to newly obtained official data.

The US Army Criminal Investigation Command said at the weekend that eight soldiers died of drug overdoses during that time.

The cases represent only the criminal investigations conducted by the investigators involving US soldiers in Afghanistan during those two years, so they are almost certainly the tip of the iceberg.

Broader drug use statistics released by the US army earlier this year reported nearly 70,000 drug offences by roughly 36,000 soldiers between 2006-2011.

The number of offences increased from about 9,400 in 2010 to about 11,200 in 2011.

Judicial Watch watchdog president Tom Fitton said the numbers revealed the need for the military leadership to be more vigilant about warning troops in Afghanistan against drug abuse.

He said the worry is that “the danger, including the danger of dying, hasn’t been fully acknowledged by the military and it needs to be.”

Opium is a key revenue source in occupied Afghanistan, both for the farmers and criminal syndicates, which can make huge profits selling, transporting or processing the drugs.

According to a UN report, revenue from opium production in Afghanistan soared by 133 per cent in 2011, to about $1.4 billion – or about one-tenth of the country’s GDP.

In February 2001 – eight months before the US-led invasion started the war – a 12-member team from the UN drug control programme said the Taliban regime had nearly wiped out opium production.

 
Link to article

Sinaloa drug cartel leaders indicted under RICO for U.S. murders and kidnappings

gsnmagazine.com

-
A federal grand jury in Texas indicted two leaders of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, as well as 22 others in the organization’s top leadership, accusing them of sweeping conspiracies to commit murder, kidnapping, money laundering and drug distribution in the U.S.

The Western District of Texas federal grand jury indicted Sinaloa cartel leaders “El Chapo” Guzman, “Mayo” Zambada and the almost two dozen other high-ranking members of the group under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act that targets the leaders of criminal organizations even though they may not have directly committed crimes, but managed the criminal activities of others.

Forbes Magazine listed Guzman as the 10th richest man in Mexico (1,140th in the world) in 2011. The financial magazine also calls him the “biggest druglord of all time.” Reportedly, the DEA strongly believes he has surpassed the influence and reach of the infamous Pablo Escobar.

Along with the money laundering and drug distribution charges, the indictment accuses Guzman and Zambada of directing the 2009 kidnap and murder of an American citizen in Horizon City, TX in retaliation for the loss of a shipment of marijuana. It also accuses the men of overseeing the 2010 kidnap and murder conspiracy aimed at an American citizen and two members of his family at a wedding ceremony in El Paso, TX. In that incident, according to the indictment, a bridegroom, his brother and his uncle were all kidnapped during the ceremony and subsequently tortured and murdered. Their bodies were discovered by Juarez, TX police a few days later in the bed of an abandoned pickup truck. Additionally, a fourth person was killed during the kidnapping at the wedding, it said.

 
Full Article

Creator of underwear bomb thought to have been killed in Yemen resurfaces

cbsnews.com

CBS/AP) WASHINGTON – When a drone strike killed one of the leaders of al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen last year, U.S. intelligence officials thought they also had wiped out the terrorist group’s top bomb maker. Soon it became apparent that Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, the brains behind sophisticated bombs that have been used in attempts to attack the U.S., was still alive. A hunted al-Asiri went underground, knowing the U.S. was after him, particularly after the U.S. killed Anwar al-Awlaki, one of the Yemen group’s top leaders.

-
But U.S. counterterrorism officials say he has resurfaced. They worry he might be at work doing what he does best: building bombs that could defeat airline security, The Associated Press has learned.

-

On “CBS This Morning” John Miller called Asiri “one of the most creative bomb makers . . . one of the most dangerous people that we have seen.”

-
Asiri invented the “Underwear Bomb” brought on board a Christmas 2009 flight headed for Detroit which – had the detonation attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab been successful – could have killed hundreds of people. Asiri was also behind bombs placed insider printers shipped from Yemen via air freight that were intercepted in 2010.

 

Full Article

Ex-employee: Al Jazeera provides Syrian rebels with satellite phones

RT

-
Al Jazeera has supplied Syrian rebels with satellite communication tools to ensure telephone and Internet connection, claims Ali Hashim, a former correspondent of the Qatar-funded channel. The equipment was smuggled from Lebanon, he told RT. ­The channel paid $50,000 for smuggling phones and other tools across the Syrian border to ensure they would get an inside picture, claims Ali Hashim.

A month ago, Hashim and two other correspondents working for Al Jazeera in Lebanon, stepped down from their jobs over a dispute over how the Arab Spring should be covered. Reporting popular unrest in Bahrain and Syria revealed the acutest differences between the men and their employer.

“The channel was taking a certain stance. It was meddling with each and every detail of reports on the Syrian revolution. At the same time it was almost covering up what was going on in Bahrain,” recalls Hashim.

The journalist says Qatar authorities actually decided the channel’s agenda and created their own version of the Syrian crisis.

“We went to the border between Lebanon and Syria. There it became obvious that militants entered Syria from Lebanon to clash with the Syrian regular army, which was 3 kilometers away from the border,” Hashim told RT.

“We took photos of those people, but the channel declined them. I was asked to forget about the militants and to return to Beirut,” he says.

In an earlier interview with the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir, Hashim called Al Jazeera’s policy “informational suicide.”

The Syrian government has repeatedly slammed the unbalanced coverage of the uprising by some Arab news channels. But Hashim remarks that both sides of this conflict are playing dirty: while some media are siding with the rebels, omitting reports of the militants’ atrocities against civilians, the Syrian regime’s media behave as if there were no calls for freedoms and reforms in the country.

Syria has been engulfed by a popular uprising against President Bashar Al-Assad for over a year now. Opposition forces submit daily claims of people killed in fights with regular forces. The reports are hard to verify as the state remains closed to most foreign journalists. Nonetheless, the UN estimates over 9,000 people have died in the conflict. The Syrian authorities maintain they are fighting foreign insurgency, which has taken lives of over 2,000 troops.

 

Link to original article

New U.S. Intelligence Program Aimed to Detect and Stop Government Wistleblowers

defensesystems.com

 

The administration last year mandated a national program to defend against insider threats in government, and a national policy with standards for enforcement are expected by year’s end, officials said.

“It’s going to take a while to implement,” said John E. Swift III of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and assistant director of the Insider Threat Task Force.

A policy is in draft form and is expected to go to the White House for review by the national security staff in the next month or two, Swift said April 4 at the FOSE conference in Washington. Standards development is waiting for the police to be completed, but are due to be issued by October.

“It’s going to take a while before agencies have a hard list of standards to follow,” Swift said, and it will take a “considerable time” to implement them once available. But although the creation of a coherent national program on insider threats is new, most agencies already are collecting data and have some components of a program in place. “No agency is starting from scratch.”

The insider threat program was called for in Executive Order 13587, in October 2012 in the wake of the Wikileaks exposure of a cache of classified documents. The order’s goal is “to ensure the responsible sharing and safeguarding of classified national security information on computer networks.”

Combining the appropriate levels of security while enabling necessary sharing and respecting the privacy of employees is a delicate balance, said Gordon Snow, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division.

The FBI and ODNI are the lead agencies in a Senior Information Sharing and Safeguarding Steering Committee that is developing the policy.

“The insider threat has existed for as long as we have had secrets,” Snow said. “What makes it difficult today is the amount and the speed with which that information can be exploited.”

Technology is one key to protecting data and ensuring accountability, and tools such as the smart ID cards mandated for government use are only part of the solution. But it is not a panacea, officials said, and implementing use of a common, electronic ID for both logical and physical access is not a simple process.

“We have a cultural acceptance problem with many of the agencies,” Snow said.

“Thinking that we can tackle the problem with only a technology solution is a mistake,” said Deanna Caputo, lead behavioral psychologist at Mitre Corp.

Behavioral profiling has been identified as a priority for identifying potential insider threats, and Caputo is working with the task force to develop a set of indicators that can be used to predict risk. The goal is to create clusters of indicators so that potential problems can be identified at a high level without violating privacy, using information already being gathered routinely on government employees, especially those with high security clearances.

 

 

Full Article

Insanity – U.S. Navy and DHS Monitoring (Hacking) Videogame Consoles to Find ‘Terrorists’ and ‘Pedophiles’

dailytech.com

 

Gamers may want to be careful about what they say when jumping onto their consoles for an innocent bout of slaying dragons or killing zombies — the government will be watching.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Navy have launched a new research initiative that will explore ways of allowing the government to hack into gaming consoles like the Xbox 360, Wii, or PlayStation 3 to obtain information on gamers.

In 2008, a project called “Gaming Systems Monitoring and Analysis Project” was executed when law enforcement became worried about pedophiles using game consoles to talk to children. Later, law enforcement authorities went to DHS’ Science and Technology Directorate in search of help on an instrument that could observe game console data. DHS then went to the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) to find Simson Garfinkel, a NPS computer science professor, to offer a contract to a company that could conduct the research and offer a product.

The U.S. Navy ended up recently awarding the $177,237 contract to Obscure Technologies, which is a computer forensics company based in San Francisco, California. Obscure Technologies will be expected to create new hardware and software capable of extracting data from video game consoles. DHS wants to be able to extract data from both new and used games systems bought on the secondary market as well.

According to DHS, the reason for tapping into game consoles is to find pedophiles, who are using communication resources on game systems to seek out victims, and even terrorists, which DHS believes are using consoles to communicate.

 
Full Article

Next Page »