No idea if the person arrrested had anything to do with it, but the government of Mexico was pressured to find someone and that is what they do best - find someone unable to pay, to blame.
23,000 murdered in 4 years JUST in the northern cities from the drug cartels ... that does not count the others from around Mexico. 23,000 is not a little problem - and Obama saying that our borders are too long and cannot be closed, leaves Americans at risk due to the violence and drugs in Mexico.
July 2, 2010
Mexico Makes Arrest in Killing of U.S. Consular Worker
By MARC LACEY and ELISABETH MALKIN
The New York Times
MEXICO CITY — Mexican police said Friday they had arrested a gang leader who confessed to ordering some of the most horrifying killings in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, including the killing of a pregnant American consular employee and her husband.
Jesús Ernesto Chávez Castillo, 41, confessed that he ordered the murder of Lesley A. Enriquez at the command of La Linea, the enforcement arm of the Juárez drug cartel, federal prosecutors said. The motive, he said, was revenge because the consulate had issued visas to members of a rival gang.
The arrest of Mr. Chávez, nicknamed the Camel, came at the end of a particularly violent week in the border region. Twenty-one people died Thursday morning in a single fierce shootout between rival drug traffickers outside Nogales, which borders Arizona.
Hours earlier, a state prosecutor was killed in Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Tex. Presumed drug traffickers hung handwritten banners in the city threatening the mayor and another top prosecutor there.
Ms. Enriquez and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, an officer at the El Paso County Jail in Texas, were killed in a barrage of gunfire on March 13 as they drove home from a birthday party with their infant daughter. The daughter was found unharmed.
Mr. Chávez told the police that he was informed that she would be traveling in a white sport utility vehicle, so the hitmen opened fire on her vehicle and a similar one returning from the same party. The Mexican husband of another consular employee, riding in the second car, was also killed.
Mr. Chávez’s story — that Ms. Enriquez’s killing had been ordered because she helped members of a rival gang obtain visas — contradicts both her official job description and the motive offered by another suspect.
American officials have said that Ms. Enriquez worked in the office that helps United States citizens and had no authority over visas.
Another suspect arrested shortly after the killings, Ricardo Valles de la Rosa, said the target of the shooting was Ms. Enriquez’s husband, Mr. Redelfs. Newspapers in El Paso and Juárez reported that gang leaders wanted to kill him because they said he had tormented a gang member in the El Paso County Jail.
Both Mr. Chávez and Mr. de la Rosa belong to Los Aztecas, a cross-border gang that works for La Linea. Mr. Chávez, whom police described as a leader of the gang, was arrested with six other suspects, also believed to be members of the gang, in a raid in Ciudad Juárez on Thursday.
Mr. Chávez had served five years in prison in Louisiana on a drug charge, the police said. He was arrested in April 2008 by the Mexican Army on drug charges and later released. He also confessed that he was part of a group of gunmen that attacked a teenagers’ party at the end of January, killing 15 people. Mr. Chávez told the police that his group mistakenly believed the people at the party were members of a rival gang, known as the Artists Assassins, or Double-A.
Andrea Simmons, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in El Paso, said she had no additional information about the arrest. “We’re working with Mexican authorities as part of a joint investigation,” she said. “We share information back and forth about the case.”
The gun battle that killed 21 people took place about 4 a.m. Thursday about 12 miles from the Arizona border in a remote area that is popular for smuggling drugs and migrants. The authorities said they captured nine suspects, six of them wounded, along with eight vehicles and seven weapons.
Farther east, near the Texas border, gunmen shot up a sport utility vehicle late Wednesday night that was carrying the state prosecutor, Sandra Salas García, and her two bodyguards. Ms. García, 38, was in charge of highly sensitive internal investigations in Ciudad Juárez. One of the bodyguards was also killed and the other was seriously wounded.
More than 23,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderón came to office vowing to stem the rising power of the drug trafficking organizations. The violence has spiked in recent months, according to tallies compiled by the Mexican news media, with the killing of a gubernatorial candidate in Tamaulipas on Monday provoking particular outrage.
Mexico
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments