Category Archives: Drugs trade

‘We went to the dark side’: horror film shows reality of Mexico’s migrant trail

Posted on by

Mystical realism conveys real-life stories of brutal cartel violence in Fernanda Valadez’s chilling directorial debut

Two teenage boys wave goodbye to their mothers across a field in rural Mexico, leaving home in search of the American dream. The opening moments of the Mexican film-maker Fernanda Valadez’s Identifying Features, available to stream from this week, reflects scenes played out every day across Mexico and Central America, as men, women and children journey north in search of safety and job opportunities.

Valadez, 39, starts her directorial debut film in her home state of Guanajuato – a picturesque, once tranquil state in the centre of the country. In recent years Guanajuato has fallen victim to the evolving geography and relentless nature of Mexico’s humanitarian crisis; it is now one of the most dangerous places in the country for those who live there and for people travelling through on the migrant trail.

Continue reading...

‘A dirty business’: how one drug is turning Syria into a narco-state

Posted on by

Manufacture of Captagon is a growth industry so big it is starting to rival GDP of flatlining economy

In the summer of 2015 a businessman in the Syrian province of Latakia was approached by a powerful security chief, seeking a favour. The official wanted the merchant, an importer of medical supplies, to source large amounts of a drug called fenethylline from abroad. The regime, he said, would readily buy the lot.

After an internet search, the merchant made a decision. He left his home that same week, first sending his wife and children to exile, then following after, scrounging what he could from his businesses for a new start. “I know what they were asking me to do,” he said from his new home in Paris. “They wanted the main ingredient for Captagon. And that drug is a dirty business.”

Continue reading...

Colombia’s cartels target Europe with cocaine, corruption and torture

Posted on by

Armed Belgian police raids have lifted the lid on a sinister new front in the drugs war

At 5am on a chilly Tuesday morning last month, 1,600 police officers and balaclava-wearing special forces, bristling with arms and battering rams, were ordered into action around the Belgian port city of Antwerp.

More than 200 addresses were raided in what was the largest police operation ever conducted in the country and potentially one of the most significant moves yet against the increasingly powerful narco-gangs of western Europe.

Continue reading...

‘Narcos are looking for me’: deadly threats to Peru’s indigenous leaders

Posted on by

Communities call for protection after string of killings linked to rush for land to grow coca, under cover of the pandemic

“We’re looking for you, dead or alive,” is one of the daily threats that Herlín Odicio receives on his mobile phone.

The leader of the indigenous Cacataibo people in Peru’s central Amazon has been forced into hiding for standing up to drug traffickers trying to steal his land. “We’ve reported coca plantations on our land so many times and nothing has been done,” Odicio said.

Continue reading...

Hong Kong police seize record 700kg of cocaine

Posted on by

Authorities say collapse of travel during Covid has forced smugglers to make bulk shipments instead of using drug mules

Hong Kong police have announced a record-breaking 700kg cocaine seizure with officers suspecting the huge shipment was smuggled into the city on speedboats.

The bust is the largest in the territory in nearly a decade and netted some HK$930m-worth ($119.6m) of cocaine.

Continue reading...

Freshwater part 6: the decision

Posted on by

The court of appeal in London hears the appeal of the Freshwater Five. In the final part of our miniseries, we find out how the judges reach their decision and what it means

The case of the Freshwater Five, convicted a decade ago of attempting to smuggle £53m (A$96m) worth of cocaine into the UK, makes it to the England and Wales court of appeal, where new evidence is heard that the men hope will clear their names. Anushka Asthana follows the week-long hearing, sitting alongside the men’s families as the barristers argue the case.

The court of appeal can consider new evidence not heard by the original jury, and so the bar to overturning the convictions is set high. Nevertheless, the appeal has several grounds: one aspect focuses on new radar data that the men hope would show they were not close enough to the cargo ship that was alleged to be the other vessel involved in the transfer of drugs. There is also evidence purporting to show a new suspect vessel in Freshwater Bay as well as a surveillance plane that should have been able to spot the drugs floating in the water if indeed they were there at the time the prosecution suggested.

Continue reading...

‘An atmosphere of terror’: the bloody rise of Mexico’s top cartel

Posted on by

The Jalisco cartel’s violence has taken a horrific toll on the state and experts say it poses a threat to Mexico’s government

It was mid-spring when residents of the wasteland behind Guadalajara’s international airport noticed a dog roaming their community with a strange object in its mouth: a human forearm.

Search teams in the ramshackle neighbourhood of La Piedrera entered a roofless red brick shack flanked by trees decked with bright orange mistletoe. Under several layers of dusky earth they made an even more grotesque discovery.

Continue reading...

‘We forget our troubles’: crystal meth use rises during lockdown in Zimbabwe

Posted on by

Harare’s drug dealers say business is booming as more young people, some at school, use mutoriro

Inside a tiny room in Kuwadzana, a township in Harare, Solomon Sigauke* and his friends talk animatedly about football and listen to loud music. The misty vapour from the crystal meth fills the room as they take turns on a fluorescent pipe.

Sigauke, 25, has no cigarette lighter so he is improvises, holding a burning candle while his friend Kudzo puffs the smoke from the burning substance, known locally as mutoriro. .

Continue reading...

El Chapo’s wife helped him run drug empire from jail, US court hears

Posted on by

Emma Coronel is ‘not a big fish’, experts say, but indictment accuses her of assisting dramatic jailbreak in 2015

The wife of the world’s most notorious drug cartel boss, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has appeared in court charged with helping him run his drug empire from jail, a day after she was arrested at Washington’s international airport.

Emma Coronel Aispuro, a 31-year-old Mexican-American who married the drug kingpin in 2007 after he spotted her in a beauty pageant, is also accused of helping organise her husband’s breathtaking jailbreak in 2015, which involved a mile-long tunnel leading from his prison shower and a motorbike adapted to run on rails from one end to the other.

Continue reading...

Emma Coronel, wife of El Chapo, arrested on drug trafficking charges

Posted on by

Joint US-Mexican citizen has also been charged with conspiring to help arrange her husband’s escape from prison in 2015

Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Mexico’s most notorious cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has been arrested in Virginia on drug trafficking charges.

In a statement released on Monday, the US justice department said that Coronel, 31 – who is a joint US-Mexican citizen – was arrested at Dulles international airport and was scheduled to make her initial appearance in federal court on Tuesday via video conference.

Continue reading...

Alleged drug lord on world’s most wanted list arrested in Amsterdam

Posted on by

Tse Chi Lop detained at request of Australian police investigating $70bn-a-year Asia-Pacific drug trade

Dutch police said on Saturday they had arrested the alleged leader of an Asian drug syndicate who is listed as one of the world’s most wanted fugitives and has been compared to Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Tse Chi Lop, a Chinese-born Canadian national, was detained on Friday at the request of Australian police, who led an investigation that found his organisation dominates the $70bn-a-year Asia-Pacific drug trade, Dutch police spokesman Thomas Aling said.

Continue reading...

Outrage after Mexico exonerates ex-defense minister in drug case

Posted on by

Gen Salvador Cienfuegos was arrested last October for allegedly shielding a conspiracy to smuggle drugs into the US

Mexico has exonerated a former defense minister who US prosecutors alleged was a drug capo nicknamed The Godfather, sparking outrage and claims that the country’s powerful armed forces have become untouchable.

Gen Salvador Cienfuegos was arrested at a Los Angeles airport last October for allegedly shielding a multimillion-dollar conspiracy to smuggle drugs into the US. But those charges were dropped by the justice department in November as part of a controversial backroom deal and Cienfuegos returned home to Mexico.

Continue reading...

Mexico security forces’ seizures of fentanyl rise by 486% this year

Posted on by
  • Officials say synthetic opioids easier to produce and smuggle
  • Drug labs have doubled from 91 last year to 175 in 2020

Seizures of the synthetic opioid fentanyl by Mexican security forces have increased by at least 486% in 2020, the country’s defence secretary has announced.

Mexico’s military and police forces seized an estimated 1.3 tons of the synthetic opioid this year, compared to 222 kilograms in 2019.

Continue reading...

Ghost boat laden with cocaine washes up in the Marshall Islands

Posted on by

Abandoned vessel containing 649kg of drug washes up on a remote Pacific atoll after potentially years at sea

Police in the Marshall Islands have found the Pacific nation’s largest-ever haul of cocaine in an abandoned boat that washed up on a remote atoll after drifting on the high seas, potentially for years.

Attorney general Richard Hickson said the 5.5 metre (18ft) fibreglass vessel was found at Ailuk atoll last week with 649 kg (1,430lb ) of cocaine hidden in a compartment beneath the deck.

Continue reading...

Murder in Mexico: journalists caught in the crosshairs

Posted on by

The 2012 killing of Regina Martínez, who was investigating links between organised crime and politics, began a wave of violence in the most dangerous country to be a reporter

Regina Martínez Pérez was considered an enemy of the state. The 48-year-old journalist had made powerful foes investigating allegations of collusion between political leaders, security forces and narcotraffickers in the Mexican region of Veracruz.

She was a source of irritation for four consecutive state governors, highlighting violence, abuses of power and cover-ups in the pages of Mexico’s foremost investigative news magazine, Proceso.

Continue reading...

Thailand’s $1bn ketamine bust probably just chemicals after all

Posted on by

Officials admit what they thought was 11.5 tonnes of drugs is most likely trisodium phosphate, a food additive and cleaning agent

Thai authorities have admitted that an 11.5-tonne drug bust may contain an innocent chemical used as a food additive or cleaning agent – and not ketamine, as they believed.

Thailand’s anti-narcotics bureau had hailed the seizure of what they said was nearly a billion dollars’ worth of ketamine – an anaesthetic that can also be used as a party drug.

Continue reading...

Almost 60 bodies found in pits at property in Mexican town

Posted on by

Search teams believe locals must have known about site in Salvatierra, Guanajuato state

Search teams are excavating a site in the central Mexico state of Guanajuato where 59 bodies have been found in clandestine graves in the past week.

The striking aspect of the discovery is that the site is not a desolate area far out in the countryside, but the town of Salvatierra.

Continue reading...

UN accused over failure to investigate ‘war on drugs’ killings in the Philippines

Posted on by

Human rights groups calling for a probe into president Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-narcotics crackdown say abuses continue

The UN human rights council has been accused of a “collective failure” over its decision not to call for an investigation into the tens of thousands of killings alleged to have occurred under Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”.

Human rights groups and UN experts had repeatedly called for an inquiry into the anti-narcotics crackdown, launched by the president after he won the 2016 election on a promise to rid the country of drugs.

Continue reading...

Drug trafficker on death row escapes Indonesian jail through sewers

Posted on by

Prisoner under death sentence dug hole from cell in Jakarta into waste pipes to road outside

A Chinese drug trafficker facing a death sentence has escaped from jail on the outskirts of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, by tunnelling through the sewers, police have said.

Cai Changpan, 37, who was convicted of methamphetamine smuggling, dug a hole from his cell at the prison in the Tangerang area into waste pipes and from there to a road outside, a Jakarta police spokesman, Yusri Yunus, said.

Continue reading...

Movie star Sean Penn, drug lord El Chapo and a failed marine raid

Posted on by

The Hollywood actor almost fell into a police trap when he met with the fugitive Mexican over a film deal, reveals new book

He is one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed actors, at one time known as much for his hellraising, turbulent marriage and interest in humanitarian causes as for his films. Now it has emerged that Sean Penn’s taste for adventure – and a potential movie part – almost led him into a trap that had been set for the notorious Mexican drug smuggler and fugitive Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

The tale, recounted in a new book, El Jefe: The Stalking of Chapo Guzmán, sheds new light on an international spying operation set up to apprehend the drug lord who was responsible for ordering as many as 200 murders, according to prosecutors.

Continue reading...