Fifth person detained after vessel carrying cocaine was intercepted off Galicia coast
Spanish police have arrested a man alleged to be the pilot of the “narco-submarine” that was intercepted off the coast of Galicia last weekend carrying three tonnes of cocaine.
Two other men were arrested at the scene after allegedly trying to scuttle the semi-submersible vessel and swim to shore on 24 November.
Continue reading...Three tonnes of drugs found on vessel off coast of Galicia could be worth €100m
A large portion of the three tonnes of cocaine smuggled aboard the “narco-submarine” seized by Spanish police last weekend would have ended up on British streets, according to the UK National Crime Agency (NCA).
The 20-metre semi-submersible craft was intercepted off the coast of Galicia, north-west Spain, on Sunday following a joint operation with police forces from the UK, Portugal, the US and Brazil. The NCA said the cocaine was worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
Continue reading...Rennes’ public prosecutor warns people who spot packages to refrain from touching them
French police are investigating how a “significant amount” of cocaine and other drugs have washed up on beaches along the Atlantic coast in recent weeks. New packages continue to appear daily.
The cocaine is particularly pure and therefore dangerous, according to the prosecutor’s office in the western city of Rennes, who urged people who spot packages not to touch them but immediately call the police.
Continue reading...After the massacre of a US family, the president offered to help ‘cleaning out these monsters’ but previous interventions have brought little peace
After nine members of a Mormon family with US/Mexican citizenship were slaughtered by gunmen, Donald Trump reacted by urging his Mexican counterpart to let him sort out the drug cartels.
“If Mexico needs or requests help cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively,” the US president tweeted on Tuesday, after news broke of the massacre – the latest in a series of extremely violent events across the country.
Continue reading...Gunmen massacred up to nine members of a family, most of them believed to be children, in Mexico on Monday. These victims’ ages, and reported US citizenship, propelled the story into the headlines. But this is a country where nearly 100 people are murdered each day, one every 15 minutes, and many deaths go unmarked.
Donald Trump, via Twitter, called on Mexico to “wage WAR on the drug cartels”. That disastrous strategy, first unleashed in 2006 in response to an explosion of violence, only exacerbated the problem – fracturing cartels into smaller factions battling for power. Two hundred thousand deaths later, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as Amlo, took power vowing to use “hugs not bullets” to bring peace.
Continue reading...The 14 October massacre that left 13 state police dead was just one extreme episode of violence in a recent litany of horrors
At first glance, the human skull lying beside the road looked like a piece of rubbish. Once spotted, it was impossible to ignore: charred, broken and punched through with a bullet hole.
Continue reading...US efforts to curb the opioid fentanyl were behind the brief arrest of a son of imprisoned kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán last month, Mexico’s security minister has said.
After the US requested his extradition, Ovidio Guzmán was briefly arrested, then freed by outnumbered officials who feared a bloody confrontation with cartel henchmen.
Continue reading...Mexico's government released dramatic video footage of the moment its forces briefly captured a son of kingpin Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán before they were ordered to release the suspected trafficker to avoid any potential bloodshed. A compound holding Ovidio Guzmán was raided by the military. Guzmán's supporters responded with gun battles, prompting him to phone them to call off the attack. Mexico's government later called off the operation after a show of strength from the cartel.
Continue reading...Government report on failed operation shows soldiers pushing Ovidio Guzmán López to tell brothers to call off rescue attempt
Mexican soldiers who detained a son of the jailed drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán forced him to telephone his brothers in a desperate effort to call off a rescue attempt by cartel gunmen.
Instead, the call triggered a fresh onslaught in the northern city of Culiacán as the Sinaloa cartel mounted a terrifying show of strength that eventually prompted the outnumbered soldiers to free the capo’s son in exchange for their lives.
Continue reading...Suspects had been arrested after drugs, money and rocket launchers seized in Mexico City
Twenty-seven of 31 suspected drugs cartel members arrested this week in a Mexico City raid have been freed by a judge, marking the government’s second high-profile blow on policing the drugs war in as many weeks.
The suspects were nabbed by security forces in a central district of the capital on Tuesday after authorities seized two laboratories used to produce synthetic drugs, 50 kg (110 pounds) of chemical precursors, more than two tonnes of marijuana and 20 kg of cocaine, as well as an unspecified amount of money, rocket launchers and grenades.
Continue reading...Mexico’s foreign minister said on Saturday that the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Donald Trump had agreed to take swift action to stem the flow of illegal weapons from the US into Mexico.
Related: 'We do not want war': Mexico president defends release of El Chapo’s son
Continue reading...Intense fighting has erupted in the Mexican city of Culiacán, where masked gunmen threw up burning barricades and traded gunfire with security forces after authorities arrested one of the sons of the jailed former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán. The chaotic scenes in Culiacán, a long-time stronghold for the Guzmáns' cartel, have increased pressure on President López Obrador, who took office in December promising to pacify a country weary after more than a decade of drug-war fighting.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador said security forces saved lives by releasing jailed kingpin’s son after his brief capture in Culiacán
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has insisted that his government was right to release one of the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a day after his brief capture by the army sparked a wave of attacks by cartel gunmen who took soldiers hostage and paralyzed the northern city of Culiacán.
“This decision was taken to protect citizens. You cannot fight fire with fire,” López Obrador said in his daily press conference on Friday morning. “We do not want deaths. We do not want war.”
Continue reading...In Culiacán, masked men exchange gunfire with security forces and erect burning barricades as armed trucks patrol
Intense fighting has erupted in the Mexican city of Culiacán, where masked gunmen threw up burning barricades and traded gunfire with security forces amid rumours that one of the sons of the jailed former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán had been arrested.
Images shared on social media showed trucks with mounted heavy machine guns patrolling the city streets; another clip showed a gunman with an assault rifle shooting at an unknown target against a soundtrack of continuous gunfire.
Continue reading...Police say they seized the cocaine-loaded penises at the home of a couple who managed a Peruvian restaurant
Police in Argentina have arrested members of a gang of drug dealers accused of smuggling cocaine hidden inside plastic penises.
The cocaine-loaded members, of the kind found as costume adornments at party shops, were sold by dealers operating in the red light district of the city of La Plata, about 36 miles south of Argentina’s capital city of Buenos Aires.
Continue reading...Lawyers in gangland cases given emergency protection after unprecedented killing
Lawyers and prosecutors in major gangland drugs cases in the Netherlands have been given emergency protection after the unprecedented murder of a top defence lawyer prompted police and the media to claim that government naivety was turning the country into a narco-state.
Derk Wiersum was gunned down in the street as he left his home in the Amsterdam suburb of Buitenveldert on Wednesday morning. Police are searching for a 16- to 20-year old man in a black hooded top who fled the scene on foot.
Continue reading...More than 3,000 secret graves containing victims of Mexico’s raging drug wars have been found across the country, according to the first ever official tally of the phenomenon.
A total of 4,874 bodies were found at 3,025 sites, and many of the victims have yet to be identified, said Karla Quintana, the head of the National Search Committee, which was set up last year to help desperate families find relatives who have gone missing.
Continue reading...It’s a favourite current joke in Mexico: “No más túneles!” – no more tunnels. There’s little chance of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera repeating his famous escapes from Mexican prisons in the US jail where he was sent after being given a life sentence last week by a court in Brooklyn.
So now that El Chapo is removed from the scene, what next? The pillar of the US “Kingpin” strategy against narco-traffic is that the trade is weakened when its leaders are caught and jailed.
Continue reading...US district judge imposed life sentence plus 30 years at hearing in federal Brooklyn court
Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Mexican drug lord found guilty of running a murderous criminal enterprise that smuggled tons of drugs into the United States, was sentenced by a US judge on Wednesday to spend the rest of his life in prison.
US District Judge Brian Cogan imposed the sentence of life plus 30 years, which was mandatory under the law, at a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn.
Continue reading...Drug educator Paul Dillon says it’s ‘ludicrous’ to think pill testing will stop drug deaths, but Australia does need to try something
One in 20 year 10 students have tried ecstasy, an Australian drug educator has told an inquest into NSW music festival deaths.
“It just baffles me,” Paul Dillon said in Sydney on Tuesday. “Certainly amongst young people, MDMA is the drug of the moment.”
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