Wednesday, September 9, 2009

MORE THAN 1,500 PEOPLE MURDERED IN CUIDAD JUAREZ

EVERY DAY THERE ARE 12 AMERICANS MURDERED BY ILLEGALS, 8 CHILDREN MOLESTED AND MILLIONS SPENT IN WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS AND FIGHTING MEXICAN CRIMES. AND YET OUR BORDERS REMAIN OPEN UNDEFENDED

THANK THE LA RAZA DEMS!


Calderón Draws Fire Over Nominee for Attorney General

By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 9, 2009



MEXICO CITY, Sept. 8 -- President Felipe Calderón plans to replace one of Mexico's top officials in the war on drugs with a controversial former prosecutor who critics say did little during his years in office to solve the killings of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez during the 1990s.

Calderón nominated Arturo Chávez to serve as the nation's attorney general, but opponents denounced the move. They said that when Chávez served as prosecutor in the border state of Chihuahua, he was accused of bungling cases and failing to make significant arrests in the string of gruesome killings of women that continue to garner international attention.

"I consider him one of the most incompetent choices," said Jaime Hervella, a human rights advocate in Ciudad Juarez.

Esther Chávez Cano, founder of a rape crisis center in Juarez and a leading voice for the hundreds of women who were killed or went missing, told El Norte newspaper, "This is bad news; it doesn't take us anywhere, it's not the solution to the problem." She questioned why Calderón would pick someone who had failed in Juarez before to now confront the surging drug violence there.

More than 1,500 people have been killed in Ciudad Juarez this year, as cartel members and local drug gangs fight for control of street corners and lucrative smuggling routes into the billion-dollar U.S. market. With Juarez's homicide rate reaching 130 killings per 100,000 residents, Mexico's Citizens' Council for Public Security and Justice recently named it the most violent city in the world. A week ago, 18 recovering drug addicts were lined up against a wall and executed at a treatment center.

Chávez's nomination needs the approval of the Mexican Senate; Calderón's National Action Party lost control of the chamber in this summer's midterm elections. In his announcement, Calderón praised Chávez's "wide experience in law and specifically in combating organized crime."

With Calderón's fight against the drug cartels raging across Mexico, the resignation of Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora on Monday signals a shake-up in the crime-fighting leadership of the cabinet.

Medina Mora was viewed as a close ally by Washington and, with his custom-made suits and fluent English, served as Mexico's public face in the evolving partnership between the Obama and Calderón governments. U.S. diplomats heaped praise on Medina Mora, saying he helped foster greater cooperation between Washington and Mexico City.

The relationship between Mexican and U.S. law enforcement agencies is undergoing profound change, with $1.4 billion in aid flowing to Mexico and U.S. agents and advisers helping Mexico to confront endemic corruption and reform its police, judiciary and intelligence-gathering.

But there have been continued setbacks. One member of Medina Mora's inner circle, Noé Ramírez Mandujano, who led organized-crime investigations, was arrested last year and charged with peddling sensitive information to the Sinaloa cartel for $450,000.

In Arizona on Friday, a former top supervisor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was arrested and charged with passing classified information to an unnamed Mexican drug cartel. Richard Padilla Cramer was the ICE resident agent in charge at the Nogales port of entry in Arizona until 2004, when he took up duties as the ICE attache in Guadalajara until retirement in 2007.

According to the criminal complaint, Cramer used his position to search government databases to find out whether any members of the cartel were federal informants. If found out, such informants are usually executed or their family members kidnapped. Cramer is also charged with personally investing in a plot to smuggle 300 kilograms of cocaine from Panama to Spain.

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