Mexico in Focus

Juarenses get caught in the middle of police rivalries

Mayor of Ciudad Juárez, Hector “Teto” Murguía said yesterday that the Federal Police would leave Juarez by middle September.

According to Murguía, Federal Police Commissioner, Facundo Rosas Rosas announced the decision to Juarez’s authorities during a meeting to analyze and review the strategies to fight crime in the city.

“The Federal Police Commissioner considered that the city is under control, therefore, the local police is prepared to guarantee the security of the municipality,” Murguía said through an official press release. As today, the Federal Police has not confirmed the information provided by Murguía.

As July of this year 1,239 people have been killed in Juarez, a number that doesn’t include 17 killed yesterday at the local detention center. According to local figures, crimes such as extortion and kidnapping are still widespread and affecting a big portion of the society, especially business owners.  Besides that, the cleaning of the municipal police is still far away of being completed and stories about the involvement of police officers in criminal activities continue plaguing the front pages of local newspapers.

So, how come the municipal police force could be ready to confront organized crime by itself?  Where are the indicators that show that they have had some kind of success in their strategies? 

The rivalries between local police and federal police are a well-known story for many Juarenses. You probably remember the incident in which a federal police shot and killed one of Murguia’s bodyguards in January this year. After the incident, Murguía asked the Federal Police to withdraw from Juarez.

In a recent interview with El Paso Times, Juarez’s chief of police, Julián Leyzaola openly recognized the lack of understanding and coordination between federal and local police forces in fighting crime in Juarez. “They are intervening in areas that are my responsibility”, he said. “But in the end they will go soon”.

Yesterday, Leyzaola’s convoy was attacked allegedly by federal police officers, an incident that just fanned the flames between these two corporations.

It is unclear what would be the real reason for an anticipated withdraw of the Federal Police, but what seems to be clear is that Juarez is still in a very difficult situation and there is not a single indication yet that the local police is ready to take the reign and to guarantee the security of all the Juarenses.

And once again, the Juarenses are caught in the middle of politics and police rivalries.

 

Affidavit shows drug dealers operations across the border

An affidavit filed by an special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a case of possession and distribution of marijuana offers an exact and clear glimpse on how drug dealers are managing their retail operations across this border.

The affidavit relates to the criminal case against Jesús Chavez, a man arrested on federal drug smuggling charges on June 30. Chavez allegedly runs a daily marijuana smuggling operation from Ciudad Juarez into El Paso, documents show. According to the affidavit filed by FBI special agent Daniel Clark, Chavez and his partner Carlos Gomez, smuggled marijuana into El Paso by using the trunks of unsuspecting driver's vehicles. 

The marijuana, according to the agent, was stored in El Paso and later on shipped to cities throughout the U.S. on a weekly basis.

The federal document details a scheme used by Chavez and Gomez that lead to the arrest of several El Pasoans, among them, Ana Isela Martinez Amaya, a private school teacher in El Paso waiting for a trial in Cd. Juarez on drug charges. Other victim of the scheme, according to the document, were Dr. Justus Lawrence Opot and Marisol Perez, who were arrested early on January in Juarez under drug charges too. Both were released after their defense demonstrated that the drugs were planted in their car.

According to the affidavit filed in federal court, Chavez and Gomez targeted professionals and students who used to travel to El Paso on a regular schedule using the express line. They selected their objectives based on the information given by “lookouts” or teenage kids whose job was to identify a target vehicle and write down the Vehicle Identification Number.

Once with this information, Chavez and Gomez would provide it to a Texas-based locksmith to prepare two keys for the target vehicle. One of the keys was kept by the suspects in El Paso, the other key would be given to their Juarez-based co-conspirators, the report states.
According to Clark, the co-conspirators would place the marijuana bags in the trunk of the target vehicle at night. The next morning, after the vehicle had crossed to El Paso, Chavez and Gomez would retrieve the bags from the car.

At least three more victims of the same scheme were mentioned in the affidavit.

In a conversation recorded by the FBI using a confidential source and quoted in the affidavit, Chavez and Gomez discussed the arrest of Martinez Amaya and talked about what went wrong in that case. “We made such a …mess”, Gomez said in the conversation. “No, but the damn soldiers saw that she (Martinez) was young. And they got her out. She was kind of cute.”

In the same conversation, they discussed how they choose Martinez as their target.
“Why did you pick her?,” the confidential source asks. “Was she really hot or what?”
“No, It's that look. Well we cross the ... vehicles like that… We have seen that girl for about a year because she's like a clock. At 5:00, she (Martinez Amaya) was there”.

Later on, they also discuss how Dr. Opot was able to get out from prison.
“Because the doctor (Opot) went and delivered (the marijuana) to the them (Mexican federal police). He  (Opot) went and told them,” said Gomez. “The doctor told them (MX federal police) 'You know what? They put that (marijuana) in (the trunk of Perez's Mitsubishi Galant) And they arrested him (Opot) anyway.”

The document filed by the FBI special agent provides an intriguing view on drug smuggling schemes and the subsequent hearings will probably reveal more details on the connection Juarez/El Paso. 

A detention hearing for Chavez will be held Thursday in U.S. District Judge Norbert Garney's court.

Judges and justice, on the spot again in Cd. Juarez

It has been almost one-and-a-half year since Arcelia Medrano lost her 17-year-old son in a massacre in Ciudad Juárez that made international headlines on January 2010. 

Mrs. Medrano can’t hold the tears when she remembers the last time that she saw her younger son, Juan Carlos, lying unconscious in a hospital bed unable to breath by himself. “With his death, I lost the reason of my life”, she said to a group of reporters last week.

The last days have been particularly difficult for Medrano and her family, but this week could be critical for them too.  Just few days ago she saw for the first time, the pictures of the crime scene in Villas de Salvarcar, where 15 young people were killed by a group of armed men, during a birthday party on January 30.

The photos were part of the evidence presented by the prosecutor office during the criminal trial against the five men who are allegedly responsible for the massacre. The oral trial began June 20 and after two weeks of arguments and evidences presented by the prosecutors and the defense, the judges would probably have a verdict and sentence by the end of this week.

“I have hope and faith that there will be justice”, said Medrano outside of the Ciudad Juarez courtroom last Friday. “I’m very tired of this. Even if they release them, I know that there is a God that will punish them.”

Regardless of the final verdict, the trial has all the elements to become national news for several reasons. Let’s look at some of them.

-- The five accused men have argued that they confessed their responsibility in the crime because they were tortured. According to the defense lawyers some of the suspects have accepted that they were involved in other major crimes —one of them was already sentenced for his role in the killings at Bar Amadeus, where five people, including  a U.S. soldier, were executed— but not in the Villas de Salvarcar massacre. One of the defendants, Israel Arzate, is under legal protection and his case has been supported by human rights organizations, which have argued that there is enough evidence to demonstrate that he was verbally, physically and psychologically tortured. 

--  The confessions of the accused men are the strongest evidence on the prosecutor side, but if the judges decide that the allegations of torture are sustainable enough, the prosecutors would be in a big problem.  This point would take us inevitably to the lack of professionalism in the way in which criminal investigations and the consequent arrests are conducted in Mexico.  A clear example can be seen in the video in which one of the accused men is explaining his role in the Villas de Salvarcar massacre: when he is talking, anybody can hear other people talking and laughing loud in the back.

-- The three judges participating in this case are under strong political pressure because of the Marisela Escobedo’s effect.  As you probably remember, the activist and mother of Rubi Freyre was killed on Dec. 16 last year, while demanding justice for her daughter’s assassination. Escobedo became a public figure when she decided to protest a state tribunal decision that cleared the man who allegedly confessed his responsibility in the killing of her teenager daughter. The judges in that case argued that they released the man because the lack of evidences presented by the prosecutors.  They said that the attorney office was not able to demonstrate the responsibility of the accused man and their decision was based on the law.  However, public opinion and the federal and state authorities targeted the judges.  They were fired, scrutinized and prosecuted.

 The Villas de Salvarcar’s massacre forced the national government and the entire country to look closely at the situation in Juárez. For that reason, the result of this trial is so important at the political level. The pressure for the judges is then enormous.

 For the victims, however, the most important thing is to have closure and justice. As Mrs. Medrano says, “I would like to see them (the killers) in jail, but inside me I’m thinking ‘I hope they investigated well, I hope they are judging the right people.’”

For the judges that should be the most important thing too.