Friday 25 January 2013

Thirteen killed around Mexico, six found in pieces

Thirteen people were reported killed or found dead on 24 January in criminal executions and shootouts with police around Mexico. Six of these were found dismembered in 15 plastic bags left in a car in the city of Toluca in the State of Mexico, a day after five bodies were found there in similar conditions, Proceso reported. A message was left apparently addressed to the authorities, and reportedly signed by one of the cartels the Familia Michoacana. Other victims included: two suspected drug dealers shot in a gun fight with police in the west-coast resort of Acapulco, and a police officer from the western district of Quitupan, shot by gangsters who pursued his car on a road near the frontier between the states of Jalisco and Michoacán. Separately the northern districts of Gómez Palacio and Lerdo were apparently without preventive or uniformed policemen after 81 resigned following their temporary detention and interrogation over suspected ties to criminals, CNN reported on 24 January, citing declarations by the Prosecutor's office of the state of Durango wherein are the districts. Other media had reported 91 resignations; this was in any case for the policemen's refusal to sit confidence or probity tests and undergo re-training ordered by the chief prosecutor of Durango, Sonia de la Garza. Nine policemen agreed to sit the tests, CNNMéxico reported.

Over 40 gangsters held in El Salvador over murders

State prosecutors in El Salvador announced on 23 January the arrests of 33 members of the M-18 gang for their suspected roles in beheading three youngsters in the eastern Izalco district last October, while eight other members of M-18 were arrested for their suspected roles in killing five rivals in the southern port of La Libertad in September. The head of the homicides office at the state prosecution service (Unidad Especial Antihomicidios Fiscalía General de la República) Óscar Torres said that the arrests had netted half or more of the members of the M-18's "Southern" line or faction, thought responsible for multiple crimes in Izalco in the Sonsonate department north-east of San Salvador. The 33 were suspected of taking part in the kidnapping, interrogation and murder with machetes of three youngsters aged between 17 and 21, on an estate on 11 October, the website elsalvador.com reported on 24 January. The daily El Mundo noted that the victims were suspected of being members of a rival gang, though state investigators later dismissed this. Eight other members of M-18's Southern line were also arrested for the murder on 18 September of five rivals in the Pacific port of La Libertad; officials have reportedly arrested more than 20 in relation with that incident. The victims, purported members of a rival faction in M-18, were aged between 13 and 18 and included a 16-year-old girl. The gang chief who ordered the killing first phoned to ask permission from his boss, currently serving a sentence in a prison west of the capital, elsalvador.com reported on 24 Januuary. He called from the home of a policeman who was also a member of the M-18 and was arrested in early October. Gang violence has reportedly declined in El Salvador since a ceasefire began in March 2012; instructions given out by imprisoned gang chiefs that violence stop among members may have been the reason for seeking approval before this killing.