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From Los Angeles Times

How many have died in Mexico's drug war?

Homicides attributed to the drug war continue across the country on a daily basis, and many more violent incidents probably go unreported. Self-censorship is widespread among news outlets in violent states such as Tamaulipas and Chihuahua.

With 2011 nearing its midway point, how many people have been killed in Mexico?

Until May many major international news outlets covering Mexico used the general figure of 34,000 or 35,000 drug war deaths -- while bodies have kept piling up in shootouts or discovered in mass graves by the hundreds. In the border city of Ciudad Juarez alone, for example, at least 976 people have been violently killed in the metropolitan region since the beginning of 2011, reports the tally at Frontera List.

But several news outlets in Mexico, as well as the peace movement of poet Javier Sicilia , have begun citing a figure of 40,000 dead since last month. A U.S.-based law-enforcement group favoring more liberal drug policies assembled this online data map from news and Internet sources to arrive an estimate topping 40,000, an increase of about 6,000 since the last official figure. (The Times lately has cited an estimate of at least 38,000, based on the official figures plus an approximation for the first months of 2011 derived from mainstream Mexican media tallies.)

Many drug-related deaths are simply not counted, and scores of people remain missing or disappeared. As The Times has reported , the missing constitute a confounding mystery that casts doubt on virtually any figure of deaths related to the drug war.

The death tally also functions as a political tool. As the number of victims creeps upward, the toll is seen as politically useful for Sicilia's peace movement (link in Spanish).

A "peace caravan" led by the poet left Cuernavaca in Morelos state last week and is set to arrive in Ciudad Juarez on Friday. Sicilia is expected to meet with an array of border and peace activists to sign a "national pact" making six demands of President Felipe Calderon . These include a demilitarization of the effort against Mexico's powerful drug cartels, placing more emphasis on education reform and targeting money laundering and entrenched corruption.

In turn, Calderon's conservative government argues that its campaign against the drug cartels is not an enforcement-only effort but incorporates steps to address some of the social and institutional causes of drug-related violence. The administration has repeatedly argued that the vast majority of the deaths stem from battles between rival trafficking groups -- a sign that the crackdown is weakening them.

Through a spokeswoman, Calderon's office told La Plaza late Monday that government analysts are updating the drug war toll, but do not yet have a specified release date. The government maintains a searchable database (link in Spanish) of deaths related to organized crime through 2010.

The death toll has always included a presumed majority of suspected cartel members, plus smaller numbers of military personnel, federal and local police officers, politicians, journalists, lawyers, human-rights activists, students, migrants from Central and South America and a handful of U.S. government employees, including a consular official killed in Ciudad Juarez and a customs agent gunned down in San Luis Potosi.

Overall, 111 U.S. citizens were killed in Mexico in 2010, by far the most violent year in the war, according to the last travel advisory issued by the U.S. State Department. The advisory does not specify which of those deaths may be tied to the drug war. In addition, numerous innocent bystanders and even infants have fallen victim to the violence.

Whatever the toll in Mexico, tallies have not included victims of violence attributed to Mexican drug cartels that are infiltrating Central America. Last month, 27 people were found decapitated on a remote farm in Guatemala in an attack blamed on a Mexican cartel.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2011/06/mexico-war-dead-update-figures-40000.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LaPlaza+%28La+Plaza%29

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Youth in gang rapes to be tried as an adult, authorities say

Eight Santa Paula residents have been arrested in connection with attacks on two teenage girls.

by Abby Sewell, Los Angeles Times

June 8, 2011

The juvenile arrested in Ventura County along with seven men on suspicion of gang-raping two teenage girls they lured from social networking sites was charged as an adult in the case, authorities said Tuesday.

The 15- and 16-year-old girls agreed to meet the suspects on separate occasions, one in March and one in April, said Det. Sgt. Ismael Cordero of the Santa Paula Police Department.

Cordero said the suspects gave the victims alcohol and possibly other substances. In both cases the girls passed out and awoke to find themselves being sexually assaulted, he said.

The suspects were identified as Santa Paula residents Esteban Oseguera, 18; Isaac Ek, 19; Joseph Sandoval, 18; Jonathan Gaona, 20; Dion Mendoza, 19; Carlos Ek, 22; Adrian Garcia, 19; and a boy whose name has not been released because he is a minor.

The charges include kidnapping, rape, conspiracy, street terrorism, unlawful intercourse with a minor and rape while a victim was asleep.

Seven of the suspects were arrested Friday. Garcia was arrested Sunday morning.

One girl came forward in April. During the course of that investigation, police said, they learned of the assault in March.

Several of the suspects are believed to be gang members or to have gang ties, but Cordero said it was unclear whether the attacks were committed in connection with the gang.

Some of the suspects were involved in both assaults, authorities said.

Based on the investigation, it is "reasonable to assume additional sexual assault victims may exist," police said in a statement.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0608-gang-rape-20110608,0,7119317,print.story

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51 indicted in Azusa gang's 'terrorizing' of blacks

Authorities say African Americans for years were victims of assault, robbery and vandalism. The gang feared a threat to its drug trade, but innocent people were allegedly targeted solely because of their race.

by Sam Quinones and Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times

June 8, 2011

An Azusa street gang's campaign against blacks began during a meeting at a local park in 1992.

From there, prosecutors contend, the predominantly Latino street gang went on the attack.

Graffiti with racial epithets began appearing around town, including "Get out N…" sprayed on garage doors of some black residents. Gang members allegedly beat up blacks they found in their "territory," telling one man "We hate n… in Azusa. This is Azusa."

Over about 15 years, blacks were assaulted, chased and robbed, their property vandalized, in a "crime spree to drive African Americans out of the city of Azusa," said U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte Jr.

Authorities announced Tuesday that a federal grand jury had indicted 51 people allegedly associated with the Azusa 13 gang in what prosecutors described as "terrorizing" blacks in the San Gabriel Valley city of more than 48,000.

Azusa Police Chief Robert Garcia said the campaign was partly motivated by racial prejudice. But it also grew from orders by leaders of the Mexican Mafia prison gang to organize Azusa 13's narcotics business by "eliminating competition so they can have a monopoly on drug sales," Garcia said. "Usually a street gang member doesn't get an original idea; it comes from someone higher up."

According to the indictment, one Azusa 13 member actually drew up a "business plan" aimed at monopolizing drug sales in the city. The plan included taxing drug dealers, protecting those who paid and attacking and destroying the operations of those who did not.

But authorities said the campaign went beyond drug deals to harassment of innocent black residents because of their race.

"We're brainwashed to think that if we let a black family in, then their [gang] cousins are going to come from Compton," said one former Azusa gang member who grew up in the neighborhood. He spoke in an interview Tuesday, requesting anonymity out of concern for his safety.

The 24-count indictment is the latest in several prosecutions alleging that Latino gangs in Southern California attacked blacks to get them to move out of neighborhoods the gangs controlled. Many of those incidents occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s in neighborhoods with histories of gang problems.

A few years ago, federal prosecutors charged members of a Latino gang with a campaign to push blacks out of the unincorporated Florence-Firestone neighborhood that allegedly resulted in 20 homicides over a decade. In the Harbor Gateway district of L.A., a Latino gang was accused of targeting blacks including 14-year-old Cheryl Green, whose death became a rallying point against such attacks. Members of the Avenues, a Latino gang in Highland Park, were convicted of a series of assaults and killings in the early 1990s.

Prosecutors did not allege any racially motivated killings in Azusa. But the indictment describes a climate of fear that the campaign created in a city far from the urban core. Azusa is primarily Latino, with whites making up about a fifth of the population, but blacks account for fewer than 1,500 of the residents.

The indictment provides a detailed look at how the gang ran its drug business and why it decided to target blacks.

Tax revenue collected from drug dealers was sent to a man referred to in the indictment as "Mexican Mafia Member #1," then incarcerated in Leavenworth, Kan. When he died in 2008, revenue was sent to two other unidentified Mexican Mafia members, the indictment says. The document does not identify "Mexican Mafia member #1," but a reputed Mexican Mafia member from Azusa, Ruben Rodriguez, was killed in Kansas in 2008 while on parole.

Controlling the neighborhood for the Mexican Mafia members were a series of gang members appointed as "keyholders" — also known as llaveros — who would communicate the prison gang's bidding to the streets and make sure orders were carried out.

The campaign allegedly began with meetings at Pioneer Park in 1992 in which gang members were urged to get rid of blacks who were then moving into apartments in Azusa.

At one meeting, prosecutors allege, a leader said, "Let's talk about" blacks. That day, the gang began patrolling the alley by a home where African Americans lived within the gang's territory. A week later, an unidentified member of the gang tagged "A13," "AZUSA 13" and a racial epithet on the garage doors of a residential complex to intimidate the African American residents.

As years passed, black residents endured beatings, confrontations, robberies and graffiti from the gang, the indictment says.

In one attack, several gang members surrounded an African American man, holding glass bottles, yelling racial epithets and hitting him in the face. They broke the windows of his car and stole the stereo as he ran to a convenience store to escape, according to the indictment.

Beginning in 1999 the city was struck by a surge in more serious hate crimes as several paroled gang members returned to the streets. Gejuan Salle, a black man and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center nurse, was shot as he was walking outside an auto parts store. In 2000, firebombs were thrown into the homes of three black families one night. Police believe both cases were racially motivated, but they remain unsolved. Attacks continued into 2005.

But by early that decade, Azusa police and community groups had begun to push back. For a brief time, undercover officers even set up a shop called A Peace of Africa, with 24-hour surveillance, selling merchandise from Africa, hoping to entice gang members into attacking it. They didn't, and the department had to close the store for lack of funds.

Eventually the hate crime investigation led police to arrest six gang members, part of what was known as the "trigger crew." At one trial, a gang member testifying for the prosecution said Azusa 13 would go out "hunting" blacks in the city. Those gang members were convicted and are serving long prison terms.

The last of them tried, Ralph "Swifty" Flores, was convicted of committing four murders over several years and received the death penalty in 2008.

In recent years, hate crimes in Azusa have dropped to less than one a year, and usually are not gang-related, said Garcia, the police chief.

The gang's presence has notably diminished. Graffiti is all but gone from the area the gang has claimed since at least the 1960s.

"The indictment is the latest step," said City Councilman Robert Gonzales. "We have gangs in our city, but we have been able to control and minimize the gang activity compared to the past."

"We were once classified as the hate crime capital of the region," added Azusa Mayor Joe Rocha. "Today we are a place of peace and tranquility."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0608-azusa-gang-20110608,0,26515,print.story

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From Google News

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North Carolina man pleads guilty to terrorism conspiracy

(CNN) -- A North Carolina man could face up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to a federal terrorism conspiracy charge, according to prosecutors.

Zakariya Boyd entered a guilty plea on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Raleigh, North Carolina, the U.S. Attorney's office said in a statement.

Boyd, 22, is one of eight defendants, including his father and brother, who were indicted in 2009 on charges of conspiring to provide money, transportation, training and other resources to jihadist recruits.

His father, Daniel P. Boyd, pleaded guilty to two counts of terrorism conspiracy in February. The remaining co-defendants, currently in U.S. custody, are scheduled to go on trial in September.

"Today, Mr. Boyd stepped into an American courtroom and was afforded the rights and privileges of a system of which he would have destroyed," U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding said in statement Tuesday.

"His decision to plead guilty sets him on a different path -- a path consistent with the rights and safety of the citizens of the United States, both at home and abroad."

According to the indictment, the Boyds and their alleged co-conspirators offered money and weapons training to aspiring terrorists, and were willing to die as martyrs for their jihadist cause.

The defendants also solicited donations, obtained assault weapons and inculcated others in the belief that committing acts of violence against perceived enemies of Islam is a requirement of their faith, the indictment states.

The alleged co-conspirators also plotted to kill U.S. military personnel in a plan to attack the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia, according to court records.

Various law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the U.S. Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Raleigh and Durham police departments, and North Carolina's Alcohol Law Enforcement office took part in the investigation, the statement said.

The investigation stretched from North Carolina to eastern Europe, where in June 2010, authorities arrested a Kosovar man for taking part in the conspiracy. The suspect, Bajram Asllani, 29, of Mitrovica, allegedly solicited money from the alleged North Carolina co-conspirators to establish a base for jihadist operations in Kosovo.

Asllani is accused of giving alleged co-conspirator Hysen Sherifi videos to recruit militants and of directing the latter to collect money to buy land, where weapons could be stored and the base could be established. Despite Asllani's arrest, U.S. authorities have been unable to extradite the Kosovar suspect.

Sherifi, a native of Kosovo, is a U.S. legal permanent resident in North Carolina. The other co-defendants: Mohammed Omar Aly Hassan, Anes Subasic, Jude Kenan Mohammad, Ziyad Yaghi and the Boyds are U.S. citizens.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/06/08/north.carolina.terror.plot/

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