Gunmen kill 17 people at a drug rehab in Mexico

[samanthajane13]

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center and shot 17 people dead in a northern Mexican border city, an official said.

The attackers on Wednesday broke down the door of El Aliviane center in Ciudad Juarez, lined up their victims against a wall and opened fire, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the regional prosecutors' office. At least five people were injured.

Authorities had no immediate suspects or information on the victims. Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, is Mexico's most violent city, with at least 1,400 people killed this year alone. Most of the homicides are tied to drug gang violence.

Dozens of sobbing relatives rushed to the center to find out if their loved ones were among the dead. Soldiers and federal agents patrolled the streets surrounding the center in the Bellavista neighborhood.

President Felipe Calderon sent thousands more troops and federal police to Ciudad Juarez earlier this year, but the surge has done little to stem the raging violence. The city is home to the Juarez drug cartel, which is battling other gangs for trafficking and dealing turf.

The government is struggling to revamp Ciudad Juarez's police force, which is plagued by corruption and the assassination of many of its officers. Other police have quit the force out of fear of being targeted.

The massacre capped a particularly bloody day in Mexico's relentless drug war.

Gunmen killed the No. 2 security official and three other people in Calderon's home state of Michoacan, where the government is locked in an intensifying battle with the ruthless La Familia cartel, blamed for a string of assassinations of police and soldiers.

Jose Manuel Revuelta, who was promoted less than two weeks ago to state deputy public safety director, is the highest-ranking government official killed in the wave of assassinations sweeping Michoacan, the cradle of La Familia drug cartel.

Attackers drove up alongside Revuelta as he headed home and opened fire, state Attorney General Jesus Montejano said.

Revuelta tried to speed away, but only made it a few blocks before he was intercepted by two vehicles. Six gunmen got out and sprayed Revuelta's car with bullets, killing him, two bodyguards and a truck driver caught in the crossfire, Montejano said.

An AP reporter at the scene saw the bodies of Revuelta and his bodyguards in the car, which had at least 15 bullet holes in the front windshield. Soldiers and federal police rushed to the site — just three blocks from the headquarters of the Michoacan Public Safety Department — and a helicopter circled overhead.

Soldiers and federal police have intensified their fight against La Familia since accusing the cartel of killing 18 federal agents and two soldiers last month. In the worst attack, 12 federal agents were slain and their tortured bodies piled along a roadside as a warning.

It was the boldest cartel attack yet on Mexico's government. Authorities said say La Familia was retaliating for the arrest of one of its top members.

The government has since rounded up more La Familia suspects, including Luis Ricardo Magana, who is alleged to have controlled methamphetamine shipments to the United States for the gang. Days before his capture, prosecutors detained the mother of reputed La Familia leader Servando "La Tuta" Gomez despite his threat to retaliate if police bothered his family. The woman was released after two days "for lack of evidence" of involvement in the cartel.

An AP reporter at the scene saw the bodies of Revuelta and his bodyguards in the car, which had at least 15 bullet holes in the front windshield. Soldiers and federal police rushed to the site — just three blocks from the headquarters of the Michoacan Public Safety Department — and a helicopter circled overhead.

Calderon first launched his crackdown against drug cartels in Michoacan, sending thousands of federal police and soldiers to his home state after taking office in late 2006. Tens of thousands more have since been deployed to drug hotspots across Mexico.

Drug gang violence has since surged, claiming more than 13,500 lives, including more than 1,000 police officers.

Calderon defended his battle against drug trafficking in a speech to Congress on Wednesday. He said the government has taken on the cartels as no previous Mexican administration has dared to do.

"As never before, we have weakened the logistical and financial structure of crime," the president told legislators.

The federal Attorney General's Office, meanwhile, announced the arrest of its two top officials in Quintana Roo, a state on the Yucatan Peninsula, for allegedly protecting the Gulf and the Beltran Levya drug cartels.

Officials provided no further details on the allegations against the prosecutors, who were ordered jailed by a court Wednesday pending the investigation.

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Associated Press Writers Gustavo Ruiz in Morelia, Michoacan, Manuel de la Cruz in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, and Alexandra Olson in Mexico City contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090903/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_drug_war_mexico

[samanthajane13]

Mexico closes drug rehab centers after attacks
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO, Associated Press Writer E. Eduardo Castillo, Associated Press Writer – 12 mins ago

MEXICO CITY – Authorities have closed 10 unregistered drug rehabilitation centers in Ciudad Juarez and say they are going after others they fear may serve as cover or recruiting grounds for drug trafficking gangs in the violence-plagued city across from El Paso, Texas.

Gunmen have slaughtered 28 people this month at two rehab centers in Ciudad Juarez in separate attacks that investigators blame on a bloody struggle between rival drug gangs.

Sergio Belmonte, the spokesman for the Ciudad Juarez mayor's office, says there is evidence traffickers are recruiting members through unregulated rehab centers.

"There are unregistered centers that they (traffickers) set up themselves, they are recruitment centers, because their most faithful soldiers are the addicts," Belmonte said. "They give them drugs, draw them together and recruit them."

Chihuahua state Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza said that while there are legitimate rehab centers, "there are others that have taken advantage of the situation to provide cover, while really doing other things."

Reyes Baeza said irregularities have been discovered in at least 12 other centers, including a lack of permits, and he pledged "we are going to close" them.

Chihuahua state authorities said records showed the center attacked on Tuesday, Anexo de Vida, had not been registered with the government and may have been operating clandestinely. Ten other centers in Ciudad Juarez have been closed for operating illegally, although police would not say whether they may have been run by gangs.

Most of those closures occurred after a Sept. 2 attack that killed 18 people at a drug rehab center, which was not among those closed for being unregistered.

Drug-rehabilitation professionals worried that authorities could exaccerbate the very social problems of addiction they are trying to fight.

"It is dangerous to demonize these centers. ... If these patients are put back on the streets, they are invariably going to return to their old behaviors," said Alonso, an employee of the Ave Fenix recovery center, where neither counselors nor addicts are identified by their last names to avoid the stigma associated with addiction.

"Instead of closing them, the right thing to do would be to train them (the centers) so they can function correctly," Alonso said.

Families have pulled relatives out of rehab centers because of the attacks. At least 41 people have been killed in attacks on Ciudad Juarez rehab clinics in the past year.

Javier, a 22-year-old drug addict, who refused to give his last name for fear of reprisals, has been in and out of rehab trying to cure a drug habit that began with marijuana at 14 and later progressed to cocaine. He is worried about the closures.

"There are rehab centers that really give you help, from the heart," he said in an interview at the city's Amarr clinic.

Authorities have blamed the latest shootings on a rivalry between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels, although investigators have named no suspects.

The battle for both the local drug market and lucrative smuggling routes into the United States have made Ciudad Juarez the most dangerous city in Mexico, with at least 1,647 people killed so far this year.

That turf war, however, has changed since the government sent thousands of army troops and federal police earlier this year to patrol the city, Belmonte said.

Cartel lieutenants who once roamed the city in convoys of flashy SUVs, staging daylight shootouts on main boulevards, are now increasingly forced to take their battles to gritty back streets, in attacks that target lower-level operatives.

That may help explain why attacks on clinics have increased, Belmonte said.

"This is a war that was going between the commanders, the leaders, and that is why they fought it out in the streets and the shopping malls," he said.

"The joint operation has inhibited the battle they were openly fighting ... changing the method of attack," he added. "It is now directed at the base level, the dealers."

In an unrelated attack, four people — including a police officer and a 3-year-old boy — were injured when gunmen open fire on a people leaving an Independence Day parade in San Bartolo Tutotepec, a small town in the central state of Hidalgo, the state Public Safety Department said Thursday.

Police arrested a suspect in Wednesday's shooting but had not established a motive.

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Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090918/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_drug_war_mexico