Mexico's bloody drug war escalated this week in the western states of Nayarit and Michoacán, raising fresh fears that large swaths of Mexico have descended into lawlessness.

Gunfights between rival drug gangs left 29 dead in Nayarit Wednesday, according to the AP. Police found the bodies, all male and dressed in fake military uniforms, along the highway around 14 bullet-ridden trucks and SUVs.
The fight was apparently a battle between the powerful Sinaloa Cartel - which has long been active in Nayarit - and Los Zetas, a violent paramilitary gang.
In nearby Michoacán state, three days of gun battles forced hundreds of people to leave their homes. The number of casualties are not known.
Officials said about 800 people were displaced to shelters when fighting broke out Monday. Some of the refugees started to return home after the fighting abated Wednesday.
The surge in violence is likely due to the break up of the La Familia cartel, which dominated Mexico's methamphetamine trade from Michoacán, the gang's home turf. La Familia has been in disarray since its messianic leader, Nazario "El Mas Loco" Moreno, was killed in December.
A new gang, "The Knights Templar," emerged in Michoácan in March. The Templars is thought to be made up of former La Familia members led by Servando "La Tuta" Gomez. Authorities believe another La Familia leader may be fighting with Gomez for control.
Unlike Mexico's other drug gangs, La Familia and its successors have a stated social purpose and cartel members work to provide for the poor and galvanize support among the local population. Corruption is widespread in Michoacán; La Familia is thought to have infiltrated all levels of municipal and state government.
The federal government is increasingly concerned that Michoacán - a strategic point between Mexico City and Guadalajara - has become virtually ungovernable. As the Wall Street Journal points out today, the state is a good example of why some U.S. military analysts and government officials worry that Mexico's drug wars could quickly become an insurgency.

Druglord 'El Chapo' Moves Operations to Argentina

Quoting an anonymous source in the Argentine government, Noticias Argentinas said that Guzman began living in the country with his wife and stepdaughter in 2010. The fugitive only moved on early this year after being alerted that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was pursuing an arrest order, according to the report, traveling to Paraguay, Colombia, and then Europe.

“It is believed that he used a new false identity,” the official said. “But this we can say, there are registers of his wife and stepdaughter leaving Argentina in March of this year.”

The allegation, which has not been independently confirmed, conflicts with the image of Guzman holed up in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains, protected by loyal gunmen and friendly locals. Reports of the Sinaloa kingpin going abroad have emerged periodically, but never to the extent of the latest story, which has him traveling from country to country with his family.

However, because of the pressure at home from the Calderon government’s ongoing campaign against organized crime, many Mexican gangs have shifted portions of their operations abroad. Perhaps the biggest example of this is the Zetas’ growing role in Guatemala, but Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel has been detected as far away as Malaysia and Australia. And with a number of the most notorious Mexican gangsters arrested or killed by the government in the past 18 months, it is also not inconceivable that Mexican capos would think it a safer option to take refuge outside of the country.

If so, this would mirror the pattern set by Colombian drug traffickers. Because of the improved capacity of the Colombian authorities, many capos, who a generation ago would have operated unmolested in Cali, Bogota, and Medellin, have found it more practical to operate abroad. As a result, instances of Colombians being arrested on drug charges in other regions of South America or in Mexico have become more common.

In one famous Argentine example, Hector Edilson Duque Ceballos, alias "El Monoteto," was shot to death along with a colleague in a Buenos Aires parking lot in 2008. Duque Ceballos had been one of the highest-ranking members of Colombia's Cordillera Cartel.

Mexican drug lords also have a long history in Argentina, dating back to former Juarez capo Amado Carrillo’s plans to move there in the 1990s. According to Proceso, Guzman had been building his presence in the South American nation since at least 2007, using a series of evangelical churches as fronts for his organization.

Other Mexican groups have followed Guzman into Argentina. According to Edgardo Buscaglia, a researcher with the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, members of the Tijuana Cartel are working with Guzman’s people in the country. Authorities have also uncovered evidence of the Zetas operating there, though not in tandem with Guzman.

Guzman’s work in Argentina centers primarily on the production and distribution of synthetic drugs, according to the Proceso report. This is concentrated in three poor northern provinces: Chaco, Formosa, and Misiones. As a result, Guzman’s group has easy access to Uruguay, Brazil, and Paraguay, including the notoriously lawless tri-border area that Argentina shares with the latter two nations. Guzman has also allegedly invested significant amounts of money in some of the largest cities in Argentina, such as Buenos Aires, Cordoba, and Santa Fe.

The appeal of Argentina for drug syndicates is rooted in a number of factors. With its long coastline and busy port system, Argentina is a valuable source of important precursor chemicals for synthetic drugs from Asia. The relative weakness of state institutions in much of  its territory means that capos have little trouble in corrupting officials. Guzman, for example, was reportedly tipped off about the DEA order by a collaborator in the Argentine government. Furthermore, with more than 40 million citizens, the country also provides a significant retail market for drugs.

 

Dhian Thapar was gunned down outside his Whitby home after taking over a popular South Asian TV show whose host had been shot and killed.

Dhian Thapar was gunned down outside his Whitby home after taking over a popular South Asian TV show whose host had been shot and killed.

But like the murder nine months earlier of Prithyi Vij in Toronto, police have made no arrests in Thapar’s Feb. 22, 1992 killing.

Both murders were execution-style.

Durham Regional Police appealed for help again recently to solve the killing of the wealthy dentist and father-of-three who owned several Metro businesses, including the India Theatre on Gerrard St. E. Investigators continue to believe the killings are linked.

There were rumours Thapar, 49, was targeted by a black Muslim gang.

And four months after his slaying, Toronto Police charged a man with threatening to kill his son over a cancelled cultural show.

Investigators also suspected ties to the May 27, 1991 murder of Umesh Shantilan Raniga, 24, in his Gerrard St. jewelry store — one day before Vij’s shooting.

Interrupted while on his phone, Raniga’s cries for mercy — calling his killer “brother” while being repeatedly stabbed — were played to successive juries before the accused killer was acquitted for a second time.

No one else has ever been charged.

“These cases never close,” says Michael A. Davis, a former Toronto homicide detective who handled Vij’s case.

“There were so many different angles, but we didn’t have anything solid to point to a killer or killers,” he says. “Obviously we had an open mind ... we didn’t have tunnel vision.”

Vij “was assassinated, as far as I’m concerned. The killer was waiting for him,” he says.

“There were so many people we spoke to,” says Davis, who runs a private investigation business that bears his name. Investigators developed several theories and decided “it was close to home,” Davis says.

“I’m not pointing fingers,” he says. “Obviously his wife wasn’t the triggerman.”

Police probed reports of financial problems with Vij’s business, marriage issues related to frequent absences from home for work and community events, plus Thapar ousting Usha from the radio show.

It was also an era of social tensions linked to India’s politics, including the 1985 Air India bombing, plus the wounding three years later of an outspoken Punjabi newspaper editor in B.C. — fatally silenced in 1998.

The White Rock chapter of the Hells Angels supplied marijuana and muscle to a multimillion-dollar cross-border drug-smuggling ring

The White Rock chapter of the Hells Angels supplied marijuana and muscle to a multimillion-dollar cross-border drug-smuggling ring in which 22 people have so far been charged, U.S. court documents allege.

U.S. law enforcement agents allege Hells Angel associate Trevor Jones was the Canadian "boss" of the drug ring alleged to have distributed up to a tonne of pot and 200 kilograms of cocaine a month for several years.

The ring was broken up last month with a series of arrests in several states and the seizure of almost $2 million US and 1,000 kilograms of cocaine from various locations.

The just-unsealed court documents say that Jones, who is not charged on the indictment, was observed by U.S. agents meeting a key member of the drug ring in Las Vegas in February.

And the documents say that U.S. members of the gang were caught on wiretap in April trying to get guns, baseball bats and pepper spray for the B.C. bikers so they could go after an associate believed to have stolen 106 kilograms of cocaine.

In fact, the coke had been seized by police.

"I believe that cocaine was destined for Canada and for the Hells Angels, possibly Trevor Jones," special agent Bryan Winger, of Homeland Security, testified in one court affidavit.

Among those now in custody are Jacob Stuart and Richard Lamar, the two Washington men alleged to have led the U.S. side of the operation, and John Washington, described as the group's main Seattle customer and "a member of the Blood street gang."

Three Canadians were also picked up: Glen Stewart -a 51-year-old who lives in Blaine -and Michel William Dubois and Mario Joseph Fenianos, who were arrested on April 26 in Los Angeles.

Dubois and Fenianos were arrested in a vehicle containing a duffel bag full of cocaine after agents observed them arriving to meet associates of the Sinaloa cartel.

The investigation began in early 2010 when U.S. Homeland Security came across three separate drug cases that all linked back to Stuart and his associates. Investigators got a series of wiretap authorizations and watched suspects in several states for months.

The U.S. Attorney said in one court document that the Stuart gang was international in scope, receiving shipments of B.C. bud trucked over the border, which were then transported across the U.S. using "aircraft flown by multiple pilots, who all have been observed by surveillance agents picking up suspected loads of marijuana."

Several suspects caught in the act agreed to become confidential informants and linked the case back to the Hells Angels in B.C., the documents said.

Members of the drug ring were "prepared to use violence to further their activities." Suspects were caught on tape plotting abductions and beatings as part of debt collecting, the U.S. Attorney said.

"Stuart was also intercepted talking to Lamar about obtaining guns, pepper spray, and baseball bats for use by a different crew of enforcers being sent down from Canada to investigate a large amount of missing drugs," one document said.

Stuart says on wiretap that he needs "some heaters, burners" -which is slang for firearms.

"They want some right now -our boss man does -because they are sending some people down to deal with the situation," he said.

One document alleges that Jones, 41, is the owner of Surrey's T-Barz strip club and the twin brother of fullpatch White Rock Hells Angel Randal Jones.

"Interviews with cooperating confidential informants (CIs) and subsequent wire intercepts indicate that the primary source of supply of the marijuana to the Jacob Stuart drug trafficking organization is a person who has been identified by their moniker of Red," Winger said in his April 26 affidavit to the court.

"Red is the nickname or code name for Trevor Jones. ... According to Canadian law enforcement Trevor Jones is a Hells Angels member and/ or associate."

Winger further alleges that while Jones was not captured on wiretap during the investigation, "we have intercepted calls we believe are about Jones and surveilled meetings between Jones and Lamar, acting on Stuart's behalf."

And he quoted records that confirmed that Jones "did fly from Canada to Las Vegas, making entry into the U.S. on Feb. 14, 2011" and stayed at the hotel where Lamar was sent by Stuart twice over several days.

"We believe that during this and the previous trip, Lamar was delivering money to Trevor Jones, which the Stuart drug trafficking organization owed for marijuana obtained from the Jones brothers," Winger testified in a court document.

After meeting Jones, Lamar is captured in one call to Stuart saying Jones praised him: "he says you're his best guy, which is good."

Jones, who lives in Langley, did not return telephone or email messages left for him Friday through T-Barz.

Detectives will question Britain's most feared gangster over the unsolved murders of two of his associates 13 years ago.

Convicted crime godfather Terry Adams, 56, will be asked about the assassination of Saul "Solly" Nahome and the disappearance of Gilbert Wynter in 1998.

Scotland Yard has announced a new inquiry into the two suspected "hits" and linked the deaths for the first time.

The men knew each other and worked for the north London-based Adams crime syndicate which is said to have amassed a £200 million fortune from racketeering and drugs trafficking.

Mr Nahome, a 48-year-old accountant who worked as a bookkeeper for Terry Adams, was shot dead outside his home in Finchley in November 1998.
Wynter, 37, an enforcer who also worked for the family, disappeared after leaving his home in Tottenham in March the same year.

He is believed to have been murdered and is rumoured to be buried in the foundations of the Millennium Dome.

Once charged with murdering former British high jump champion Claude Moseley, allegedly on the orders of Adams, Wynter walked free after the chief prosecution witness refused to give evidence.

Scotland Yard say they plan to use new forensic techniques to examine items relating to both the murder of Nahome and the disappearance of Wynter. Detectives plan to talk to about 20 associates of the Adams syndicate.

Adams was released from jail last year after serving half of a seven-year sentence for money laundering and is now thought to be living in north London.

Detective Chief Inspector David Manning said: "The cases have never been closed. Having reviewed both investigations and with advances in DNA techniques, we decided to launch a last-ditch effort to bring them to a successful conclusion."

Police in Arizona have arrested 25 suspected members of a Mexican drug cartel,

Police in Arizona have arrested 25 suspected members of a Mexican drug cartel, significantly hampering the group's ability to smuggle drugs and illegal immigrants from Mexico, authorities said on Thursday.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said the suspects -- believed to be members of the Jesus Valencia-Rodgriguez cell of the powerful Sinaloa cartel -- smuggled drugs and undocumented immigrants through the remote Tohono O'odham Indian Nation on the Arizona-Mexico border.

The suspects, who were arrested in Phoenix, Tucson and on the Tohono O'odham nation, face state charges including drug and human smuggling, money laundering, conspiracy and participation in a criminal syndicate. No federal charges were filed.

Arizona straddles a major trafficking corridor for smugglers hauling drugs and illegal immigrants into the United States from Mexico.

The sweep followed an 18-month investigation, said Doug Coleman, the DEA's special agent in charge for Arizona.

"This organization is going to have to reconstitute itself, and when they do we'll be ready," Coleman said.

Valencia-Rodriguez is believed to be at large in Mexico, and U.S. officials plan to ask Mexican authorities for help in capturing him. The cartel will require months or years to recover, Coleman said.

Most of the suspects are U.S. citizens and the rest Mexican, said Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, who announced the arrests at a Tucson news conference.

The smuggling operation used sophisticated methods, including spotters hidden in the Arizona desert with solar-powered radios and night-vision equipment to alert smugglers when law enforcement was near, Horne said.

"This criminal enterprise was a well-organized operation that constantly worked against law-enforcement interdiction efforts," he said.

Valencia-Rodriguez is responsible for bringing illegal aliens and tons of marijuana across the border, often using a gate that allows tribe members to cross the border unrestricted, Horne said.

Authorities also seized more than 10,000 pounds of marijuana and shut down stash and safe houses in Tucson and Phoenix during the investigation. More arrests are expected, Horne said.

Coleman could not say how significant the arrests are for the cartel, because authorities do not know how many such cells exist.

"If I knew how many there were, I would arrest them," he said.