Mexico ( Reputed Border Crime Boss Apprehended in Mexico )

 

MEXICO CITY – A man suspected of running an extensive criminal operation in the border city of Nuevo Laredo was arrested this week for the third time since 2011, Mexican authorities said.

Fernando Martinez Magaña was detained on Wednesday in Monterrey “as the result of investigations begun months ago and of surveillance work by the Mexican navy and other federal forces,” National Security Commission head Monte Alejandro Rubido said.

From his base in Nuevo Laredo – just across the border from Laredo, Texas, the 42-year-old Martinez managed operations for “one of the criminal groups dedicated to drug and weapons smuggling, and to the trafficking of undocumented migrants to the United States,” the official said.

While Rubido declined to identify the organization, media outlets say Martinez was a local boss for the ultraviolent Los Zetas outfit.

Martinez had relocated to Monterrey to avoid arrest, the security commissioner said.

Navy personnel picked up Martinez in Nuevo Laredo nearly three years ago on illegal weapons charges, but a Tamaulipas state court ordered his release, a source in Mexico’s Government Secretariat told Efe.

The same court allowed Martinez to walk again after a subsequent arrest for money laundering, the source said.

An alleged associate of Martinez, Ernesto Villegas, was apprehended Wednesday in the Monterrey suburb of San Pedro Garza Garcia.

Those arrests came a day after Mexico’s second-most-powerful official, Government Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio, unveiled a “new phase” of the federal security strategy for Tamaulipas state.

A recent surge in drug-related violence in the border state is due “to a large extent to the unraveling of criminal organizations as a result of the Mexican state’s actions,” he said.

Operations by federal and state security forces have led to a “weakening” of the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas, the two largest drug cartels operating in Tamaulipas, Osorio Chong said, while acknowledging that progress “has not been sufficient.”

Colombia ( Homeless Man Set on Fire, Killed in Colombian Capital )

 
BOGOTA – A homeless man was killed in Bogota by unknown attackers who doused him with gasoline while he was sleeping and then set him on fire, Colombian authorities said on Wednesday.

The attack occurred on May 2 and the victim, identified as Marco Tulio Sevillano, died a few days later in a hospital as a result of the serious burns he suffered.

Police are investigating the possibility that his killers were soccer hooligans or members of a neo-Nazi group.

Colombia’s national ombudsman, Jorge Armando Otalora, asked police and prosecutors to give priority to the investigation of “this atrocious act.”

“It is necessary to identify those responsible and bring them to justice so that there may be no impunity,” said Otalora in a communique, adding that in Colombia human rights must prevail without regard for the social, economic and cultural situation of the citizens.

Students at the Universidad Javeriana, near where the attack occurred, said that Sevillano was known in the area, where he had lived for years with a dog and two cats, who were also burned alive.

Some of the Javeriana students who knew Sevillano on Wednesday will hold a symbolic funeral for him and will demand that the authorities find those who are responsible for his horrific murder.

“We called him ‘Warm-hearted’ because he treated everyone with affection. He greeted us and even accompanied us while we took the transportation,” one university student told Efe.

Colombia ( 12 and 13 year old boys die throwing bomb at " police station" )

 

BOGOTA – Two boys – ages 12 and 13 – died in an explosion when they threw a bomb at a police facility in the rural part of the municipality of Tumaco, on Colombia’s Pacific coast, authorities reported Thursday.

Several police officers were wounded in the Wednesday attack.

The police commander in Nariño province, where Tumaco is located, Col. Hugo Henry Marquez, told the daily El Tiempo that the two boys staged the attack at the behest of the Daniel Aldana Mobile Column, a unit of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas that has been very active in recent months in the area.

The boys were identified as Luis Sebastian Preciado, who died in the explosion as a result of the blast wave and shrapnel wounds, and Angelo Cabezas Pierre, who – police said – actually threw the bomb and died on Wednesday night in Tumaco’s San Vicente Hospital.

Eight police officers were wounded in the attack, according to the force.

The conservative candidate for Colombia’s presidency, Marta Lucia Ramirez, criticized the government for not insisting in its ongoing peace talks with the FARC that the rebels end the recruitment of children.

Those talks are under way in Cuba, and Ramirez said that the guerrillas’ negotiators “are on a beach in Varadero” while sending children to “die as human bombs.”

Sudan ( Woman to be " killed " for marrying a Christian man ) Sharia Law

Sudan ( Woman " beat and whipped " in street ) Sharia law

Vietnam ( 20 people were killed-anti-China riots spread )

HANOI: More than 20 people were killed in Vietnam and a huge foreign steel project set ablaze as  to the center of the country a day after arson and looting in the south, a doctor and company officials said on Thursday.

A doctor at a hospital in central Ha Tinh province said five Vietnamese workers and 16 other people described as Chinese were killed on Wednesday night in rioting, one of the worst breakdowns in Sino-Vietnamese relations since the neighbors fought a brief border war in 1979.
“There were about a hundred people sent to the hospital last night. Many were Chinese. More are being sent to the hospital this morning,” the doctor at Ha Tinh General Hospital told Reuters by phone.
Local media has, however, said only person was killed.
Formosa Plastics Group, Taiwan’s biggest investor in Vietnam, said its upcoming steel plant in Ha Tinh was set on fire after fighting between its Vietnamese and Chinese workers. One Chinese worker was killed and 90 others injured, it said in a statement in Taipei.
It was not immediately clear if the casualties were among those admitted to the Ha Tinh hospital.
The plant is expected to be Southeast Asia’s largest steel making facility when it is completed in 2017. No details of fire damage or financial losses were immediately available, the company said.
The Ha Tinh industrial park, estimated to cost more than $20 billion, is more than half complete. When finished in 2020, it will have a port, a 2,100-MW power plant and six furnaces, Vietnamese media say.The United States has called on both sides for restraint.
Such disputes “need to be resolved through dialogue, not through intimidation,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told a regular briefing. “We again urge dialogue in their resolution.”
The US State Department said it was monitoring events in Vietnam closely, and urged restraint from all parties, while adding: “We support the right of individuals to assemble peacefully to protest.”

Syria ( Syria is driving one family from their home every minute )

GENEVA: The war in Syria is driving one family from their home every minute, pushing the number of people internally displaced by conflict to record highs globally, a report said Wednesday.

The study by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) said that 33.3 million people were displaced by violence in their own nations last year.
The report showed that just five countries accounted for two-thirds of the tally: Syria, Colombia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.
Internally displaced people (IDPs) are those who flee their homes but do not leave their country, as opposed to those who cross a border and are counted as refugees.
While the bulk of the 33.3 million were people who had already fled before 2013 — including some displaced over a decade ago — the total of new IDPs reached 8.2 million by the end of the year, the report said.
Of those, nearly half were in Syria.
With 9,500 people a day — approximately one family every 60 seconds — being displaced inside Syria, the country remains the largest and fastest evolving displacement crisis in the world.
“The IDMC report reveals a frightening reality of life inside Syria, now the largest internal displacement crisis in the world,” said former UN aid chief Jan Egeland, who now runs the Norwegian Refugee Council, of which the IMDC is part.
“Not only do armed groups control the areas where internal displacement camps are located, these camps are badly managed, provide inadequate shelter, sanitation and limited aid delivery,” he said in a statement.
In addition, the report said, large concentrations of IDPs have been particularly targeted by artillery bombardments and airstrikes.
Meanwhile, nearly 850 prisoners have died in Syrian regime jails this year, many executed summarily or tortured to death, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday.
“From the beginning of the year until May 13, 847 prisoners, including 15 below the age of 18 and six women, have died in security service prisons and army bases,” the Britain-based monitoring group said.
“Families and relatives were notified of the deaths,” it added.
“All these people lost their lives as a result of torture, summary executions, maltreatment, poor detention conditions, including a lack of food, and because they were unable to obtain the medicine they needed.”
It said some 18,000 people among those held by the government have disappeared, and many were feared dead.
“The number of victims increases because there are no measures being taken to deter the regime,” said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. “When the criminal knows there is no accountability, he continues his crimes.”