Gangs Target Purebred Dogs in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES – Purebred and expensive dogs, preferably small ones, are the latest victims of gangs in Argentina, where the snatching of canines has increased in the past year.

Public parks and shopping centers in upscale neighborhoods are the areas targeted by dog snatchers, attorney Javier Miglino told Efe.


The largest number of stolen dog reports - more than 1,000 in the past year - were filed in Buenos Aires province, where gated communities and high-income suburbs dot the land.

But the crime, first detected some five years ago on a much smaller scale, has spread to provincial capitals across the country, Miglino said.

The attorney is the founder of Defendamos Buenos Aires (Let’s Defend Buenos Aires), a non-governmental organization helping dog owners file police reports and start campaigns to find lost pets.

“These are among the most expensive and small dogs on the market,” Miglino said, adding that “sadly” only about 8 percent of stolen pooches have been recovered.

The breeds most sought by criminals are the French Bull Dog, Pug, Cocker Spaniel and Toy Poodles worth between 12,000 and 14,000 pesos ($1,350 and $1,580) that can be “sold easily for half the price” in traveling fairs or online auctions, Miglino said.

A major source of stolen dogs is La Salada, located on the outskirts of Buenos Aires and considered the largest black market in Latin America, where no dogs snatched by criminals have been recovered because it is “a criminal ghetto where police don’t go,” Miglino said.

The attorney has met with prosecutors and judges to discuss the situation, but he has not been able to identify who is behind the crimes, which are occurring as unsafe conditions and impunity in the region increase, and because it is quite easy to snatch, cage and sell puppies.
The dognappings are not the work of isolated robbers but of gangs that organize their operations - some scan public places for purebred dogs, others take the animals away on pickup trucks or a motorcycle, keeping them until they are sold, Miglino said.

About 10 percent of dog owners who have sought help from Miglino’s group were pressured by gangs into paying ransom and these cases are investigated as extortion rackets.

Two New Gangs Behind Violence in Northeast Mexico, Security Official Says

MEXICO CITY – Two small gangs formed following the break-up of a drug cartel are behind the violence in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, Mexican National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido on Tuesday.

The Ciclones and Metros gangs “are the ones clashing in the border region” with the United States, Rubido told Radio Formula.

One gang is based in Matamoros, located across the border from Brownsville, Texas, and the other operates out of Reynosa, across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas, Rubido said.

The gangs’ current power “cannot remotely be compared with the organizations’ capabilities when the leaders who are under arrest or neutralized were around,” the national security commissioner said.

“The 15 principal criminals who were sowing fear, who were attacking the citizens ... today 14 have been neutralized,” Rubido said, adding that 13 gang leaders were under arrest and one was dead.

Progress has been made in Tamaulipas in terms of security in the past year, but “we have still not turned” the situation around, Rubido said.

Tamaulipas “has 17 border crossings with the United States, three ports, five international airports,” making it the only Mexican state with that many airports, the national security commissioner said.

Last Thursday, marines arrested nine suspects in connection with a wave of violence in Tamaulipas that left a police officer dead.

Four other suspects, including the purported head of the gang, were arrested a day earlier.

Suspected members of the same unidentified gang responded to the four arrests by mounting roadblocks, burning vehicles and carrying out armed attacks against federal and state security forces, actions that left a police officer dead and two suspected gang members wounded.

Tamaulipas has been for years a battleground between the Gulf and Los Zetas drug cartels, and it is regularly among the states with the highest numbers of homicides.

President Enrique Peña Nieto sent additional Federal Police and military personnel to Tamaulipas last May and ordered a thorough vetting of the state and municipal police forces to root out corrupt officers.

Mexican Woman Escapes from Laundry Where She Was Forced to Work for 2 Years

MEXICO CITY – A 22-year-old woman managed to escape from the Mexico City laundry where she was chained, beaten and forced to work for two years, the Federal District Attorney’s Office said.

The unidentified woman applied for a job at the business in Lomas de Padierna, a district in the southern Mexico City borough of Tlalpan, and “was chained by her employers, and to make her keep working they beat her until she bled, and when the cuts started to heal they tore off the scabs,” the DA’s office said.

“That allowed them to hold her for two years until she managed to escape and seek help. The Federal District Attorney’s Office requested search warrants for the establishment, where they arrested the five people likely responsible” for keeping the woman as a slave, prosecutors said.

The suspects have been identified as Jose de Jesus Sanchez Vera, Leticia Molina Ochoa, Fani Molina Ochoa, Ivette Hernandez Molina and Jannet Hernandez Molina, the DA’s office said.

“This is the first case of this kind to occur in Mexico City,” the DA’s office said.

The victim told investigators that she was fed a small amount of food once a day and chewed on the plastic bags used to cover garments to stave off hunger, prosecutors said.

Iran news in brief, 28 April 2015

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Mexican Students Burn Cars in Front of Guerrero Congress Building

A group of students in Mexico's Chilpancingo city, in Guerrero, set fire to vehicles outside the regional Congress building and carried out other acts of vandalism, after a march in solidarity with 43 students missing for seven months.

A group of 800 marchers, led by the parents of the missing, unionists and students from several states left Chilpancingo at 1pm on Sunday and reached the gates of the Congress at 2.30pm.