By Martin Duran Romero / Associated PressAssociated
Press
CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) - A group of
armed men stormed a town in the mountains of the western state of Sinaloa on
Christmas Eve and shot nine men to death with assault weapons, then dumped their
bodies on a sports field as part of a war between Mexico's two most powerful
cartels, officials said Wednesday.
"El Chapo " Guzman
Sinaloa state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez said the town of El
Platanar de Los Ontiveros had become part of a dispute between the Sinaloa
cartel controlled by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted man, and
remnants of the Beltran-Leyva cartel who have allied themselves with the Zetas,
a paramilitary organized-crime group founded by ex-members of the Mexican
special forces.
"Everything is linked to a dispute for territory and the buying and selling
of drugs," he said.
The prosecutor said the nine victims were eating Christmas dinner when gunmen
entered the town on foot, surrounded them, and opened fire with assault rifles.
They decapitated one victim with a machete and dumped the bodies on field,
Higuera Gomez said.
He said the army had set up a checkpoint nearby to hunt for drugs, but the
killers had avoided it by entering the town on foot.
Beltran-leyva members
Another cartel fight is raging to the south, along the border between the
state of Jalisco and Michoacan. At least seven people have been killed in the
area since Sunday. Officials in both states said Wednesday they could not
confirm local media reports of more than a dozen new deaths in clashes in the area. Michoacan authorities did report the slaying of a mother and her three
children in the capital, Morelia, which has been mostly spared the worst of the
state's drug violence.
Prosecutors said 41-year-old Maria Elena Lopez Bautista and her 19-year-old
daughter and 18- and 13-year-old sons appeared to have been tied hand and foot
with wire and burned to death inside their home on Monday.Officials did not speculate on the motive for the crime, but the border with
Jalisco has been hit by clashes between Michoacan's dominant Knights Templar
cartel, and the New Generation cartel that operates in much of Jalisco.
MILWAUKEE (AP) — The husband of a police officer who was fatally shot on Christmas Eve while patrolling in suburban Milwaukee has been arrested in connection with her death, authorities said Thursday.
Benjamin Sebena, of Menomonee Falls, was booked into Milwaukee County Jail on Wednesday night on a tentative charge of first-degree intentional homicide, the Wauwatosa police department said in a statement.
He has not been formally charged in the death of his 30-year-old wife, Jennifer Sebena. A message was left with the district attorney's office seeking comment. Ben Sebena, 30, is a decorated U.S. Marine who served two tours in Iraq before suffering severe arm and leg injuries in a mortar attack, according to Pastor Scott Arbeiter at Elmbrook Church in nearby Brookfield.
Police officers found Sebena's body in the early hours of Monday morning after she failed to respond to radio calls. She had been shot several times. Police have released few details about the shooting.
Jennifer Sebena had worked for the Wauwatosa police department for two years and her death was the first in active duty in the department's 96-year history. Wauwatosa is a city of about 46,000 people just west of Milwaukee.
Sebena's funeral is scheduled for Saturday.
Police have arrested a second
suspect in connection with an alleged assault at a Northeast El Paso McDonald's
restaurant last week.
Tyler Velasquez, 17, was arrested Christmas Day at his Northeast El Paso
home. Police allege that Velasquez was with Jesus Medina, 20, when Medina
pointed a gun at a 19-year-old employee at the McDonald's at 9461 Dyer.
Police said the incident took place at 4:05 p.m. Dec. 19. Velasquez allegedly
pulled up at the restaurant's drive-through in a Mercury Grand Marquis with
Medina in the passenger seat. During an argument with the McDonald's employee,
Medina allegedly pulled a black gun from his waistband and pointed it at the
employee as Velasquez drove away.
Velasquez faces a charge of aggravated assault and was booked into the El
Paso County Jail on a $5,000 bond. Medina, who faces an aggravated assault with
a deadly weapon charge, was arrested on Dec. 20 and booked into the El Paso
County Jail on a $45,000 bond.
TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - Deputies responded to a home on the north west side after the homeowner set off a small explosion in his garage while trying to make self-exploding targets.
Deputy Tom Peine with the Pima County Sheriff's Department tells KGUN9 that deputies responded to a home near Horizon Hills Drive and Galaxy Road where a man was creating explosives in his garage.
There was minor damage to the garage and the man also received minor injuries, but he was not taken to the hospital.
Peine says there is no danger to the home, or any homes in the area, but deputies are working to clear the scene.
They are still trying to determine what the man was trying to make. Northwest Fire District also responded and Capt. Adam Goldberg tells KGUN9 the man was making pyrotechnics to be used on New Year's Eve.
No word yet on if the man will be charged with anything.
This woman walks the street's of Iran to speak of her son's death (brave) uncertain if this may get her killed. If you ever stood on a corner with a "protest sign" you know it could be a lonely place,but when you lose someone you love you already have an empty place in your heart.
I don't know what I would do if my government took my son from me for blogging and put him in prison. I don't know what I would do if they gave him back to me beaten to death, but your seeing what one strong woman is doing about it!
Beheshti's death exposed Iran's political fissures as a handful of lawmakers badgered President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government and the judiciary into ordering an inquiry.
But the most effective tool in publicizing Beheshti's unusual death was the one he had chosen - the Internet.
"I really do believe this is one of the great examples of the impact of the Internet in Iran," said Mahmood Enayat, director of the Iran Media program at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder of Small Media, a non-profit group that focuses on improving information flows in closed societies.
The Internet had become a watchdog, forcing the government to react to anything gathering enough attention, he argued.
"They can't just ignore it anymore."
Although many of the details of Beheshti's detention and death are murky, some are no longer in dispute. On the night of October 30, he was arrested at his home in Robat Karim and transferred to section 350 of Tehran's notorious Evin prison.
Fellow prisoners there said he was hung from the ceiling of a cell and beaten. His arms and legs were then tied to a chair and he was beaten again. At times, his interrogators threw him on the ground and kicked him in the head and neck.
A group of political prisoners talked to Beheshti while he was detained, and slipped out a letter based on their observations and his account to opposition activists.
"When they brought Sattar to section 350, the marks of torture were visible on all parts of his body," said the letter signed by 41 prisoners and published on opposition websites.
Despite his injuries, Beheshti filed a complaint about his treatment to prison officials. Shortly before he was transferred to another detention facility, Beheshti told his fellow prisoners that his captors intended to kill him. Four days later, authorities informed his family that he was dead.
After Beheshti's death, security forces warned his family not to talk to media outlets, and security agents threatened to arrest Beheshti's sister if the family did not sign a consent form regarding the circumstances of his death, his mother said in an interview with the Persian service of German radio Deutsche Welle.
BLOOD-STAINED SHROUD
The family was also offered diye, or blood money, but Beheshti's mother, Gohar Eshqi, refused. When the family was allowed to see Beheshti's body, they noticed that blood from his knee and head had stained the burial shroud.
"They killed him and handed me back his body," Eshqi said in an interview with the pro-opposition Saham News website.
On December 13, a small crowd of friends, neighbors and family gathered to commemorate the fortieth day after Beheshti's death at his gravesite. The previous day security agents tore up notices about the ceremony in the neighborhood, Beheshti's sister Sahar told Kalame, another opposition website.
Videos of the event posted online show Eshqi, Beheshti's mother, holding his picture and shouting "I'm proud of my son" and "My son's killers must be executed." Police later attacked the crowd and beat Eshqi, wounding her leg, Sahar said.
Kalame published pictures of Eshqi's injuries.
Few Iranians could have predicted that Beheshti's death would make any waves. But the Internet buzz kept building. Websites linked with the opposition Green Movement took up the cause and published details of his detention and physical abuse. That led even conservative bloggers to speak out, concerned that the case would damage the image of the Islamic Republic.
The cyber police, a unit within the Iranian police force, was created in January 2011 with a relatively broad mandate.
While the Revolutionary Guards and Intelligence Ministry do their own web surveillance, the cyber police are mainly responsible for tracking down dissidents online.
They are also responsible for blocking websites with controversial content and for pursuing cases of web sabotage.
Earlier this year, new cyber police guidelines directed all Internet cafes to install cameras to monitor customers.
But in Beheshti's case, little sophisticated surveillance was necessary - he was blogging openly under his own name.
Prosecutor killed in
Guatemala along with 6 others
The Associated PressAssociated Press
Posted: 12/24/2012 12:24:22 PM MST
GUATEMALA CITY—Guatemala's attorney
general dispatched a special team Monday to investigate the slaying of a federal
prosecutor and six other people in an attack near the Mexican border.
Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz said she was sending prosecutors and
investigators to the area of northern Guatemala where Irma Yolanda Olivares, who
worked in one of the prosecutor's regional officers, was slain along with an
official working for a government social service agency and five others on
Sunday night.
President Otto Perez Molina blamed the attack on drug traffickers, who have
taken over swathes of territory along the border with Mexico.
The Interior Ministry said that a group of armed, masked men had intercepted
the sport-utility vehicle carrying Olivares and three other passengers, who were
returning from the inauguration of a hotel in the city of La Mesilla. The
attackers opened fire, then burned the victims' bodies, officials said. Three
other people were found fatally shot and burned in another vehicle nearby,
official said.
Officials were not immediately able to determine the identities of the three
or whether they were killed by the same attackers, said Ricardo Guzman,
sub-secretary general in the prosecutor's office.
"The death of a member of the attorney general's team is a serious attack
against the institution and against the work done by each prosecutor's office to
fight impunity in this country," Paz said.
