6 officers in Mexican crime unit arrested
The men are believed to have aided drug smugglers in Sinaloa state, officials say.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexarrest14-2008aug14,0,2178973.story
From the Los Angeles Times

6 officers in Mexican crime unit arrested
The men are believed to have aided drug smugglers in Sinaloa state, officials say.

By Ken Ellingwood
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

4:44 PM PDT, August 13, 2008

MEXICO CITY — Six members of the Mexican government's top organized-crime unit have been arrested on suspicion of leaking information to drug traffickers, officials said Wednesday.

An official in the Mexican attorney general's office said a supervisor and five agents are thought to have passed tips to smugglers in the west-central state of Sinaloa for about three months.

The official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said the men disclosed details about evidence that had been seized during government raids and information about arrestees. He said authorities were looking into possible involvement by other employees of the agency, known as SIEDO by its initials in Spanish.

SIEDO, which investigates drug and arms smuggling as well as kidnapping and terrorism cases, is well known and generally trusted by American law-enforcement agencies.

Its agents have helped U.S. authorities build cases against Mexican drug suspects, such as members of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix gang, by sharing intelligence and granting access to Mexican witnesses and their statements.

Confirmation that SIEDO was infiltrated by drug traffickers would be a black eye for the 400-member agency and for President Felipe Calderon's 20-month-old offensive against organized crime.

Mexico is awaiting $400 million in U.S. crime-fighting aid as the first installment in what the two nations describe as a stepped-up joint push to combat the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Noe Ramirez Mandujano resigned as SIEDO's chief two weeks ago as part of a shake-up that appeared tied to public anger over a persistent wave of kidnappings. The attorney general's office said the resignation was not tied to the current investigation. Previous efforts by Mexico to battle crime through highly touted specialized police units have fallen victim to suspected corruption. SIEDO's predecessor within the attorney general's office, an anti-drug agency known as FEADS, was shut down in 2003 after half a dozen of its agents were arrested on suspicion they were helping drug traffickers.

In the latest episode, authorities said they arrested SIEDO's technical coordinator, Miguel Angel Colorado Gonzalez, and five agents assigned to the agency by Mexico's equivalent of the FBI.

The men, though not privy to the most sensitive investigative details, had access to information about arrest orders and the timing of searches, and about the agency's security arrangements.

The attorney general's office said the six were arrested after an investigation that began months ago into possible leaks to the news media. A judge ordered the suspects detained for 40 days as the investigation advances.

The men allegedly provided tips to a Sinaloa trafficking gang led by the Beltran Leyva brothers.

The gang, once part of a loose alliance of Sinaloa smugglers known as the Federation, has been involved in a bloody fight with another leading Sinaloa trafficker, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, one of Mexico's most wanted fugitives. That feud has sparked months of slayings that have left more than 400 people dead in Sinaloa so far this year, according to government figures.

The Beltran Leyva faction is suspected by authorities of carrying out the assassination in May of the acting federal police chief, Edgar Millan Gomez, at his home in Mexico City.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

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Mexico drug wars suspected in deadly shootout
At least 8 are killed in a highway gun battle between alleged rival traffickers, officials say.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexshooting21-2008may21,0,1723698.story
From the Los Angeles Times

Mexico drug wars suspected in deadly shootout
At least 8 are killed in a highway gun battle between alleged rival traffickers, officials say.

By Ken Ellingwood
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

9:00 PM PDT, May 20, 2008

MEXICO CITY — At least eight men were reported dead Tuesday in the northern Mexican state of Durango after a gun battle between suspected drug traffickers, authorities said.

The early morning shootout took place on a highway near the town of Vicente Guerrero, about 400 miles northwest of Mexico City.

Officials shed little light on possible motives for the gun battle, the latest in a wave of violent incidents that have erupted around Mexico in recent weeks.

A spokesman for the Durango state attorney general's office said officials discovered fragmentation grenades and high-powered firearms at the scene.

None of the dead bore identification, said the spokesman, Ruben Lopez.

All were dressed in black, he said.

"The initial theory is that it involved a confrontation between organized crime groups that until now we have not been able to identify," Lopez said.

Authorities also found a dozen late-model vehicles that had been reinforced with armor, he said.

Durango, about 300 miles south of the border city of Ciudad Juarez, is not known as a hot spot for drug violence. But it abuts the states of Chihuahua and Sinaloa, both of which have been the scene of violent turf wars between drug traffickers.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon dispatched 2,000 soldiers and federal police to Sinaloa last week amid warring between rival factions of a major drug cartel, violence that has killed more than 200 people this year, according to Mexican media tallies.

One of those factions is believed to have been behind the May 8 assassination in Mexico City of Edgar Millan Gomez, the acting chief of the Federal Preventive Police.

Authorities suspect that Millan Gomez was targeted by Arturo Beltran Leyva, formerly a top aide to drug lord Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman. Beltran Leyva has reportedly broken off and allied his faction with a group known as the Zetas, which has served as the armed wing of the so-called Gulf cartel.

In Chihuahua, the Gulf cartel has been locked in a bloody turf war with the group that has dominated drug trafficking there from its base in Ciudad Juarez.

Also, the Baja California attorney general's office said that a California woman whose body was among four discovered fatally shot on a hillside outside Rosarito Beach on Sunday had a criminal record in Mexico.

Libey Gianna Craig, 28, of La Mesa, a suburb of San Diego, had been arrested several times on drug, weapons and human-smuggling charges, according to Mexican authorities.

The other three victims were Mexican citizens. Two had criminal records in the U.S., authorities said. Police still have not discovered a motive in the case, which is the latest in a string of homicides in the Tijuana area.

Craig, whose purse was found containing her passport and a hypodermic needle, according to authorities, had been reported missing by her father on May 8, authorities said.

More than 1,300 people have been killed nationwide this year, according to media tallies. Most of the slayings have taken place in half a dozen states that are hubs for drug trafficking and organized crime.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

Times staff writers Cecilia Sánchez and Richard Marosi contributed to this report.

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