Mexican army deserters hired as hit men by drug gang based on U.S. border
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20040723-0859-assa...
By Will Weissert
July 23, 2004
TIJUANA, Mexico ? A ruthless drug gang is using a group of deserters from an elite Mexican army unit to carry out contract killings along the U.S.
border, Mexico's top anti-narcotics investigator said.
The alliance pairs the Arellano Felix smuggling syndicate with the Zetas, a criminal group led by former members of a paratroop and intelligence
battalion trained to fight drug traffickers.
"For us, it's very dangerous," Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, deputy attorney general for drug trafficking and organized crime, told reporters on
Thursday.
The Arellano Felixes work the busy San Ysidro entry point between San Diego and this border town. U.S. and Mexican authorities estimate the gang moves
one quarter of all the cocaine flowing across the U.S. border.
Mexican officials said the Zetas were recruited by Osiel Card##as, the reputed leader of the Gulf cartel, during the 1990s when their unit was posted
to the border state of Tamaulipas. More than 100 killings and dozens of kidnappings are attributed to the deserters.
In March 2002, Mexican federal agents and soldiers captured Benjamin Arellano Felix, the suspected operations chief of the gang bearing his family's
name. A year later, Card##as was captured. Both are awaiting trial at the maximum security La Palma prison outside Mexico City.
"After the detention of the two leaders ... there is an alliance between these two organizations and I have heard some news of representatives from
the famous Zetas group operating in the Arellano Felix area and of Arellano Felix hit men in Tamaulipas," the prosecutor said.
He suggested that the Zetas may be linked to the killing of Francisco Ortiz, a crusading editor at the weekly newspaper Zeta who wrote a May 14
article identifying 40 alleged Arellano Felix operatives.
"We have every indication that the Arellanos are calling on the Zetas when they want a killing that is carried out in a professional style," Zeta
publisher Jesus Blancornelas said in an interview. "The Zetas are providing tactical support."
Blancornelas himself barely survived a 1997 assassination attempt that involved men prosecutors associated with the Arellano Felix gang.
Santiago Vasconcelos said Arellano Felix gunmen usually spray targets with bullets. Ortiz was shot from close range just four times.
The deputy attorney general, who traveled to Tijuana to investigate Ortiz's killing, declined to say Thursday if the Zetas were involved. In previous
comments to Mexican media, however, he identified the chief suspect in the slaying as Heriberto Lazcano, who is linked to the Zetas.
Federal authorities also say Zetas are suspected in the January slaying of former Baja California deputy state attorney general Rogelio Delgado Neri,
who was shot by men who burst into a cantina. Delgado Neri, who died along with three bodyguards, had been suspended from his post because of
suspected links to the Arellano Felix gang, a relationship that apparently went sour.
Santiago Vasconcelos said Tijuana's main smuggling gang was so weakened by the capture of Benjamin Arellano Felix and other top leaders that it had to
reach out to the Zetas to keep control of its drug smuggling routes into the United States.
"Just one group can't sustain a territory by itself, so they begin complementing each other and fortifying in order to cover weaknesses," he said.
But Blancornelas said he doesn't believe the syndicates were sharing drugs or smuggling routes.
"It's an armed alliance, not a drug-trafficking alliance," he said. "The Arellanos do not need help when it comes to cocaine."
Luis Astorga, a sociologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who studies the drug trade, called the drug-gang friendship "an alliance
that won't last."
"The Zetas are providing a service for the Arellanos now, but the Arellanos can't stand to be in second place, to share their control of territory,"
Astorga said.
But even a short-lived alliance means Zetas training Arellano Felix smugglers, producing a more dangerous class of criminal on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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