Gypsy Jan
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Mexico marines detain suspected son of drug lord (UPDATE)
The wrong man: Mexico says detained suspect not capo's son
By Associated Press, Friday, June 22, 2012
"The man arrested Thursday as the presumed son of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is really Felix Beltran Leon, 23, and not Alfredo Guzman Salazar, as the
Mexican Navy had presented him, the Attorney General's Office said Friday.
The stocky, baby-faced suspect had been presented as the son of Guzman, the chief of the Sinaloa Cartel, and a Navy official described him as a rising
operator in the international drug trafficking organization.
But Beltran Leon's wife, Karla Pacheco, said he is the father of a toddler and works with his mother-in-law at a used car dealership.
The Attorney General's Office said that "necessary tests" had proved that he wasn't the drug lord's son, but said he would remain under investigation
for the guns and money found during his arrest.
"There is total confusion," said Beltran Leon's lawyer Veronica Guerrero,"... which is having a serious effect on their personal and family
situation."
The Attorney General's Office issued a statement earlier Friday saying the original information on his identity came from the United States.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said the information came from Mexico.
"The Mexican Navy and Mexican law enforcement have said this is El Chapo's son and that's what we took," said DEA spokesman Rusty Payne, noting that
the DEA is working separately to confirm the man's identity.
Pacheco showed The Associated Press what she said were her husband's voting credential and driver's license. The man arrested bears only slight
resemblance to a photograph of Guzman's son recently issued by the U.S. Treasury Department.
Guzman Salazar and his father were indicted on multiple drug trafficking charges in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in
August 2009, the U.S. Treasury Department said earlier this month, when it announced it had placed financial sanctions on Guzman Salazar and his
mother, Maria Alejandrina Salazar Hernandez.
Elodia Beltran appeared with Guerrero at a press conference Friday saying she is the mother of the detained man.
"He's never been arrested," she said. "This is a real injustice."
Pacheco said the couple and their 1-year-old were sleeping in their home in Zapopan, a suburb of the western city of Guadalajara, when marines kicked
in the door and arrested her husband and his half-brother, 19-year-old Kevin Daniel Beltran Rios.
Authorities identified Beltran Rios as an alleged member of the Sinaloa Cartel.
The men were found with a grenade launcher and four grenades, two assault rifles, two pistols and $135,000 in cash, the navy said. Pacheco said there
were no drugs or guns, but the family did have the cash because of a recent home sale.
Another lawyer, Heriberto Rangel Mendez, said the government planted the weapons.
Zapopan has been the scene of much drug violence and arrests. It's where Guzman's other son, Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar, also known as "El
Chapito," was detained on money laundering charges in 2005, and where top Sinaloa lieutenant, Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, was killed in a 2010 shootout
with Mexican army.
Pacheco said her husband works at Autos Pacheco, a used car dealership that gunmen attacked in May, killing one man. The target was a customer looking
at cars, not the business, Pacheco said, though media reports said the dealership owner was killed.
"We've never had any links to drug traffickers," Pacheco said. "He's not the person they say he is."
The possible misidentification could be embarrassing for both countries in the cat-and-mouse game they are playing with Guzman, who has been on the
run since escaping from a Mexican prison in a laundry cart in 2001. The Treasury Department has called Guzman the world's most powerful drug lord.
Both countries are conducting an intense manhunt for Guzman. Mexican authorities said they narrowly missed him in February as he was vacationing in
the Baja resort of Los Cabos under the nose of heavy security during an international meeting of foreign ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton."
**********
From USA Today
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexican marines on Thursday detained a young man they believe is one of the sons of Mexico's most-wanted drug kingpin, Joaquin "El
Chapo" Guzman, leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
"The presumed son, identified by the Navy as Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, 26, was allegedly taking on an increasing leadership role in Mexico's most
powerful drug cartel and purportedly served as the administrator of his father's fortune, estimated by Forbes magazine at about $1 billion.
The boyish, heavyset Guzman Salazar, known as "El Gordo," or "Fattie," was captured early Thursday during a raid by marines in Zapopan, an upscale
suburb of the western city of Guadalajara, thanks to intelligence work and information from U.S. authorities, Navy spokesman Jose Luis Vergara said at
a news conference.
Also captured in the raid was an alleged 19-year-old Sinaloa cartel member, Kevin Daniel Beltran Ros. The pair was caught with a grenade launcher and
four grenades, two assault rifles, two pistols and $135,000 in cash.
Vergara said Guzman Salazar was "a key element" in the Sinaloa cartel, "not just because of his blood tie to the leader ... but because he was
presumably in charge of managing his assets."
"Intelligence sources say that Guzman Salazar was coordinating the majority of the drug shipments sent to the United States by the Sinaloa cartel,
including cocaine and heroin," Vergara said, adding that "several sources also say Guzman Salazar was taking increasing control of Sinaloa cartel
operations."
When he was paraded before news media, the paunchy Guzman Salazar mostly kept his eyes down or closed. Dressed in a red polo shirt and jeans, he did
not answer when asked where his father is.
Vergara said the capture was due to months of Navy intelligence work and information from U.S. authorities. He said Guzman Salazar is wanted in the
United States on an outstanding extradition request, to face charges in Chicago, Illinois related to drug trafficking.
Guzman Salazar and his father were indicted on multiple drug trafficking charges in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in
August 2009, the U.S. Treasury Department said earlier this month, when it announced it had placed financial sanctions on Guzman Salazar and his
mother, Maria Alejandrina Salazar Hernandez.
The designation bars American citizens from doing business with them and allows authorities to freeze their assets in the U.S.
U.S. authorities have said they believe "El Chapo" Guzman has at least six children with three women, including a woman whom he married in 2007 and
who last year gave birth to twin girls in California. The Treasury Department described Salazar Hernandez, 53, as a wife of Guzman, without providing
details.
A senior U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons said that U.S. officials believe the younger
Guzman "oversaw many of the drug transportation and money laundering operations ... (and) operated from Jalisco, Colima and Sinaloa" states.
In May, the department announced similar sanctions against Guzman's sons Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar, 31, and Ovidio Guzman Lopez, 22.
Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar, also known as "El Chapito," was also detained in Zapopan, in Jalisco state, on money laundering charges in Mexico in
2005, but was later released. Guzman Lopez plays a significant role in his father's drug trafficking activities, the department said.
Another son, Edgar Guzman Lopez, was killed in 2008 in a gunfight in the parking lot of a shopping center in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan.
Authorities recovered more than 500 bullet casings from AK-47 rifles from the site where the capo's son laid dead in a pool of blood.
"El Chapo" Guzman was put on the Treasury Department's list in 2001, the year he escaped from a maximum security prison hidden in a laundry truck. He
has evaded authorities ever since, moving from hideout to hideout as he directs the operations of his cartel and a fight against rivals that has left
thousands of people dead across Mexico.
The western state of Jalisco - where Guzman Salazar was arrested - as well as the nearby states of Colima, Nayarit and Sinaloa have seen a spike in
drug-related killings in the last few years as the Sinaloa drug cartel battles its former allies in the Beltran Leyva cartel and its archrival the
Zetas drug gang.
Similar battles have been seen in the northern border state of Coahuila, where nine people were killed Thursday in a pair of shootouts between police
and gunmen on one of the main avenues in the state capital, Saltillo.
State security spokesman Sergio Sisbeles said eight suspected gunmen and one civilian who was caught in the cross fire died. The shootouts started
after police tried to stop a sport utility vehicle, whose occupants opened fire."
[Edited on 6-24-2012 by Gypsy Jan]
[Edited on 6-24-2012 by Gypsy Jan]
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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BajaBruno
Super Nomad
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Location: Back in CA
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The latest news is that this fellow, though an operative of Guzman, is not his son.
Christopher Bruno, Elk Grove, CA.
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Mulegena
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oops, sorry...! They got an innocent man.
To read the expanded coppy with journalist commentary, go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18561819
This is the jist of what happened:
" Mexico: 'Mistaken identity' over Guzman drug arrest
Mexican marines believed the car salesman they arrested was a growing force within the Sinaloa cartel...
Mexico's government has admitted that it mistakenly identified a detained man as the son of the country's most-wanted drugs lord, Joaquin "El Chapo"
Guzman.
On Thursday officials paraded before the media a man they said was Jesus Alfredo Guzman, whose father leads the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
But the arrested man was in fact Felix Beltran Leon, a car salesman, the attorney general's office said.
The authorities had hailed the arrest as the most important in years...
'Embarrassing U-turn'
Felix Beltran Leon's distraught mother said the family had no connection to the Guzmans
The BBC's Will Grant in the capital, Mexico City, says within hours of the high-profile arrest, doubts had started to be cast on the official version
of events.
A lawyer proclaiming to speak for the Guzman family released a statement denying that the suspect in custody was the drug boss's son.
Mr Beltran Leon's mother then spoke to journalists and denied any link to Joaquin Guzman or the Sinaloa cartel.
It took another few hours, while identity tests were carried out, before the government admitted it had made a huge mistake.
In less than a day, the episode has transformed from an apparent coup against one of Mexico's biggest drug cartels to a major embarrassment for
President Felipe Calderon's administration, our reporter says.
US agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, were among those that had applauded the arrest..."
"Raise your words, not your voice. It's rain that grows flowers, not thunder." ~Rumi
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~ Aristotle
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bajajazz
Nomad
Posts: 386
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Location: La Paz, BCS, Mexico
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The pathetic "war on drugs" just got exponentially goofier.
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toneart
Ultra Nomad
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War is an industry. It is what Governments do.
It is a culture. It is a low base mentality run by people who are cunning, vicious but aren't very intelligent. It supports weapons manufacturers,
the welfare military state, and the politicians who do not represent us in the least.
War is for profit. Violence begets violence. That makes the game go around. It is a depopulation tool for an over populated planet. It is used for
exploitation. It is used to plunder natural resources. It is used to establish and enforce the power hierarchy that rules the world.
Too many innocent people die! War is a tragedy that could be prevented, but it won't for all the reasons above.
The false arrest of this young man is the culmination of the joint Military Intelligence operations between the United States and Mexico. Military
Intelligence=Oxymarooon! El Chapo is laughing his a$$ off right now.
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chuckie
Elite Nomad
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I picked up a newspaper , going through Tecate, that said El Chapo had been captured in Sinaloa..BIG HEADLINES..how come no one picked up on
this???????????
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