Drug Enforcement Agency officers and a number of local, state, and federal agencies made the arrests. They called the Bandidos a ruthless crime organization and believe the gang has been receiving meth from Mexico drug cartels and were helping transport it and sell it here in the U.S.
The arrests come after an 18-month long investigation and are part of a nationwide sweep operation which began after ICE agent Jaime Zapata was killed in a roadside ambush in Mexico on February 11th. Fellow ICE agent Victor Avila was wounded in the attack.
Bandidos motorcycle gang were arrested this week as part of a nationwide drug cartel bust.
headquarters of the bikie gang Rock Machine has seized explosives which police claim are powerful enough to blow up a small building
police raid on the Myaree headquarters of the bikie gang Rock Machine has seized explosives which police claim are powerful enough to blow up a small building and cause extensive loss of life.
Police discovered 54 sticks of a powerful gel explosive and 34 detonators - commonly used in the mining industry - during the raid at the club's McCoy Street premises about 7pm yesterday.
Inspector Paul McMurtrie said they believed they had stopped a "serious criminal incident" by seizing the explosives.
He said he could not speculate that explosives may have been used in Rock Machine's ongoing rivalry with the Rebels bikie gang.
But he said police were investigating the criminal motives of the find.
A 42-year-old southern suburbs man was expected to be charged with unlawful possession of explosives.
drug hitmen rolled into the isolated village of Tierras Coloradas and burned it down,
Just after Christmas, drug hitmen rolled into the isolated village of Tierras Coloradas and burned it down, leaving more than 150 people, mostly children, homeless in the raw mountain winter.
The residents, Tepehuan Indians who speak Spanish as a second language and have no electricity or running water, had already fled into the woods, sleeping under trees or hiding in caves after a raid by a feared drug gang on Dec. 26.
Using murder and intimidation, rival cartels are fighting for control of this drug-growing area. A group of armed men came searching for a man rumored to be cultivating marijuana.
He died trying to defend himself, but not before killing a suspected drug trafficking leader, and residents were sure the gang would return for revenge.
“We saw they killed one person and we thought, ‘Now they are going to kill everyone.’ So we ran,” said Jose, a village leader, standing in front of the charred remains of the one-room pre-school, with mangled desk chairs strewn outside.
On Dec. 28, two days after the initial raid, a column of 50 to 60 men, some in military-type uniforms and ski masks, filed on foot down a steep mountain road and torched three dozen homes — about half the village — as well as two schools, 17 trucks, the radio receiver and the community store.
The attack on Tierras Coloradas is one of the most dramatic examples yet of a still largely hidden phenomenon of Mexico’s drugs war: people forced from their homes by the violence.
“The situation is out of control,” Durango state prosecutor Ramiro Ortiz said in an interview at his office last week. “Organized crime has no limits any more. They don’t respect women or children. It’s a situation of total brutality.”
President Felipe Calderon’s four-year-old army-led campaign against the cartels has shaken up the balance of power in Mexico’s criminal underworld and sparked a wave of turf wars, sometimes trapping civilians in their midst.
Tierras Coloradas lies in the heart of a marijuana and opium poppy growing region known as Mexico’s “Golden Triangle,” and is more than 11 hours by car on poor roads and dirt tracks from Durango’s state capital,
The rule of law is evaporating in the region as drug gangs extend their power. Jose said he tried to call the municipal police on the village’s only radio the day before it was reduced to ashes but he was told there were ‘dangerous people’ on the road who wouldn’t let police through.
“We were waiting and waiting but they never came,” said 24-year-old Maria Guadalupe, wearing the traditional Tepehuan dress of brightly colored satin blouse and skirt lined with ruffles, paired with fuzzy fluorescent socks.
Walking with difficulty because of a limp, she fled with her mother, seven brothers and sisters and a four-month old niece. The villagers hid in the mountains for nearly a week before soldiers arrived to secure what was left of the town.
In the northern states of Durango, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas, cartels fighting for control of lucrative smuggling routes to the United States have threatened entire towns with ultimatums to flee or be killed.
No official numbers exist, but the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, or IDMC, estimates 115,000 people have been displaced by Mexico’s drug violence.
Another 115,000 or more have fled and slipped into the United States, IDMC says. Some leave and then move back, creating a floating population that is hard to track.
“The focus of the government is obviously on beating the cartels ... Beyond keeping a tally of people who have been killed, they are not tracking the impact of this violence on the civilian population,” IDMC’s Mexico program director Sebastian Albuja said.
drug gang "Los Rastrojos" left at least 15 people dead, authorities said Friday.
Milton Benavides, a local government official, told the Terra news Web site the lengthy battle broke out Thursday in Argelia in northern Colombia. Benevides said authorities had confirmed nine people had died Thursday with six more killed overnight and Friday.
The Web site said local radio reported the death toll could rise to 20.
Meanwhile, Colombia Reports said El Tiempo reported FARC had released two more hostages -- Armando Acuna, a former councilman, Henry Lopez Martinez, a former marine. The pair were reunited with their families.
The BBC said FARC had freed another captive earlier in the week and may release two more Sunday.
The Colombian government has made release of all FARC hostages a pre-condition for any negotiations with the rebel group, which has been a thorn in the governments side for decades.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/02/12/15-die-in-FARC-drug-gang-battle/UPI-46091297490193/#ixzz1Dpqv2Ugi
The Rebels are trying to build international drug networks and they are modifying their operations.
the Rebels are trying to build international drug networks and they are modifying their operations.
“What you now see is trying to stay below the radar and create business networks so that they can make money,” Mr Kane says.
Among yesterday's arrests were two men who appeared in the Palmerston North District Court this afternoon.
Mr Kane says it not just other motorcycle gangs
the Rebels are building links with.“If they want to arrange importation they'll approach the Asian organised criminal network,” says Mr Kane.
A network he says will bring in the precursors to meth.
The 34 and 23-year-old men who appeared in Palmerston North District Court today face charges of conspiracy to supply methamphetamine. They were remanded in custody and will reappear, along with five others on the same charges, on Tuesday.
Eight people were killed in a gun battle Saturday between police and criminals in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey,
Eight people were killed in a gun battle Saturday between police and criminals in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, while at least six died when a grenade exploded in Guadalajara. The attacks are the latest deadly violence gripping Mexico as the country's cartels struggle over turf and police and soldiers try to crush them.
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Fourteen+people+drug+gang+violence/4273491/story.html#ixzz1DppB5LlV
