America Security News.- President Barack Obama and Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto, right, leave a joint news conference in Mexico City, Mexico, Thursday, May 2, 2013. Credit to AP Photo

Last week, Mr. Obama returned to capitals in Latin America with a vastly different message. Relationships with countries racked by drug violence and organized crime should focus more on economic development and less on the endless battles against drug traffickers and organized crime capos that have left few clear victors. The countries, Mexico in particular, need to set their own course on security, with the United States playing more of a backing role.READ WHOLE ARTICLE HERE

The Americas Post - Prison security chief Alejandro Osuna Rios only survived four months on the job

The head of security for a Mexican prison in Culiacan, the capital of the northwestern state of Sinaloa, has been gunned down, according to police.

Alejandro Osuna Rios was murdered on Friday in front of his house, authorities announced.  The 36-year-old had been in charge of security at the prison for four months.

Osuna Rios was attacked by several gunmen riding in two SUVs as he stood in front of his house with his wife and son in the Villas del Manantial district.

Sinaloa state Attorney General’s Office investigators found 44 bullet casings and an ammunition clip for an AK-47 at the crime scene, as well as the officer’s service weapon.  Osuna Rios, who had just started his vacation, did not have time to draw his 9 mm pistol and return fire, police said.

Sinaloa is currently the scene of a bloody turf war among several heavily armed groups.  The state is home to the drug cartel led by Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman, who was arrested in Guatemala in 1993 and pulled off a Hollywood-style jailbreak when he escaped from the Puente Grande maximum-security prison in the western state of Jalisco on Jan. 19, 2001.

The Sinaloa organization, sometimes referred to by officials as the Pacific cartel, is the oldest and most powerful drug cartel in Mexico.

The Sinaloa cartel, according to intelligence agencies, is a transnational business empire that operates in the United States, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Americas and Asia.

About 50,000 people have died in Mexico’s drug war since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon declared war on the country’s powerful cartels, sending soldiers into the streets to fight criminals.

Oswaldo Paya

Oswaldo Payá, an Cuban activist who spent decades trying to build a  movement the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) that would pressure the government of Fidel Castro to allow more freedom and human rights, died Sunday in a car crash in Bayamo, a city some 750 kilometers (460 miles) east of Havana.  He was 60.

Paya was founder and national coordinator of the MCL, and he was also winner of the European Parliament’s 2002 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Paya was an important force among Cuba’s internal opposition and notable for his long career of peaceful activism to bring democracy to the island.

Ofelia Acevedo, wife of deceased Paya, said Monday that the MCL “will continue its peaceful struggle” on the island on behalf of Cubans’ rights, “until all Cubans are granted the rights that are rightfully ours. That was the ideal my husband dedicated his life to until the day he died,” Acevedo said.

The circumstances of his death were in dispute.

Cuban officials said the crash, occurred when the driver lost control and hit a tree, killing Mr. Payá and another Cuban and injuring two passengers, one from Spain, the other from Sweden.

But some Cuban dissidents said witnesses saw another vehicle hit Mr. Payá’s.

One of  Paya´s  three children, Rosa Maria, 23, said in an interview that she did not believe the crash was an accident.  Rosa Maria said her family was still searching for details.

The Americas Post - Organ donor illegal trafficking

The illegal trade in kidneys has risen to such a level that an estimated 10,000 black market operations involving purchased human organs now take place annually, or more than one an hour, World Health Organization (WHO) experts have revealed.

Evidence collected by a worldwide network of doctors shows that traffickers are defying laws intended to curtail their activities and are cashing in on rising international demand for replacement kidneys driven by the increase in diabetes and other diseases.

Though not comparable in size to other forms of human trafficking, such as forced labor and sexual exploitation, organ trafficking still represents a highly lucrative trade for criminal gangs. Organs Watch, an NGO that tracks illegal organ sales, estimates that up to 20000 kidneys alone are sold worldwide each year on the black market where they can fetch a price of around $150,000. Gangs are able to profit from this primarily through acting as brokers, linking buyers who typically originate from the western world and the Middle East to impoverished communities where people are willing to sell their organ in the hope of achieving some financial security. Though prices vary considerably around the world, a study made in 2005 found that on average a kidney would sell for $10,000 in Peru and around $6,000 in Brazil, offering brokers a potential profit margin of over 1000 percent. What’s more, there is no guarantee the seller will receive the promised amount in full.

Given this situation, at a meeting of judicial officials from Central America and the Dominican Republic last month, representatives from all countries agreed to set a minimum penalty for the crime of organ trafficking.

However, for transplants to happen the criminals need the illegal cooperation of a hospital and well-trained surgeons.

Another problem is the international legal framework. While organ trafficking is deemed to be illegal in almost every country in the world, the lack of a legal international framework is preventing governments from cracking down on the trade more effectively.

Chavez and Ahmadinejad. Photo Credit Elmer Martinez AFP Getty Images

During the last six months, Iran is developing an offensive in Latin America.  Tehran views the latinamerican region as one of the main points to overcome its increasing international isolation due to its nuclear program.

The Iranian strategy is comprehensive. For example, a few weeks ago, the inhabitants of Quito were surprised by the appearance of  street billboards calling to commemorate a new anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini.

the posters read “a lifetime dedicated to the people and the revolution”.

During the event, held on 31 May in the Auditorium of the National Council of Pichincha with the presence of Iranian diplomats, Khomeini was compared to the latinamerican independence hero Simón Bolivar.

The event was broadcasted by Hispan TV, a satellite TV channel that the Iranian regime inaugurated last December, which broadcasts news in Spanish on a 24 hours a day  basis and whose main target is the Latin American audience.

Another way of showing the Iranian involvment in the subcontinent are the Iranian diplomacy,  who have increased their activity and presence in the region. In  the case of Bolivia,  Iran has 145 diplomats accredited, more than the rest of the diplomatic corps in La Paz.

Spain, with all its historical relationship with Iran  has  between 8 and 10 Iranian diplomats.

The estimated number of Iranian diplomats accredited in Venezuela is even greater than in Bolivia.

Another important step taked by Iran is the several visits of  Iranian officials to Latin America that are constant and often are accompanied by economic benefits for the countries visited.

Recently over a week ago, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attended  a Summit on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro and then started with a mini tour in South America,  announced a few days in advance.

It is the second visit of the Iranian President in six months and the fourth in the same period of a senior Iranian top government official.

Last January, Ahmadinejad visited Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Nicaragua. In May it was the turn of the vice president, Ali Saeidlo, who made the same tour also including Bolivia.

In Managua, Iranian officials announced the cancellation of debt of Nicaragua with Iran.

Days before the Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi visited Bolivia , who opened the Defense College of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the regional integration organization that emerged on the personal initiative of Hugo Chavez. About Vahidi weighs an international warrant for his involvement in the bombings in 1992 and 1994 in Buenos Aires against the Embassy of Israel and Argentina Jewish Mutual, which caused a total of 115 dead.

In their travels, Vahidi was accompanied by Iranian representative Kanbiz Jalali, head of the Directorate General for Latin America created by the Iranian Foreign Ministry. Jalali is a  diplomat with extensive experience in the region.

Tehran is focusing on military and defense issues. In less than 24 hours has signed a military assistance pact with Bolivia. Also the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez admitted the announcement  that Venezuela is building drones under the supervision of Iranian engineers.

Ramin Keshavarz, a leading member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, is responsible for overseeing the project.

One the other hand, Brazil is not so enthusiastic about Iran . President Rousseff refused to meet privately with Ahmadinejad, despite Iran’s insistence.

Brazil is not the only obstacle. Colombia is also resisting Iran´s “charme” offensive, while in Argentina the Iranian official representation only adheres to senior diplomats, due to the arrest warrant that Justice has issued Argentina against senior Iranian officials , including Vahidi and Ali Rafsanjani, due to the bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires (AMIA).

However, this diplomatic chill has not stopped the trade between the both countries, that has gone from zero to $ 400 million in just four years, or since 2010 Iran is the second world soybean buyer Argentina.

The Americas Post - This guy doesn't look very happy about being mistaken for the son of a drug lord

Mexican authorities confirmed that a man arrested earlier this week and initially reported to be the son of fugitive drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman is in fact another individual.

“After conducting the necessary tests to determine their identities, we found that (the two suspects presented to the media Thursday) are Felix Beltran Leon and Kevin Daniel Beltran Rios, ages 23 and 19, respectively,” the federal Attorney General’s Office said in a statement Friday.

“On June 21, members of the Navy Secretariat presented two people, one of whom was believed to be Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar,” Chapo’s son, the AG’s office said.

The men were arrested on charges of “organized crime, possession of firearms for exclusive use of the army, navy and air force, and transactions with illicitly acquired funds,” it added.

Without providing further details on the suspects, the AG’s office said the ongoing investigation will support the allegations against them.

A source with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said earlier Friday that the young man initially identified as Chapo’s son was in fact an individual named Felix Beltran Leon.

That detainee “is one of the bosses who sells drugs for Chapo’s son in (the western state of) Jalisco,” the source said on condition of anonymity.

Several hours earlier, a woman identifying herself as Elodia Leon Vega told reporters in Guadalajara, Jalisco’s capital, that her son, Felix Beltran Leon, had been wrongly identified as the drug kingpin’s relative.

“They’re badly confusing him,” she said in the company of her attorney, rejecting any link between her son and Guzman’s family.

Both said the 23-year-old suspect was born in Los Angeles and is the half-brother of the other detainee, Beltran Rios, for whom they provided no details.

Chapo Guzman, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, tops the list of Mexico’s 37 most-wanted criminals and is on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people.

He was captured in Guatemala in 1993 and extradited to Mexico, where he was convicted and sentenced to prison. But the drug lord escaped from a maximum-security prison in 2001 and has since built his Sinaloa cartel into Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization.

The Americas Post - "El Tigre" swears that his hands are clean, but investigators say otherwise.

The new chief selected to clean up the Honduran national police force has been accused by the department’s internal affairs investigators of running a death squad when he was a top regional police official.

A 10-year-old report on Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, nicknamed “The Tiger,” resurfaced in widely distributed emails and on a local website after he was named police chief May 21 as part of President Porfirio Lobo’s efforts to reform a department that is widely accused of killings and human rights violations. The report named Bonilla in at least three killings or forced disappearances between 1998 and 2002 and said he was among several officers suspected in 11 other cases.

Only one of the allegations against the now-46-year-old Bonilla led to murder charges, however, and he was acquitted in 2004. The verdict was upheld by Honduras’ Supreme Court in 2009.

Internal affairs investigators weren’t able to substantiate many of the cases because of interference by top security officials, said Maria Luisa Borjas, who as head of the police internal affairs department at the time signed the investigation. She was suspended before she finished the report because she had called a news conference to complain about the obstruction.

“I said the investigation pointed to certain officials, that we had evidence and witnesses, but there was no desire on the part of any authority to process this case,” she stated, adding that she and her team at the time also received death threats.

Borjas said she documented a policy of killing gang members and crime suspects rather than bringing them to trial when Bonilla was regional police chief in charge of Copan, Santa Barbara and Ocotepeque provinces in western Honduras. He held that post from 1998 until September 2011. Borjas said she collected descriptions of cold-blooded killings in San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa and other parts of the country to try to establish what she called a pattern.

In one case, a witness said Bonilla sent a team of officers to track down a suspected leader of a kidnapping gang, Angel Maria Romero, in December 2001.

When they identified him, Bonilla said, “You’ve got him. Do what you have to do,” according to a witness quoted in the report.

The witness, who was with Bonilla while talking to Romero on a cellphone, reported he heard thunderous gunshots, and then Bonilla said: “It’s done. Let’s go take a look”

They arrived at the scene to see Romero’s body in a car that had crashed against a wall.

Bonilla, who serving as liaison between the national police and the army when Lobo tapped him as Honduras’ police chief, said he is not granting interviews. The president’s office is standing by him.

“He’s clean,” said Miguel Bonilla, spokesman for Lobo, who gave the new chief emergency powers to fire any officer who fails or refuses a background check. “He has the attributes to head the police and to lead an effective cleanup. We know we have problems and we have to clean up the police in a quick manner.”

A 10-year-old report on Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, nicknamed “The Tiger,” resurfaced in widely distributed emails and on a local website after he was named police chief May 21 as part of President Porfirio Lobo’s efforts to reform a department that is widely accused of killings and human rights violations. The report named Bonilla in at least three killings or forced disappearances between 1998 and 2002 and said he was among several officers suspected in 11 other cases.

Honduras’ human rights ombudsman, Ramon Custodio, who also participated in the 2002 internal affairs investigation, said he backs Bonilla’s appointment, calling it “the best message Lobo could have sent on the issue of security.”

After his acquittal, Bonilla built a reputation as a gregarious patriot who aggressively pursued drug traffickers in border states and reported other officers for corruption and unethical behavior, Custodio and others said.

“You can’t keep persecuting him for something he was acquitted on,” Custodio said. When asked why he had changed his view on Bonilla, he said, “I don’t have any other comment to make.”

The appointment of Bonilla comes as the United States is paying special attention to the impoverished Central American country, which is a key drug-transport hub with one of the highest murder rates in the world. The U.S. State Department, which has cited repeated concerns about human rights abuses, appointed a special security adviser for three months and Vice President Joe Biden visited in March reiterating U.S. support for Lobo’s administration.

The national police chief post has become a revolving door, with various scandals of alleged police involvement in high-profile crimes.

Bonilla replaced Ricardo Ramirez del Cid amid charges that police were involved in the May 9 kidnapping and murder of one of Honduras’ best-known journalists, Alfredo Villatoro, a close adviser to Lobo. Villatoro’s body was found six days after he was abducted. Ten people have been detained in the case, including a former police officer already incarcerated for another crime, police spokesman Hector Ivan Mejia said.

Ramirez had been appointed in November after charges that police were involved in the murder of Rafael Vargas, 22, son of Honduras National Autonomous University President Julieta Castellanos. Security cameras filmed men in police uniforms killing him and a friend. Some of the officers involved in the crime escaped after being granted weekend leave. The head of the municipal police division and its investigative section were removed and are also under investigation.

Borjas’ 2002 internal affairs report coincided with a United Nations report that said Honduran police were conducting a campaign of “social cleansing,” using killings to rid the streets of gang members.

In 2004, a State Department report noted that Bonilla had turned himself in as a suspect in extrajudicial killings and was out on bail. Three years later, the State Department said Bonilla was suspected but never charged in a series of killings.

In the 2012 human rights report issued last week, the State Department also said Honduran law enforcement agents have murdered and tortured people, though it did not mention Bonilla.

“Among the most serious human rights problems were corruption within the national police force,” the report said.

Lisa Kubiske, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, wouldn’t comment on the internal affairs report but said that she thinks Bonilla’s boss and others in the Lobo administration have “heightened awareness on human rights.”

“We definitely hope this change in leadership really leads to effective, lawful cleaning up of the police,” she said.

The internal affairs report lists 22 deaths or disappearances in San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. The most direct allegations against Bonilla involve suspects or witnesses in the kidnapping of former Economy Minister Reginaldo Panting, who was found dead in 2001 after his family paid a ransom of $125,000.

Borjas said she was ordered to conduct an investigation based on a complaint from Enelda Caballero, whose son disappeared in custody in June 2002. According to local news reports, Caballero knew of a band of kidnappers her son was involved with and gave the information to Bonilla. Instead of arresting them, he killed them, she said. She and her other children fled to Costa Rica after receiving death threats, having filed a complaint against Bonilla with the prosecutor and the human rights ombudsman.

At the time of the internal affairs report, authorities had already issued an arrest warrant for Bonilla in the June 6, 2002, killing of Jorge Luis Caceres, who was picked up for questioning by men in ski masks and was found riddled with 36 gunshots the next day. Bonilla was at the scene of his abduction, witnesses told Borjas.

Neither the security minister nor the police department “moved to carry through” in arresting Bonilla or ordering him to appear, the document said.

Borjas said she was hampered from the start by then-Minister of Security Oscar Alvarez, who took away her investigators, then gasoline for her cars, then the cars. Borjas called the news conference in September 2002 and was suspended that Nov. 28 for violating rules of confidentiality, she said. She delivered her report three days later.

The investigative report lists names and dates of the alleged killings, and in many cases a short paragraph describing how a victim was lured to a particular spot and then ambushed. Borjas said the interference kept her from producing more evidence.

Alvarez, who also was security minister under Lobo and now lives in the U.S., could not be reached for comment. A person who answered his phone said to call back later. Later calls went to voice mail.

In its conclusion, the report said the investigation “gives us the names of some police officials who allegedly are responsible for directing an intelligence team that has the responsibility for, or has had something to do with, the extrajudicial killings of young people in the country … operating as a supposed death squad.”

The Americas Post - El Loco is the one whose arms are still tired from off-loading 49 bodies

The Mexican army this week accused top leaders from the ultra-violent Zetas drug cartel of ordering the dumping of 49 mutilated bodies in a northern Mexico town square, then hanging banners around the country denying responsibility in an effort to have their enemies blamed for the massacre.

The charges were announced in a news conference presenting the alleged Zetas local leader detained in the killings, Daniel Jesus Elizondo Ramirez. He allegedly got his orders from Zetas leaders Miguel-Angel Trevino Morales and Heriberto Lazcano to dump the bodies in the town square of Cadereyta in the border state of Nuevo Leon.

Brigadier General Edgar Luis Villegas said that Elizondo Ramirez, in spite of being known as ”El Loco,” or the Crazy One, got nervous about depositing the hacked-up bodies in town so left them on a highway outside Cadereyta instead. The bodies with their heads, hands and feet hacked off were found on May 13.

A video later posted on a Mexican drug crime news site showed gunmen dumping the bodies in the dark and unrolling a banner claiming responsibility for the killings signed by the Zetas, who are fighting a turf war with the competing Gulf and Sinaloa cartels. Villegas said another suspect who made the videotape is still at large .

After the bodies were found, banners were hung on freeway overpasses in other Mexican states denying that the Zetas were responsible.  Villegas said the denials were a Zetas strategy to “cause confusion among authorities and the public” and blame the cartel’s rivals.

Elizondo Ramirez tried to escape arrest Friday by throwing a hand grenade at troops who captured him in the northern city of Monterrey, the general said. He is now being held without charge at a special detention facility while prosecutors gather evidence against him.

Villegas said Elizondo Ramirez had confessed to killing members of the Gulf cartel and burning or burying their bodies in another area of Nuevo Leon.  He said Elizondo Ramirez also acknowledged accompanying Zetas second-in-command Miguel-Angel Trevino Morales to Guatemala in 2008 to assassinate a rival drug capo, Juan Jose “Juancho” Leon. Leon was killed in an ambush that year in the neighboring country, where the Zetas have expanded their operations in recent years.

The Americas Post - Does the UN have any real hope of accomplishing more than hand-wringing?

Senior United Nations officials yesterday drew the world’s attention to threats posed by transnational organized crime and drug trafficking in Central America and called for concerted global efforts to combat the scourge, which they said was spreading to other regions.

“Countries in Central America face a tide of violence, born of transnational organized crime and drug trafficking,” the President of the General Assembly, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, said at the opening in New York of the United Nations General Assembly’s thematic debate on “Security in Central America as a regional and global challenge: how to improve and implement the Central American security strategy”.

The debate was aimed at highlighting the individual and collective fight of Central American Governments against transnational organized crime, the focus on that subject in the framework of United Nations policies and actions and the importance of cooperation with, and the support of, the donor community. In June last year, the region’s Heads of State adopted a Central American regional security strategy.

In his opening remarks, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: “Caught between drug-producing countries in the South and some of the major consumer countries in the North, proximity has encouraged criminality in the region.”

He highlighted the fact that Central America had become the region with the highest homicide rates in the world: 39 murders per 100,000 citizens in Guatemala, 72 per 100,000 in El Salvador and 86 per 100,000 in Honduras.

Mr. Ban noted that the narcotics problem was not confined to Central America, pointing out that the region was a “bridge” to North America and that the Americas were, in general, a “staging post” for Europe, through trafficking routes in West and Central Africa.

“All of this underscores the need to go beyond a regional approach. Our world is interconnected. Our challenges are linked. Our solutions must be, too,” said Mr. Ban. “That is why, last year, I established the task force on transnational organized crime and drug trafficking. Our approach is rooted in the rule of law and respect for human rights.”

The task force was set up in March 2011 to integrate responses to transnational organized crime into United Nations activities relating to peacekeeping, peacebuilding, security and development, with UNODC and the Department of Political Affairs as co-chairs.

In his message to the thematic debate, UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov said that the multifaceted, interconnected nature of drugs and crime called for interregional approaches.

To help counter the threat of drugs and crime in Central America, Mr. Fedotov announced that UNODC had created a regional hub in Panama for Central America and the Caribbean which would link with a reprofiled office in Mexico and other countries in the region.

At the tactical level, Mr. Fedotov said that UNODC was establishing centres of excellence in Mexico on public security statistics and in the Dominican Republic on prison reform and drug demand reduction. The Government of Panama, with the technical support of UNODC, had also established a regional anti-corruption academy.

Mr. Fedotov announced that UNODC would soon release a threat assessment for the region to improve understanding of the situation in Central America and the Caribbean.

The Americas Post - This semi-submergible drug boat was sunk by US and Honduran forces in March

As recently reported in the New York Times, Honduras is the newest front in America’s drug war.  Recent anti-narcotics operations in Mexico have forced over 90 percent of US-bound cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela through Central America. Over 30% of it passes through Honduras, which as a result now has one of the highest homicide rates on the planet.

The latest offensive illustrates the new US emphasis on discrete missions with small numbers of troops, partnerships with foreign military and police forces, and limited goals, whether targeting insurgents, terrorists or criminal groups opposed to American interests.

Using lessons learned in Afghanistan and Iraq, the mission here has been adapted to rules of engagement barring American combat in Central America.  In past operations, helicopters ferrying Honduran and American antinarcotics squads were based in the capital, Tegucigalpa.  New forward outposts patterned on those in Iraq and Afghanistan now allow for much faster response times to interdict drug runs.

American troops here cannot fire except in self-defense, and are forbidden to respond with force even if Honduran or Drug Enforcement Administration agents are in danger. Within these limits, the military provides personnel, aircraft and logistical support that Honduras, the State Department and D.E.A. cannot.

American ambassador Lisa Kubiske, who is responsible for coordinating the complex blend of interagency programs, also oversees compliance with human rights legislation. She describes the Honduran armed forces as “eager and capable partners in this joint effort.”