Free Trade Agreement with United States: having as background a billboard saying `Colombia is now open´ President Santos ringed The Opening Bell at the New York Stock Exchange trading floor, on May 25th 2012.

On Friday, May 25, Juan Manuel Santos, President of the Republic of Colombia, visited the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).  During his visit, the President met with NYSE Euronext executives, participated in an executive roundtable breakfast, ringed The Opening Bel^lSM and toured the NYSE trading floor.READ MORE HERE

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 - Mexican drug cartel territories are shifting quickly as the body count soars

A fourth high-ranking Mexican army officer has been arrested for possible connections to a drug trafficking cartel.

Mexico’s department of defense announced that Lt Col Silvio Hernandez Soto had been detained for questioning.  Three generals, including a former deputy defense minister, have been arrested since Tuesday as part of an ongoing investigation.  They are accused of involvement with the Beltran Leyva cartel – charges which the generals have denied.

After retiring from the army in 2002, Col Hernandez Soto became a senior police commander in Sinaloa state, in Mexico’s Pacific coast.  The defense department says the investigation against him and the three generals was based on a case from 2009.

Gen Tomas Angeles Dauahara and Gen Roberto Dawe Gonzalez were detained for questioning Tuesday.  A judge put them under house arrest for 40 days, while  investigators and prosecutors prepare their case.  A third general, Ricardo Escorcia Vargas, was detained on Thursday.

They are suspected of collaborating with the Beltran Leyva cartel, a group known to smuggle cocaine, heroin and other illegal drugs into the United States.

Mexico’s powerful drug cartels have been under systematic attack since President Felipe Calderon launched a war on drugs six years ago.  The military has played a key role in that effort, with troops deployed across the country.

Drug-related violence since 2006 has killed over 50,000 people in Mexico.

The three generals detained this week all occupied strategic posts in Mexico’s anti-drugs effort.  Gen Angeles was assistant defense minister from 2006 to 2008, when he retired – a decision which surprised Mexican commentators.  Gen Dawe commanded an army division in Colima state, in Mexico’s Pacific coast, an important trafficking route.  Gen Escorcia was in charge of the military in Morelos state, the command centre of the Beltran Leyva cartel.

A statement from the Mexican attorney general’s office said multiple witnesses have already testified against the generals.

The Americas Post - Innocent bus riders were caught in the blast that rocked Bogota

A bomb aimed at a hardline former interior minister killed two of his bodyguards and injured at least 31 people in Bogotá’s uptown commercial district Tuesday, in the kind of attack not been seen in the capital for years.

Former official Fernando Londoño suffered minor shrapnel wounds and was out of danger, authorities said. Video footage showed a stunned Londoño, his face bruised, being led from the wreckage in a dark suit and red tie.

Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro said a pedestrian attached an explosive to a door of Londoño’s armored SUV and set it off remotely. He said authorities had video of the attack.

The attacker “walked away disguised” and a wig of long black hair and a hat were found in the area, Petro told reporters.

It was the first fatal bombing in the capital in nearly a decade of an apparently political nature. While officials didn’t ascribe blame, some analysts suspected the country’s main leftist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.  The attack marked the very first day that the new Free Trade Pact between Colombia and the United States went into effect.

“We don’t know what’s behind it,” said President Juan Manuel Santos. “But rest assured that the government isn’t going to be knocked off track by terrorist acts.”

A morning radio host who is an archconservative and a stringent critic of the FARC, the 68-year-old Londoño was interior and justice minister in 2002-2003 under former President Alvaro Uribe.

He hosts a daily radio show called “The Hour of Truth” and firmly opposes peace talks with the FARC, calling the rebels “terrorists” and “murderers.” He has also been critical of Santos for allegedly being soft on the rebels, who have stepped up attacks in recent months.

Under Uribe, Colombia’s U.S.-backed military dealt major setbacks to the FARC, diminishing its numbers by roughly half to about 9,000 currently. Colombia’s capital became progressively safer, the conflict increasingly limited to less populated hinterlands.

The last major bombing in Bogotá was in 2003, when the FARC bombed the exclusive El Nogal social club, killing 36 people. The cocaine trade-funded FARC was also blamed for a pre-dawn bombing outside an office building housing Caracol radio in August 2010, but that blast only injured nine people.

Londoño’s driver and a police bodyguard were killed in the attack shortly before midday on Calle 74 a half block from Caracas Avenue. The district is packed with office buildings, stores, restaurants and banks.

Catalina Ballesteros, a 24-year-old student, was in a bus that was badly damaged by the blast. She said she was surprised at the concentrated force.

“After the explosion it was chaos,” said Ballesteros, who suffered only cuts. She said she saw one man on the street who had fainted.

Londono was being treated at the Clinica del Country hospital for minor shrapnel wounds in his face and was out of danger, said the hospital’s director, Jorge Ospina.

An additional 24 people were treated for injuries at the clinic, eight of whom were released, Ospina said. Six others were treated at a different hospital, El Marly, said police Gen. Rodolfo Palomino.

Ospina said the only person seriously injured in the blast was a 38-year-old passer-by who needed surgery and was in danger of losing his right arm.

Earlier Tuesday, police said they had deactivated a car bomb in the center of the city and said they presumed it was from the FARC. Police said they arrested the person who was driving the car.

It was not known if the incident was related to the apparent attack on Londoño. Santos convened Petro, Colombia’s chief prosecutor and its military and police brass for an afternoon security session.

Santos considers himself a progressive and, in addition to a military hard line against the FARC, has sought to return stolen land to peasants and pay reparations to victims of Colombia’s long-running civil conflict.

The FARC was blamed by authorities for two bombings in February in provincial Colombia that killed at least 16 people, and military analyst Alfredo Rangel said he suspected it Tuesday’s bombing because of Londoño’s hard line against the rebels.

Leftist congressman and human rights activist Ivan Cepeda said he feared the attack could trigger others attack, including those targeting the left.

“I see a clear intent to destabilize,” Cepeda said, blaming “sectors who don’t want peace.”

Political scientist Vicente Torrijos of the Universidad del Rosario, supported the theory that the FARC was to blame as it “seeks to show itself to the world as an organization sufficiently strong militarily and not only a weak organization that is only looking to negotiate with the government.”

The FARC has been seeking peace talks and last month released what it said were its last “political prisoners,” 10 police and soldiers held for as many as 14 years.

The Americas Post - Hank Crumpton says the United States is infested by foreign espionage

A higher number of foreign spies are active on U.S. soil today than there were during the Cold War, according to a former top CIA officer.

Hank Crumpton, former deputy director of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center who led the U.S. response to 9/11, told the CBS news documentary program “60 Minutes” that China is the largest source of espionage agents operating in the US.

“If you look at the threat that is imposed upon our nation every day, some of the major nation states — China in particular — [have] very sophisticated intelligence operations, very aggressive operations against the U.S.,” Crumpton said.

“I would hazard to guess there are more foreign intelligence officers inside the U.S. working against U.S. interests now than even at the height of the Cold War,” he said. “It’s a critical issue.”

In the  interview that aired Sunday, Crumpton, 55, discussed on his 24 years in the CIA, including the time spent hunting Osama bin Laden before and after 9/11 and the CIA-led mission to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan.

During his time in Afghanistan and North Korea, Crumpton said he discovered America’s enemies had at least one thing in common: They loved pornography.

“I never met a North Korean that did not like pornography,” Crumpton said, adding that it was common for CIA spooks to exchange X-rated material for intelligence on Kim Jong Il’s regime.

“Supplying porn to a North Korean official to entice them to spy for America, along with money or whatever else it might take. Well, for me the answer was yes, I was willing to do that.”

In late summer 1999, the team had the former Al Qaeda leader in its sights — but President Bill Clinton missed the opportunity to take him out.

Describing an early Predator spy drone mission, Crumpton said, “We saw a security detail, a convoy, and we saw bin Laden exit the vehicle, clearly.”

“We immediately alerted the White House, and the Clinton administration’s response was, ‘Well, it will take several hours for [the cruise missiles\] launched from submarines, to reach that objective. So, you need to tell us where bin Laden will be five or six hours from now,’” he said.

“The frustration was enormous,” he added.

Though Navy SEALs took bin Laden out a year ago this month, Crumpton said he was still worried about the danger posed by Al Qaeda’s affiliates in North Africa.

“I’m particularly concerned about al Qaeda in Yemen, which is fractured as a nation state,” he said. “The Sahel [region\], if you look at al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, they pose a threat, and in Somalia. Those are the places I’d be concerned [about].”

The Americas Post - Mexico is starting to look the way it did when the Aztecs were in charge

Mexican police recovered 18 decapitated and dismembered bodies  near  Guadalajara Wednesday, in what appeared to be the latest atrocity by the country’s most brutal drug cartel.

Believed to be the work of the Zetas cartel, it was one of the biggest mass beheadings in the recent history of Mexico, where decapitations have become a daily occurrence.

The bodies and heads were packed into two vehicles left on the side of a highway in the small town of Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos, according to the chief prosecutor for the state of Jalisco, Tomas Coronado.

Some of the bodies had been refrigerated before they were dumped, Coronado reported.  A policeman at the scene said some victims were so badly mutilated that officers could not determine whether they were male or female.

The officer said a note by the bodies was signed by the Zetas gang, a criminal militia led by former Mexican soldiers and blamed for some of the worst atrocities in Mexico’s drug war.

Guadalajara, known for high-tech industry, mariachi and tequila, has been a center of operations for drug traffickers since the 1980s.  But violence has now exploded in the once-tranquil city as the Zetas moved in to challenge the turf of other gangs in western Mexico.  Soldiers arrested a high-ranking member of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel in the city in March, causing his supporters to block streets with 25 burning cars and trucks.

Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos lies 18 miles south of the center of Guadalajara on the road to Lake Chapala, a site popular with foreign tourists and American retirees.

Attacks between the Zetas and their rivals have flared up across Mexico since the beginning of the year.  On Friday, nine corpses were hanged from a bridge in the border city of Nuevo Laredo just hours before 14 bodies were dismembered and shoved into garbage bags and ice boxes.  Three more journalists were murdered as well.  Five days of intense battles in western Sinaloa state last week also left 34 dead, adding to the body count in Mexico’s drug war, which has killed over 50,000 people in the past five years.

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.”

The Americas Post - Faces of crime victims hover like ghosts over the Ecatepec slums in Mexico City

Mexico’s congress approved a law Monday to recognize and protect the rights of crime victims, a longstanding demand in a country where more than 47,500 people have died in 5½ years of drug-related violence, and thousands more have disappeared.

The law covers the dead, wounded, kidnapped or missing whether they are ordinary civilians or are members of drug cartels and other crime gangs. It also would cover victims of other crimes, like extortion.

The measure has now been passed by both houses of congress and remains to be signed into law by the president, who supports the move.

The law will establish a national registry of victims and set aside funds to compensate them, financed in part by assets seized from organized crime groups. The compensation payments could reach as high as one million pesos ($77,000) apiece.

The law requires authorities to make efforts to identify crime victims’ remains or locate those who might still be alive.

Relatives of people who have gone missing during the drug violence often claim authorities are slow or reluctant to help find missing people.

Hundreds of bodies have been recovered from mass graves, and thousands more have been hacked to pieces, dissolved or dumped in vacant lots. Those victims, often believed to be drug gang members killed by rivals, frequently go unidentified.

The Americas Post - Courageous Mexicans publicly protest the murder of journalist Regina Martinez

Police in Mexico are investigating the death of a journalist in the eastern state of Veracruz.

Regina Martinez was found in her home in Xalapa on Saturday, apparently beaten and strangled to death.  She was a correspondent for the weekly news magazine Proceso.

Industry groups say Mexico is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist, with more than 40 journalists killed or disappeared since President Felipe Calderon took office.

Police had found Ms Martinez’s body in the bathroom of her house after being alerted by neighbours who had noticed the main entrance door had been left open all day.

State prosecutors said her body showed signs of heavy “blows to her face and body”.  A spokeswoman for the Veracruz government said all lines of investigation would be exhausted, and that “the fact that she was a journalist is one of them”.

Ms Martinez had been working for investigative news magazine Proceso for 10 years.  Before that, she had worked for local newspapers in the Veracruz region.  Veracruz Governor Javier Duarte has ordered an exhaustive investigation into Ms Martinez’s death.

The state has seen a rise in killings in recent months.  Much of the violence has been blamed on a battle for control of drug-trafficking routes between two of Mexico’s most powerful drugs gangs – the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in Mexico over the past decade, but there are conflicting data on how many of them were killed as a direct result of their profession.

Professional media organizations generally agree that whatever the exact figures, Mexico has become one of the most dangerous countries for journalists in the world.