Mexico Marks Four Months Since 43 Ayotzinapa Students Disappeared

By Renee Lewis, 1/26/2015

The Associated Press October 22, 2014

Marking four months since 43 students went missing in Mexico’s Guerrero state, supporters demanded the students’ return during mass demonstrations in Mexico and abroad.

Thousands of protesters attended marches across Mexico on Monday, according to local media, with many blaming the state for the students’ disappearance. In Mexico City, protesters converged from four directions for a rally on Zocalo Square.

As the protesters marched, they chanted, “Careful with Guerrero, a guerrilla state” and held banners that read, “They took them alive, we want them back alive!”

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Frenchwoman Freed From Mexico Jail Sues Ex-President, Others

Yahoo News, 1/26/2015

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Frenchwoman who became a cause celebre in her country after she was jailed for kidnapping in Mexico is suing a former Mexican president, other ex-officials and a major TV network, her lawyer said Monday.

Jose Patino Hurtado, Florence Cassez’s attorney in Mexico, told Noticias MVS radio that the civil suit filed on Friday seeks $36 million for suffering and “moral damage.”

The lawsuit seeks “above all to vindicate Florence Cassez, which is the most important thing,” Patino said in an interview with Noticias MVS host Carmen Aristegui.

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Mexican official says kidnapping investigations drop 18 pct

1/21/15 The Washington Post

Investigations of abductions in Mexico declined 18 percent last year, Mexico’s national chief of anti-kidnapping efforts said Wednesday in crediting better state and federal coordination. The number of kidnapping investigations in 2014 was 1,394, down from 1,698 in 2013, Renato Sales said at a news conference. But under reporting remains a persistent problem. Mexico’s national statistics institute estimates more than 90 percent of kidnapping cases are never reported.

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Migrants snared in multi-million dollar kidnap racket on U.S.-Mexico border

10/13/14 Reuters

Tens of thousands of Central American migrants are being kidnapped, abused and extorted by Mexican gangs just yards from the United States in a growing racket that may be worth up to $250 million a year. Arriving in ragtag border towns like Reynosa, Mexico’s migrant kidnapping capital where police in armored vehicles patrol the streets and daytime shootouts are commonplace, migrants are picked off buses by gangs who federal authorities say are in cahoots with local officials. They are then held captive in small houses packed with dozens of fellow migrants, where they are ransomed for up to $5,000 a head. Women who cannot pay face rape, while men risk beatings and conscription into gang ranks, police say.

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Mexico: 2 burned bodies found in congressman’s SUV

09/23/14 The Washington Post 

Two charred bodies were discovered Tuesday inside a burned-out vehicle in which a congressman and his driver were kidnapped at gunpoint the previous day, Mexican authorities said. Zacatecas state prosecutor Arturo Nahle said that although the vehicle was completely burned, the license plates left “no doubt” that it was the congressman’s SUV. He said DNA testing was being done on the remains to determine whether they belonged to Gabriel Gomez Michel, a member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and his driver.

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Tourist town in central Mexico plagued by kidnappings, officials say

08/19/14 Fox News Latino

At least seven people have been kidnapped in Valle de Bravo, a popular tourist town in central Mexico, with three of the victims already released, state officials said Tuesday.

Three kidnappings have been reported in recent days, Mexico state Government Secretary Jose Manzur said.

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Kidnappings in Mexico surge to the highest number on record

08/15/14 The Washington Post

The first time, after the men with police badges had lashed Adriana Carrillo’s wrists and ankles with tape, and she had spent 37 hours in the back of a Nissan, her father tossed the $12,000 ransom in a black satchel over a graffiti-strewn brick wall and brought her nightmare to its conclusion. She took three days off and then went back to work.

“I don’t want to live as a victim,” she said.

Carrillo returned to the cash register of the family store, where she had worked since she was 8 with her parents and six sisters, amid the floor-to-ceiling jumble of marshmallows and mixed nuts and pinwheel pasta and Styrofoam cups. Their business — cash-based, working-class, on the outskirts of Mexico City — happened to put them squarely into the demographic most vulnerable to Mexico’s kidnapping epidemic. And on May 28, 2013, less than two years later, a white sedan pulled up alongside Carrillo’s car as she drove home late from the market. When she saw the guns, she covered her face with her hands.

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Mexico at Peace: An Incomplete Approach

Washington Office on Latin America, 06/02/14

“Mexico has suffered from high levels of violence in recent years… Since taking office, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto committed to adopting a new strategy called ‘Mexico at Peace.’

In Mexico at Peace: An Incomplete Approach, researchers Alejandro Hope and Angela Guerrero analyze the results from the new program.”

Click here to read the full report…

 

Mexico doubles prison sentences for kidnapping

BBC, 06/04/14

Mexico has published new sentencing guidelines that will double prison sentences for kidnapping. The minimum prison term has risen from 20 to 40 years.

It will apply for all abductions, including those that last only a few hours or days, so-called “express kidnappings”. The maximum prison sentence will rise from 50 to 140 years for those who kill their victims.

Kidnappings committed by a public security official, such as a member of the police or military, will be punished with up to 100 years in prison. Kidnappers will also have to pay heavy fines.

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Hunger for drugs brings torture and death to Mexico City

Al Jazeera, 11/12/2013

A silver sedan sits in front of Bar Heaven in the Zona Rosa here, the nightclub district that serves the rich locals and foreign tourists. Inside is an investigator from the attorney general’s office, asleep with a clipboard on his chest. It’s not clear why he’s there, since the club has long been shuttered with police tape, the walls covered with memorial photos of the 13 young people who were abducted there five months ago, their decapitated remains found later in a grave some 30 miles away.

“Confidential,” the investigator growled when asked why his presence was required at the spot, which now serves as a landmark for the sadism and kidnappings that have long been associated with other areas. Drug-related violence that has claimed perhaps 70,000 lives nationwide over seven years has now arrived 15 minutes from the seat of the federal government.

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