December 12, 2008
M3 Report
Guatemala: National Police have lost more than two thousand firearms
Posted: 11 Dec 2008 07:58 PM CST
La Cronica de Hoy (Mexico City)
The president of the "Public Function Committee" of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies said that in 2007 "mordidas" (read" bribe payments) in Mexico totaled 27 billion pesos.
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Prensa Libre (Guatemala City, Guatemala) 12/10/08
When members of the Guatemalan Congress questioned Marlene Blanco, the head of Guatemala's National Police, she stated that more than two thousand firearms have been lost including UZI sub-machine guns and AK47s, among others. She added that the number could be higher and that they didn't know who had taken them from storage or with whose permission, because the registers only show an illegible signature.
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El Tiempo (Bogota, Colombia) 12/10/08
A few days ago a light aircraft arrived in Barranquilla, Colombia, from Bogota. (Barranquilla is on Colombia's north coast, east of Panama). It bore registry HK1249P. Later, it was towed to a cargo hangar. On Tuesday night, its pilot attempted to take off at night and without using lights, but a police helicopter prevented it from doing so by hovering just above and in front of the plane.
The plane now bore a new registry, GT 123, and sported a Guatemalan flag. Its seats had been removed except for the pilot's and copilot's and it had been loaded with 650 kilos of cocaine and more than a dozen fuel containers. Three persons have been arrested and more arrests are expected.
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El Debate (Culiacan, Sinaloa) 12/10/08
Five persons have died and six others were wounded Tuesday at mid afternoon in Culiacan as a result of two shootouts. The report describes vehicle-to-vehicle running gun battles along various streets and the wounding of innocent third parties who happened to be in the way of the attacks and counterattacks on the streets. Eventually, police located four AK47s, an AR 15, pistols, full and empty clips and tactical vests.
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El Sur (Acapulco, Guerrero) 12/10/08
In Chilpancingo (on the highway inland from Acapulco): "another human head, this time that of a soldier" was found on a busy avenue. A tag board alongside accused the military of involvement in kidnappings. The rest of the body was found by the bridge of a nearby town.
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La Jornada (Mexico City) 12/10/08
- The police chief of Villagran, Guanajuato, was carried off forcibly some days ago by armed subjects. He was assassinated and his body was found today (Wed.) in Apasco el Alto, Gto.
- Update re our report of yesterday about those 59 Central Americans being smuggled aboard a truck in Chiapas: a new report states that all were not Central Americans and that the load also included 19 Ecuadorans. The corrected total was 61.
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La Voz de la Frontera (Mexicali, Baja Calif.) 12/10/08
Tuesday in Tijuana:
"While a man and a woman were executed by multiple firearm impacts when they rode in an SUV, the bodies of two (other) individuals were abandoned, one of them with a pacifier hanging (from him), and covered with a diaper, and the other one with a woman's dress."
Elsewhere in Tijuana, a fifth person stopped his vehicle and as he was getting off he became the target of "at least" 95 rounds of 7.62×39 mm. caliber rounds from AK47.
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La Razon (La Paz, Bolivia) 12/10/08
Bolivian Immigration and Anti-Smuggling officials intercepted a minibus in Unduavi, Bolivia (n.e. of La Paz). Five of the passengers were Chinese and the latest admission stamps in their passports were from Ecuador, two countries away. The case is being handled as one of "emigrant trafficking." A number of Bolivians were also arrested but the report failed to mention their linkage to the smuggled aliens.
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NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS
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Foreign News Report
The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis.
