Posted on 01/12/2007 1:54:53 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
A Mexican woman was arrested Thursday, accused of helping kidnap two Laredoans in Nuevo Laredo last July. Maria Christina Rodriguez, 31, a U.S. legal resident from Mexico, was arrested in her Laredo home Thursday at 4 p.m., according to a statement released by the FBI.
FBI agents, assisted by the Laredo Police Department, stormed her residence and arrested her without incident, police said.
She was charged with conspiracy to kidnap victims in a foreign country, said Norman Townsend, FBI senior agent in charge.
If convicted, she could face up to life imprisonment for the criminal offense, he added.
“Obviously we think there were more people involved,” he said.
Townsend said Rodriguez played a role in conspiring to kidnap two Laredoans who were visiting Nuevo Laredo on July 16.
The unidentified victims, a man and a woman, were leaving a wedding in Nuevo Laredo when they were kidnapped, he said.
A criminal complaint regarding the kidnapping was filed Jan. 5 by an FBI agent in Laredo.
“Both of the victims were returned shortly thereafter,” Townsend said, adding that they were returned “safely” to the United States.
When asked whether the victims were injured, Townsend said, “They were not hospitalized.”
Rodriguez will appear before a U.S. magistrate today, Townsend said, and the kidnap victim’s names would not be released until then.
(Celina Alvarado can be reached at (956) 728-2566 or by e-mail at celina@lmtonline.com)
Los dos Laredos ping!
If you want on or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepmail me.
Isn't kidnapping a cottage industry south of the border? Seems its coming here too.
"Isn't kidnapping a cottage industry south of the border?"
Seems like everything is a *cottage industry* in Mexico. There have been several "kidnappings for ransum" on this side.
Pubdate: Sun, 12 Dec 1999
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 1999 Los Angeles Times
Contact: Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053
Fax: (213) 237-4712
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Forum: http://www.latimes.com/home/discuss/
Author: Eva Bertram, Kenneth Sharpe
Note: Eva Bertram, a Policy Analyst, and Kenneth Sharpe, Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College, Are Coauthors of "Drug War Politics: the Price of Denial."
DRUG WAR MONEY BRINGS EVER MORE CORRUPTION
WASHINGTON--Plata o plomo. Silver or lead. That is the choice drug traffickers in Mexico have given their allies and enemies for years: the bribe or the bullet.
The graves now being exhumed on the Mexican-U.S. border near Juarez are thought to contain the remains of antidrug agents, informers and rival gangsters who refused the silver offered by the Juarez drug cartel and their allies to join up or shut up during the last half decade. Hundreds of families of victims of violent crime in the area are now coming forward to see if the graves might contain their loved ones.
The magnitude of the past brutality in Juarez--the violence, the murders, the hundreds of disappearances--cries out for action by Mexican authorities. The mounting evidence of drug-related atrocities will almost certainly fuel calls by drug warriors in Washington for more military and police aid to help Mexico fight these criminals. President Bill Clinton has already declared that the evidence "reinforces the imperative" to "work with the Mexican authorities to try to combat these cartels."
But there is a troubling underside to the story that U.S. drug warriors refuse to confront honestly: Many of our drug-war allies have already chosen the silver, and the lead we provide them may serve to undermine rather than advance U.S. objectives. One of the perverse consequences of the U.S. war on drugs is that it drives corruption: giving traffickers both strong incentives and ample illicit profits to buy lax law enforcement. It is no surprise that this corruption is particularly visible on the border where the flow of drugs meets the lucrative U.S. market.
The Juarez cartel may be behind the killings, but there is evidence that the Mexican military and police have been deeply involved. Many of those who have disappeared in the Juarez area reportedly vanished after police officials, presumably in the pay of the traffickers, detained them, and local police have been excluded from current investigative activities. Arturo Gonzalez Rascon, attorney general for the state of Chihuahua, has publicly suggested a police role in disappearances of people feared buried in the mass graves.
Evidence of widespread official corruption in the drug war is an open secret. U.S. drug-enforcement agents say they knew of the mass graves in 1993 but did not act because Mexican drug traffickers and police were believed to control the secret cemeteries. Local U.S. counternarcotics agents widely share the view of former FBI agent Richard Schwein, who headed the El Paso office: "You don't share information with your counterparts across the river, because you don't know whom you can trust."
In November, the former FBI boss for Mexico, Stanley Pimental, even accused some officials of Mexico's ruling party of using the police, the army and the legal system to extort money from drug traffickers, exchanging impunity for donations to party coffers.
Given the record of corruption, how can U.S. drug warriors possibly justify more aid? Their story is as simple as it is simple-minded: We'll tell Mexican officials to clean things up, or we'll cut off aid, and we'll provide training and assistance to help create cleaner forces. But there is a Catch-22 here: If the U.S. were really to cut the flow of aid to Mexico and other Latin nations, who would fight our drug war? Meanwhile, the internal logic of a war on the drug supply guarantees the corruption will get worse.
[remainder snipped due to FR restrictions on LA Times reposts]
CONTACT PERSON:SUSAN W. BROOKS
United States Attorney
(317) 226-6333
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
WASHINGTON, INDIANA MAN SENTENCED FOLLOWING FEDERAL METHAMPHETAMINE TRAFFICKING TRIAL
PRESS RELEASE
Susan W. Brooks, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana,announced that JOSUE BABINES-PIMENTEL, 32, of Washington, Indiana, was sentenced to 292 months imprisonment today by U.S. District Judge Richard L. Young following his conviction after trial June 14, 2005 for conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute methamphetamine. The case was the result of an investigation by the DEA-Evansville, the Vincennes Police Department, the Indiana State Police, the Daviess County Sheriff’s Department, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the Knox County Sheriff’s Department and the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Joint Drug Task Force.
Page 2 In April, 2004, fifteen persons. including BABINES-PIMENTEL, were indicted for conspiring to traffic in methamphetamine between the fall of 2003 and the spring of 2004. These persons trafficked multiple kilograms of high purity methamphetamine from Mexico and California to southwestern Indiana, often in vehicles with hidden compartments. Once in Indiana, the drugs were sold for cash or firearms. According to Assistant United States Attorney Matthew P. Brookman, who prosecuted the case for the government, Judge Young also imposed 5 years supervised release following BABINES-PIMENTEL’s release from imprisonment.
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