latimes.com
Mexican troops kill top Sinaloa cartel figure
Ignacio Coronel Villarreal died in a gunfight in an upscale suburb of Guadalajara, authorities say. Separately, dozens of Tijuana law enforcement officers are arrested in an anti-corruption sweep.
By Ken Ellingwood and Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times
July 30, 2010
Reporting from Mexico City and San Diego
In a significant blow against the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, Mexican troops on Thursday killed one of the group's top figures during an arrest raid in western Mexico.
The raid came as troops in Tijuana rounded up dozens of police officers in a separate operation targeting organized crime.
Ignacio Coronel Villarreal is described as one of the three most important bosses in the cartel, which is based in Sinaloa state and run by the country's most-wanted drug suspect, Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. Coronel, known as "Nacho" and in his mid-50s, was highly sought by U.S. and Mexican authorities.
Authorities said Coronel headed the group's operations in the western states of Colima, Nayarit and Jalisco, where troops tracked him down Thursday. U.S. officials have described him as a pioneer in making large quantities of methamphetamine to be smuggled into the United States.
Army officials said Coronel was slain after opening fire on troops closing in on him in an upscale, tree-lined suburb of Guadalajara, long considered a haven for drug bosses. Coronel kept two residences that he used as safe houses and maintained a low profile, the army said.
A soldier was killed and another was injured, Gen. Edgar Luis Villegas said during a brief news conference. He said troops arrested a close aide of Coronel.
Coronel's death represents a victory for President Felipe Calderon's nearly 4-year-old war against drug cartels. Calderon has dispatched nearly 50,000 troops into the streets, but the country's soaring violence has frightened many Mexicans.
The raid should help Calderon fend off allegations that the government offensive has left largely unscathed the Sinaloa group while hitting its rivals. Calderon has vehemently denied that accusation.
Coronel is the second suspected drug kingpin slain by troops in the last year. In December, commandos killed Arturo Beltran Leyva, a former Guzman ally, during a raid in the city of Cuernavaca.
Beltran Leyva's death has spawned a bloody succession struggle inside the organization he headed. Coronel's foot soldiers battled with remnants of that group in Jalisco in recent months.
Though for years a close associate of Guzman, Coronel was considered by U.S. and Mexican authorities a potent trafficker in his own right, with direct access to cocaine supplies in Colombia. Coronel was considered especially adept at importing into Mexico the chemical ingredients for making methamphetamine.
The FBI, which offered a $5-million reward for his capture, had said Coronel's group "has been growing in power since the 1990s and is now considered one of the most powerful drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico." He is named in federal drug-trafficking indictments in Texas and New York.
Mexican authorities offered their own reward equal to about $2.5 million.
In Tijuana, the military rounded up 56 members of various law enforcement agencies in one of the largest efforts in recent years to purge corrupt police in the border city of Tijuana.
Forty officers from the Tijuana police department and 16 agents from the Baja California attorney general's office were detained. Six former officers were also arrested, authorities said.
Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mugica, who runs military operations in Tijuana, said the sweep targeted law enforcement officers tied to the Arellano Felix drug cartel, which has long used police as bodyguards and informants.
The arrested officers were taken to a military air base and paraded in front of the news media, at which point some proclaimed their innocence.
The sweep marked the latest push by authorities to keep the pressure on organized crime groups in northern Baja California. Unlike other regions in Mexico with spiraling drug war violence, authorities there have been credited with lowering crime rates and arresting organized crime bosses.
The anti-corruption measures, headed by Julian Leyzaola, Tijuana's secretary of public security, have been a key component of the strategy. Since he assumed the post 2 1/2 years ago, more than 460 law enforcement personnel have been arrested or fired or have left the department.
The scale of Thursday's operation was a sign that corruption persists, but that authorities seem committed to rooting out bad officers, according to experts and law enforcement officials in the U.S. and Mexico.
"How many police chiefs would arrest 40 guys from his department, and do it again and again and again?" said one U.S. law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the news media.
Evidence of high-level corruption was revealed last week when U.S. authorities arrested the top liaison officer of the Baja California attorney general's office, Jesus Quinones Marques, who was accused of passing along confidential information from U.S. law enforcement officials to cartel leaders.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has shut indefinitely its consulate in Ciudad Juarez, a border city racked by drug violence, to evaluate security conditions. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said in a statement Thursday that the consulate would "remain closed until the security review is completed."
The consulate closed briefly in March after three people connected to the consulate were killed by suspected drug cartel hit men.
ken.ellingwood@latimes.com
richard.marosi@latimes.com
Ellingwood reported from Mexico City and Marosi from San Diego. Times wire services were used in compiling this report.
http://www.latimes.c...0,5278620.story
Mexican troops kill top Sinaloa cartel figure
Started by HK70, Jul 30 2010 11:43 PM
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Posted 30 July 2010 - 11:55 PM
Troops kill senior 'capo' of mighty Mexico cartel
By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 11:37 p.m.
MEXICO CITY — Soldiers killed a top leader of the Sinaloa cartel in a raid on his posh hideout, dealing the biggest blow yet to Mexico's most powerful drug gang since President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against organized crime in 2006.
Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, a reputed founder of Mexico's methamphetamine trade, was gunned down Thursday trying to escape soldiers in the western city of Guadalajara. Mexican authorities says he fired on soldiers as helicopters hovered overhead and troops closed in.
Coronel was a close associate of Mexico's most wanted man, Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, and was No. 3 in the organization after Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.
"Nacho Coronel tried to escape, and fired on military personnel, killing one soldier and wounding another," Gen. Edgar Luis Villegas said at a news conference in Mexico City. "Responding to the attack, this 'capo' died."
The raid "significantly affects the operational capacity and drug distribution of the organization run by Guzman," he added.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration described Coronel as a major trafficker who was "directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people," and called his death "a crippling blow" to the Sinaloa cartel.
"We congratulate the Government of Mexico on this victory in their sustained efforts to dismantle the drug cartels by targeting the highest levels of cartel leadership," the DEA said.
Coronel's downfall came amid persistent allegations that Calderon's administration appeared to be favoring the Sinaloa cartel, or not hitting it as hard as other drug gangs.
Those allegations have drawn angry denials from the president and his top law enforcement officials, who point to the 2009 arrest of Vicente "El Vicentillo" Zambada - the son of Ismael Zambada - as proof they were going after the gang.
Coronel's death was also the biggest strike against Mexican cartels since drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva and six of his bodyguards were killed in a Dec. 16 raid by Mexican marines in the central city of Cuernavaca. Beltran Leyva, whose gang was once allied with the Sinaloa cartel, had become an enemy of Guzman's organization by the time of his death.
The mysterious Coronel was believed to be "the forerunner in producing massive amounts of methamphetamine in clandestine laboratories in Mexico, then smuggling it into the U.S.", according to the FBI, which offered a $5 million reward for the 56 year old.
Coronel allegedly controlled trafficking through the Mexican states of Jalisco, Colima and parts of Michoacan - the "Pacific route" for cocaine smuggling.
"The scope of its influence and operations penetrate throughout the United States, Mexico, and several other European, Central American, and South American countries," according to an FBI statement.
Coronel ran his criminal cell out of Zapopan, according to the Mexican government, an upscale suburb that has been the scene of previous cartel arrests. Guzman's son was accused of killing two people outside a bar there in 2004.
In 2006 raids on four Zapopan homes, federal police arrested five of Coronel's lieutenants and seized more than $2 million in cash, along with expensive watches and jewelry - but failed to find Coronel himself.
During Thursday's raid, soldiers appeared to search at least two homes and arrested Francisco Quinonez Gastelum, alleged to be Coronel's right-hand man and the only associate allowed to accompany him to his mansion.
"Coronel used two homes as safe houses ... and employed the tactic of being accompanied only by Quinonez Gastelum, to keep a low profile and not draw attention to himself," Villegas said.
Coronel was born in the northern state of Durango, the home state of many of Mexico's drug traffickers and was groomed to be a drug lord from an early age.
He rose up under Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the so-called "Lord of the Skies" and leader of the Juarez drug cartel who died in 1997. After Carrillo's death, Coronel joined the Sinaloa cartel and rose through the ranks to become the cartel's No. 3.
Little was known about him.
On its website of most wanted drug traffickers, the Mexican federal attorney general has three photographs of Coronel and gives his nickname, "Nacho." There are only blanks after "age," "place of origin," and "personal characteristics."
The Associated Press
http://www.signonsan...-mexico-cartel/
By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 11:37 p.m.
MEXICO CITY — Soldiers killed a top leader of the Sinaloa cartel in a raid on his posh hideout, dealing the biggest blow yet to Mexico's most powerful drug gang since President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against organized crime in 2006.
Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, a reputed founder of Mexico's methamphetamine trade, was gunned down Thursday trying to escape soldiers in the western city of Guadalajara. Mexican authorities says he fired on soldiers as helicopters hovered overhead and troops closed in.
Coronel was a close associate of Mexico's most wanted man, Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, and was No. 3 in the organization after Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.
"Nacho Coronel tried to escape, and fired on military personnel, killing one soldier and wounding another," Gen. Edgar Luis Villegas said at a news conference in Mexico City. "Responding to the attack, this 'capo' died."
The raid "significantly affects the operational capacity and drug distribution of the organization run by Guzman," he added.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration described Coronel as a major trafficker who was "directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people," and called his death "a crippling blow" to the Sinaloa cartel.
"We congratulate the Government of Mexico on this victory in their sustained efforts to dismantle the drug cartels by targeting the highest levels of cartel leadership," the DEA said.
Coronel's downfall came amid persistent allegations that Calderon's administration appeared to be favoring the Sinaloa cartel, or not hitting it as hard as other drug gangs.
Those allegations have drawn angry denials from the president and his top law enforcement officials, who point to the 2009 arrest of Vicente "El Vicentillo" Zambada - the son of Ismael Zambada - as proof they were going after the gang.
Coronel's death was also the biggest strike against Mexican cartels since drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva and six of his bodyguards were killed in a Dec. 16 raid by Mexican marines in the central city of Cuernavaca. Beltran Leyva, whose gang was once allied with the Sinaloa cartel, had become an enemy of Guzman's organization by the time of his death.
The mysterious Coronel was believed to be "the forerunner in producing massive amounts of methamphetamine in clandestine laboratories in Mexico, then smuggling it into the U.S.", according to the FBI, which offered a $5 million reward for the 56 year old.
Coronel allegedly controlled trafficking through the Mexican states of Jalisco, Colima and parts of Michoacan - the "Pacific route" for cocaine smuggling.
"The scope of its influence and operations penetrate throughout the United States, Mexico, and several other European, Central American, and South American countries," according to an FBI statement.
Coronel ran his criminal cell out of Zapopan, according to the Mexican government, an upscale suburb that has been the scene of previous cartel arrests. Guzman's son was accused of killing two people outside a bar there in 2004.
In 2006 raids on four Zapopan homes, federal police arrested five of Coronel's lieutenants and seized more than $2 million in cash, along with expensive watches and jewelry - but failed to find Coronel himself.
During Thursday's raid, soldiers appeared to search at least two homes and arrested Francisco Quinonez Gastelum, alleged to be Coronel's right-hand man and the only associate allowed to accompany him to his mansion.
"Coronel used two homes as safe houses ... and employed the tactic of being accompanied only by Quinonez Gastelum, to keep a low profile and not draw attention to himself," Villegas said.
Coronel was born in the northern state of Durango, the home state of many of Mexico's drug traffickers and was groomed to be a drug lord from an early age.
He rose up under Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the so-called "Lord of the Skies" and leader of the Juarez drug cartel who died in 1997. After Carrillo's death, Coronel joined the Sinaloa cartel and rose through the ranks to become the cartel's No. 3.
Little was known about him.
On its website of most wanted drug traffickers, the Mexican federal attorney general has three photographs of Coronel and gives his nickname, "Nacho." There are only blanks after "age," "place of origin," and "personal characteristics."
The Associated Press
http://www.signonsan...-mexico-cartel/
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