Reuters: Top Guatemala detective quits in drug killings saga

[Eugene]

Top Guatemala detective quits in drug killings saga

Fri Mar 2, 11:20 PM ET

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala's top detective quit on Friday following a spate
of recent murders of politicians and policemen that have raised suspicion of links
between high-level security forces and drug gangs.

Javier Figueroa was in charge of six detectives suspected in the February 19 slayings
of three lawmakers from El Salvador and their driver. Four of the policemen were arrested
but killed within days, their throats slashed in a prison cell.

As the scandal grips the nation officials have come under growing pressure from opposition
figures and activists who say shadowy armed groups working within the police have been
given free rein to kill and smuggle drugs, weapons and people.

Announcing Figueroa's resignation, Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann said Figueroa and his
deputy, Victor Soto, who was demoted, were not under investigation.

-snip-

Full article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070303/wl_nm/guatemala_drugs_dc

(Associated Press)

Prison Gangs Eyed in Officer Slayings


Saturday March 3, 2007 1:31 AM

By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA

Associated Press Writer

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - Authorities are investigating whether imprisoned gang members - and not
outside attackers - were responsible for gunning down four policemen being held in the deaths
of three Salvadoran politicians, officials said Friday.

Prosecutor Alvaro Matus said guards this week discovered four guns hidden in possessions being
removed from gang members' jail cells by family members.

The announcement conflicts with previous declarations by Guatemalan President Oscar Berger -
who said organized crime hitmen reached the officers' cell last Sunday after getting past eight
locked doors at the prison - and prisoners' family members, who said they saw armed men entering
the lockup.

Inmates, who denied involvement, staged a riot saying they feared they would be blamed for the
killings.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6453715,00.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. A new claim surfaces: the prisoners knocked off the government employees who snuffed the right-wing

politicians, not anyone connected to the original victems, at all!

The right-wing politician, son of death squads leader Roberto "Blowtorch" D'Aubuisson, dreaded, feared, despised right-wing monster who lead vicious, violent massacres of helpless native Guatemalans, suddenly gets killed and burned to a crisp, along with other right-wing members of the party his father started, and fingers simply start turning and pointing to the men who were in prison at the time they brought in the original suspects who then got snuffed, like Lee Harvey Oswald.

Then they make up the cover story that the men's relatives probably all smuggled guns in to them to use to shoot up the policemen charged with the murders. So what if they find guns in their cells in the future? That would make them sound like the Miami police department which tends to fall back on that dirty trick (planting "throwdown" guns) and gets caught at it.

I hope there's someone clean enough in power in Guatemala to insist upon continuing the investigation and not let it end with this cover-up.

[Judi Lynn]

2. New info.: The alleged assassin/cops not only were shot in the cells, but had their throats cut.

This story gets odder and odder:

~snip~

Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann has been under increasing pressure to resign since suspected drug hitmen killed four policemen at a high-security prison last Sunday. They were shot and had their throats cut.

The policemen, including the head of the squad that targets organised crime, had been arrested for the drug-related murders a few days earlier of three Salvadoran members of the Central American parliament whose charred bodies were left on an isolated road.

Several television, radio and newspaper journalists have received anonymous phone calls telling them to stop writing about the murders and to watch out for their family members.

In a twist to the tale, one of the slain lawmakers was the son of Roberto D'Aubuisson, an infamous 1980s death squad leader during El Salvador's civil war.

A candidate for this year's presidential election says groups with links to organised crime operate within the police force and the ministry and were behind the recent killings.

"We can't allow Guatemala to go on in this situation _ this is anarchy," said candidate Otto Perez Molina, a former military intelligence chief running second in opinion polls to centre-leftist Alvaro Colom.

The president backs Vielmann but says the minister may have to take a lie detector test.

The scandal is the latest blow to the image of Guatemala, which is still recovering from a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996.
(snip/...)

http://www.bruneitimes.com.bn/details.php?shape_ID=22508

[bemildred]

3. Does sound like a "Family" matter.

One wonders whether Mr. Molina is involved, or perhaps merely exploiting the situation to improve his chances in the election. As a former "former military intelligence chief" one would think him well informed about this sort of thing.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Interesting vortex of events. Bush to visit both Guatemala and Colombia with

big checks (written on our credit and future solvency) for the big beneficiaries of US/Bush Junta military aid: the fascist paramilitaries. Very similar scandal--involving mass murder, drug trafficking and corruption--in Colombia right now. Could topple the government of Bush's bud, Uribe (though I picked up that Uribe refused to participate in Bushite plots against Hugo Chavez; one of the items to come out in the Colombian scandal was that the same murdering, drug trafficking paramilitaries were plotting to assassinate Chavez).

There are a lot of good democracies a President of the US could be visiting. But most have put up crossed fingers and garlic wreaths to prevent it. Only Brazil and Uruguay--both with leftist, but still somewhat corporatist governments--agreed to incur the security expense. They are having a small local spat within Mercosur--So. American trade group, possible precursor to So. American Common Market and common currency (to get off the US dollar). Bush's mission, no doubt, is to stir up more "divide and conquer" trouble. And I'm sure that he and his global corporate predator brethren would particularly like to split Brazil off from the Andean democracies (Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela), and likely also have plans for more killing of peasants, leftists and union leaders in Peru and Paraguay (to stop big leftist democracy movements there).

I am fascinated--and surprised--by these simultaneous rightwing paramilitary scandals in Colombia and Guatemala--both at their simultaneity, and their occurring on the eve of Bush's evil junket. Seems like there are some really, really good and courageous people working on democracy in these countries, and possibly coordinating. Also, the majority of Colombians and Guatemalans no doubt would like to benefit from the principles of regional self-determination and cooperation that Venezuela has so powerfully advocated with the Bolivarian revolution. Why remain the exploited, brutalized chattels of the Bushites and super-rich of this world, when there is an alternative? They can see what's happening in Argentina, for instance, and in other countries where leftists (majorityists) are gaining control.

ONE QUESTION: Judi Lynn, do you know the answer to this? I thought Nobel Peace Price winner Rigoberta Menchu was running for president in Guatemala. She is not mentioned in discussions of presidential candidates. Do you know what her status is? (She is a hero of the horrible death squad days under Reagan-backed dictators.)

And did you see where the Bush Junta State Dept. came out with an attack on Venezuela for DRUG-TRAFFICKING? My God, there is nothing they will not lie about.

[donkeyotay]

5. bush is visiting Guatemala and Columbia, and bearing gifts. Interesting. nt

[Judi Lynn]

6. Yep, that's still the plan, from what I can tell. This is the last big article I can find on it,

from February 21st, from the AP:

Nobel Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu running for president in Guatemala
The Associated Press
Published: February 21, 2007


GUATEMALA CITY: Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu on Wednesday announced that she will run for the presidency of Guatemala in the country's September elections, a move likely fuel talk about an Indian resurgence in Latin American politics.

Menchu said she reached an agreement with the smaller Encounter For Guatemala Party, which still must formally ratify her nomination at a March 22 assembly.

"I have accepted the presidential candidacy for 2007, and we expect to bring hope to Guatemala," Menchu told reporters following a meeting with Nineth Montenegro, leader of the Encounter Party. "We are immediately going to begin to unite the two teams."

"We are two women who share ideas and have extraordinary teams," Menchu said of Montenegro, a rights activists and legislator who predicted Menchu's bid would be "a successful process that will change the country."

Earlier this month Menchu said she was forming an Indian-led political movement with an eye toward a possible presidential bid.

U.S. sees its emissions growing without letupBut the movement, known as Winaq, does not have time to register itself as a political party before September elections. It could back Menchu's candidacy under the banner of a smaller registered party like Encounter.

The two groups would apparently have to negotiate how many people from each would be included for other posts on Menchu's ticket.

Winaq is a Mayan word signifying "the wholeness of the human being." Menchu, a Guatemalan Quiche Indian, would be the first woman and the first Indian ever to serve as president in this overwhelmingly Indian country.
(snip/...)

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/22/america/LA-GEN-Guatemala-Menchu-Presidency.php

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Surely wish we had more wire services available........

Our choices seem to be narrowing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You know, concerning what you said about her name not being included in conventional discussions, I don't know where the blame falls.

Her country has a HIDEOUS race problem. She, personally, after the massacres, after mourning her family members' murders by extreme violence, as part of the indigenous population, has been treated astonishingly cruelly by the ruling class in Guatemala, called names which would make the saints weep in public by people whose only qualification, apparently, was their Spanish ancestry, scorned and mocked as if she were the town drunk, village idiot.

When I heard something years ago about one of these spontaneous hate explosions at a social event in Guatemala, I nearly fell out of my chair. It's far rougher in Guatemala than anything which normally seeps out through common, ordinary articles meant for mass consumption.

She'll have a hell of a fight ahead, but I hope there are some stubborn, determined people around her.

[Peace Patriot]

7. IHT tends to be a cut above--probably because it's written for expat US

community in Europe (and maybe other places now--Asia, South America), and they have access to good information from foreign sources, and likely wouldn't bother to read the kind of crap we get here.

But I know what you mean about the super-politeness in the corporate press. How often do you hear it mentioned that 200,000 Mayans were slaughtered in Guatemala during Reagan's rein (and with his direct complicity), and that some of these death squadders are still living in Guatemala as public figures? You have to go to out-of-the-way corners of the internet to find that out, yet it deeply influences what is going on there now. Guatemalans know about it. In fact, much of the world knows about it--it was a UN "truth and reconciliation" commission that investigated the matter. And that is in living memory in Guatemala. It's rather like the history of the US/UK/Israel in Iran--their destruction of Iran's democracy in 1954, and their infliction of 25 years of torture and oppression on the Iranian people, under the horrible Shah. That, too, is in living memory--to the people who suffered it. And it profoundly informs current events. But North Americans remain ignorant, because it is not polite to talk about US complicity in crimes like these--in fact, I'm sure it's verboten.

I was amused by the reaction of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies--and by some DUers as well--to Chavez's remark about the smell of sulfur Bush left behind at the UN podium. Many of us are just so ignorant of how apt that remark was, from a third world country that has been under the US/fascist boot, and is now free. It was impolite--but, my God, it was well deserved. But, of course, WHY it was well-deserved is left out of corporate news reports. Bush is the reincarnation of Reagan--a bit rawer, but the same MO, the same puppetmasters, the same henchmen, and the same purposes of death, destruction and thievery. The point of both regimes has been to destroy the US government and its great progressive middle class supporters, who believe in using their taxes for the common good, and oppose unjust war--and to plunder and kill abroad, in collusion with local fascist elites. Chavez, and I'm sure most of Latin American, can see what Bush is. And I'm sure that the remark that Bush is "the devil" was well-received there. I loved Rafael Correa's response--that it was "an insult to the devil"--right in the middle of his presidential campaign. Probably the reason he won so big.

I'm reminded of an old civil rights song, by Curtis Mayfield.... I heard it first in Alabama in 1965...

"People get ready, there's a train a-comin'
"You don't need no baggage, you just get on board
"All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'
"Don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord."

Such sweet hopefulness and assurance, after so much pain. Things are changing very fast, toward a better world. You have to break out our "Iron Curtain" to see it, but it's really happening. With these huge scandals about the paramilitaries in Colombia and Guatemala, breaking just now, I'm certain this change is occurring very quickly throughout the southern half of the western hemisphere. I was worried about those countries, and about the fragility of the democracy movements in Bolivia (seemingly successful but with such bad dudes opposing it), Peru and Paraguay, and the potential for disruption of this marvelous trend. I feel greatly encouraged by these efforts to root out the really bad guys--the killers, the torturers, the horribly corrupt, to destroy their entrenchment, and to disable their evildoing. I thought it might be decades before this happened in Colombia, and that Colombia would remain a launching pad for fascist thugs against the Andean democracies. But it's happening NOW. Wonder of wonders! ("Don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord.")

[anotherdrew]

8. one story says the police were shot, the other that their throats were cut, which is it? n/t

[Judi Lynn]

9. Post #2 links to an article which says they hit the jackpot, got BOTH for their troubles.

Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann has been under increasing pressure to resign since suspected drug hitmen killed four policemen at a high-security prison last Sunday. They were shot and had their throats cut.

[bemildred]

10. Police chief, guard killed in capital

A top Honduran police commander and his bodyguard were killed by gunmen thought to be linked to drug traffickers smuggling cocaine along the country's isolated Atlantic coast, authorities said.

Operations chief Rigoberto Aceituno, Honduras' fourth-highest-ranking policeman, was killed Saturday outside his home in the capital, Tegucigalpa, when gunmen opened fire from a car, said Security Ministry spokesman Miguel Martinez.

Martinez said the attack was thought to be the work of a gang shipping South American cocaine to the United States along Honduras' Atlantic coast, much of which is a near-impenetrable area of jungle.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs5.2mar05,1,1039618.story?coll=la-headlines-world

[Judi Lynn]

11. "Honduras: Mafia Behind Assassination?"

Honduras: Mafia Behind Assassination?

Tegucigalpa, Mar 5 (Prensa Latina) The Honduran Security Ministry said on Monday that there is a possible involvement of organized crime in this weekend s assassination of National Police Operations Director Rigoberto Aceituno and his bodyguard.

"Presumably, the attack perpetrated during the weekend was an action by criminal gang members related to drug traffic on the Atlantic coast," Under Commissioner Miguel Martinez said.

Aceituno, the fourth in the Honduran police chain of command, was outide his home, while his employee washed his car, when someone approached the house to confirm the owner s name.

Immediately thereafter three men shot the victims from a moving car.

Martinez said Aceituno was the highest-ranking officer to be assassinated in several decades, in an uncontrollable wave of violence that is lashing the country, and which caused 16 deaths on Saturday.
(snip/)

~~~~ link ~~~~

[bemildred]

12. We all know its criminals, the question is are they with the government?

And which government(s), and how high (sorry, poor choice of words there) does it go?