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A judge in Mexico has sentenced drug lord Vicente Carrillo Fuentes to 28 years in prison for organized crime, money laundering and weapons violations, prosecutors announced Tuesday. Carillo Fuentes was a former leader of the Juarez drug cartel, based in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas. He is the brother of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as “The Lord of The Skies,” who died in a botched plastic surgery in 1997.
A metro overpass has collapsed in Mexico City as a train was traveling over it, killing at least 23 people, including children, the mayor said. Two train carriages were seen hanging from the structure, above a busy road. At least 65 people were injured, and seven are in a serious condition. This is the deadliest incident in decades in the city’s metro system, one of the busiest in the world.
Gunmen apparently from a drug gang ambushed a police convoy Thursday in central Mexico, killing eight state police officers and five prosecution investigators in a hail of gunfire, authorities said. The massacre of the 13 law enforcement officers was the country’s single biggest slaying of law enforcement since October 2019, when cartel gunmen ambushed and killed 14 state police officers in the neighboring state of Michoacan.
Women marching on International Women’s Day have clashed with police at barricades surrounding the National Palace in Mexico City, where officers fired pepper spray after the protesters attempted to tear down a metal wall. At least 939 women were victims of femicide last year in Mexico, official data shows. The Mexico City government “categorically denied” using any kind of gas against protesters.
A dozen Mexican police officers have been arrested for allegedly killing 19 people, including Guatemalan migrants, whose bodies were found shot and burned near the US border late in January. The Tamaulipas state attorney-general, Irving Barrios Mojica, said all 12 officers were in custody and face charges of homicide, abuse of authority and making false statements. The bodies were found piled in a charred pickup truck in Camargo, across the Rio Grande from Texas.
Nine members of a Mormon family – three mums and six children – were killed in a massacre in Mexico when they were allegedly caught in the crossfire of rival drug cartels. Seventeen members of the prominent Lebaron Mormon community were apparently travelling to a wedding in a convoy of SUVs when they were “ambushed” about 70 miles south of the US border.
President Trump announced on Monday that he alerted US military that the migrant caravan approaching from Mexico constituted a ‘national emergency,’ asserting that aid to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras will be cut off. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned of ‘potentially catastrophic’ Hurricane Wilma which is set to make landfall in Mexico on Tuesday.
Nearly 62,000 people have gone missing in Mexico – with most of those disappearing during the six years of the country’s bloody war on drug cartels. Initial figures released last year suggest 41,000 were unaccounted for – but that number has now increased by around 50%. Officials have so far discovered 1,124 corpses in 873 clandestine burial pits. Sites are frequently used by drug and kidnapping gangs to dispose of the bodies of their victims or rivals.
Clashes sparked by suspected cartel gunmen in a northern Mexican town killed 20 people this weekend, authorities said, putting more pressure on Mexico’s president to curb gang violence after the United States vowed to label the gangs terrorists. Killings clouded celebrations marking Lopez Obrador’s first year in office, which were buffeted by a march in Mexico City by thousands of people protesting the violence.
Former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto accepted a $100m bribe from drug cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a witness has testified. Alex Cifuentes, who says he was a close associate of Guzmán for years, told a New York City courtroom that he had told authorities of the bribe in 2016. Guzmán is accused of being behind the Sinaloa drug cartel, which prosecutors say was the largest US drug supplier. Mr Peña Nieto served as the president of Mexico from 2012 to 2018.