Arrests Mexico

Mexican authorities have arrested a couple from Oregon on charges of taking handguns into the country. Kevin John Faill, 22, and his wife, Marcie Mears, 18, made their initial appearance in court Tuesday. They were being held without bail in a municipal jail in downtown Tijuana.

A group of Los Angeles environmentalists, politicians and activists has begun lobbying for the release of two Mexican farmers who led efforts to save a forest near their village. Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, who were convicted of drug trafficking this year, are the focus of a national campaign coordinated by the Sierra Club and Amnesty International.

The attorney general's office confirmed that 11 members of a pro-government vigilante group implicated in attacks in the state of Chiapas have been arrested. They were charged with organized crime, terrorism and illegal arms possession. They are accused of evicting sympathizers of Zapatista rebels at gunpoint and destroying homes in the village of Yajalon in August.

Six U.S. residents returned home Thursday to hugs and cheers from relatives after being held for more than a week in a Mexican jail on charges of providing illegal help to Iraqi Christians seeking asylum. Relatives rushed to greet them as they walked across the border crossing that links San Diego and Tijuana. "We were innocent," Kathy Barno of El Cajon said. "We have done nothing wrong and I'm glad I'm back home with my family."

Two suspects in a home-invasion robbery Wednesday morning in Laguna Hills have been arrested and are in the custody of Mexican authorities in Tijuana, police said. Jose Luis Santos Navarette, who is in his 20s, and Omar Guzman Vargas, 18, were arrested Wednesday night after Mexican officials spotted them driving a stolen midnight-blue Mercedes-Benz sport-utility vehicle between Tijuana and Rosarita, Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said.

Two senior army generals were jailed Thursday on drug trafficking charges, in one of the biggest public scandals to hit Mexico's secretive military in decades, officials announced. "This is an important breakthrough. It establishes a precedent," said Roderic A. Camp, a political scientist at Claremont College near Los Angeles and an expert on Mexico's military. At the urging of the U.S.

The Interpol has identified an Argentine living in Mexico as the same man accused of torturing people during Argentina's military dictatorship, and a federal judge on Saturday ordered him held here for 60 days while Spanish officials proceed with an extradition request. After former Argentine political prisoners identified the director of Mexico's private National Registry of Motor Vehicles as their torturer, the Interpol detained him Thursday in Cancun.

A Garden Grove murder suspect who fled the country two years ago and began a new life as a business owner in Mexico has been arrested after investigators traced his whereabouts through his telephone calls to associates. Joel David Baptiste, 23, was handed over to FBI agents at the border Thursday night by Mexican Federal Police. He is being held at the Orange County Jail and is to be arraigned on a first-degree murder charge early next week, according to Westminster Police Det. Sam Miller.

After a four-year hunt that stretched from remote mountains to sweltering Yucatan villages, Mexican authorities announced Monday that they had captured one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives, a Mexican accused in the killing of a U.S. drug agent in Arizona. U.S. authorities hailed the arrest of Agustin Vazquez Mendoza, 30, which had become a priority in their often troubled relationship with Mexican anti-drug authorities.

A man wanted in connection with the shooting death of a friend and the wounding of the friend's cousin last weekend has been arrested by Mexican police in Tijuana, authorities said Monday. Investigators had been looking for Manual Salas, 20, since early Saturday, after he allegedly opened fire on two friends, killing Robert S. Orales, 16, of Anaheim and wounding Orales' 16-year-cousin with a semiautomatic gun while the three watched "The Sixth Sense" at a friend's house.