Drug Trafficking

Marking a gruesome new setback in the war on drug gangs, Mexican authorities said Tuesday that 12 people found tortured and fatally shot in the western state of Michoacan a night earlier were federal police officers. Officials said the slayings were the work of La Familia, a Michoacan-based trafficking group that has carried out at least 10 attacks against federal police in the state since Saturday, when authorities captured an alleged leader of the group.

The United States and Colombia are poised to sign an agreement to transfer anti-drug flight operations from Ecuador to at least three Colombian air bases, a move that has drawn criticism here that it will leave the country even more dependent on Washington. Although the deal is not yet nailed down, Colombia's defense, interior and foreign ministers held a public forum in Bogota, the capital, on Wednesday to discuss details of the plan.

Mexican authorities announced plans Thursday to send 5,500 police officers and military personnel to the western state of Michoacan to confront a violent crime syndicate offering some of the fiercest resistance President Felipe Calderon's government has faced since launching its war on drugs 2 1/2 years ago. About 1,000 extra police officers were deployed Thursday before officials outlined the broader buildup.

Millions of dollars in aid to fight Mexican drug trafficking could be delayed as a result of a disagreement between a key lawmaker and the State Department regarding the status of Mexico's human rights prosecutions. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, released a statement Wednesday suggesting that it was "premature" to declare that Mexico had met the requirements needed to earn conditional U.S.

An arms dealer arrested by U.S. agents in a 2008 sting operation at a Bangkok hotel could go free this week after a Thai judge's unexpected decision Tuesday to reject an American request for extradition. Bangkok Criminal Court Judge Chittakorn Pattanasiri ruled that Viktor Bout's alleged crimes, which U.S. officials say involved a Colombian terrorist organization, actually would be classified as political offenses. Extradition is not allowed for political offenses. According to an indictment, Bout was attempting to sell more than 700 surface-to-air missiles, a massive cache of automatic weapons, and airplanes and helicopters to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group.

Three teenagers, including a U.S. soldier, have been charged with capital murder for their roles in the contract killing of a Mexican drug cartel lieutenant who was cooperating with U.S. authorities, police said Wednesday. Army Pfc. Michael Jackson Apodaca, 18, and Christopher Duran, 17, were arrested Monday. A 16-year-old boy, whom police did not identify because of his age, was arrested Wednesday. Investigators said Apodaca, an El Paso native who joined the Army last year, admitted taking money from a mid-level cartel official to be the triggerman.

This just in: Mexico may not be as violent as everyone thinks. Yes, a drug war has killed more than 11,000 people since the end of 2006. Severed heads and heaps of bodies turn up as traffickers battle Mexican forces and one another. Some days, the nationwide toll from drug-related slayings tops 30. (One Mexican newspaper website tallies the carnage on its "Execute-o-meter.") Looked at another way, though, Mexico isn't as deadly as it used to be. That's the point the nation's attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, was pushing this week when he cited figures showing that Mexico's overall homicide rate has fallen since the 1990s.

In Tijuana, schoolchildren get lessons on how to duck during gangland shootouts. Ciudad Juarez cops patrol with military escorts, and the morgue there is spilling over with gunshot victims. But here in Mexicali, people fear the desert sun more than drug hit men. The city of 700,000 has a homicide rate comparable to that of Wichita, Kan., and one of the biggest police deployments is Operation Beat the Heat, in which officers haul blocks of ice to shantytown residents. There hasn't been a bank robbery in Mexicali in 18 months, or a reported kidnapping in a year.

For the second time in less than two weeks, heavily armed gunmen attacked a rehabilitation clinic for drug addicts in the volatile border city of Ciudad Juarez, authorities said today. At least 10 people, patients and therapists, were killed. The gunmen escaped and authorities offered little in the way of motives in the Tuesday night shootings. Rehab clinics are often attacked as drug gangs pursue rivals or attempt to settle old scores. It's the sixth drug treatment center attacked in Ciudad Juarez in the last 13 months.

As a high-ranking U.S. anti-drug official, Richard Padilla Cramer held front-line posts in the war on Mexico's murderous cartels. He led an office of two dozen agents in Arizona and was the attache for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Guadalajara. While in Mexico, however, Cramer also served as a secret ally of drug lords, according to federal investigators. Cramer allegedly advised traffickers on law enforcement tactics and pulled secret files to help them identify turncoats.