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September 20, 2011 in Nation/World
Gunmen dump 35 bodies on busy avenue in Mexico
Saul Solis Solis, right, and Mario Alberto Gordillo, alleged members of Mexico’s Knights Templar drug cartel, are escorted by soldiers upon their presentation to the media in Mexico City, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011. Solis Solis, a former police chief and one-time congressional candidate, and Gordillo were captured Monday in the cartel’s home state of Michoacan, Mexico.
(Full-size photo)
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Masked gunmen blocked traffic on a busy avenue in a Gulf of Mexico coastal city Tuesday and dumped the bodies of 35 slaying victims as horrified motorists watched, authorities said.
Veracruz state Attorney General Reynaldo Escobar Perez said the bodies were left piled in two trucks and on the ground of an underpass near a shopping mall in the city of Boca del Rio.
Police had identified seven of the victims so far and all had criminal records and were linked to organized crime, Escobar said. He didn’t say to what group the victims belonged to.
The Gulf and Zetas drug cartels have been locked in a bloody war for control in Veracruz state over the last year.
Motorists first began tweeting Tuesday afternoon that masked gunmen in military uniforms were blocking Manuel Avila Camacho Boulevard in Boca del Rio and pointing their guns at civilians.
Local media reported that some of the slaying victims were among prisoners who escaped from three Veracruz prisons on Monday, but Escobar said he couldn’t confirm that.
At least 32 inmates got away from the three Veracruz prisons. Police recaptured 14 of them.
Earlier Tuesday, the Mexican army announced it had captured a key figure in the cult-like Knights Templar drug cartel that is sowing violence in western Mexico.
Saul Solis Solis, 49, a former police chief and one-time congressional candidate, was captured without incident Monday in the cartel’s home state of Michoacan, Brig. Gen. Edgar Luis Villegas said during a presentation of Solis to the media.
Solis is considered one of the principal lieutenants in the Knights Templar, which split late last year from La Familia, a pseudo-religious drug gang known as a major trafficker of methamphetamine.
He is accused in various attacks on the military and federal police, including one in May 2007 that killed an officer and four soldiers, Villegas said. Solis also is suspected of planting and harvesting drugs, managing clandestine labs manufacturing synthetic drugs and ordering attacks on police facilities in cities around the entire state.
Mexico’s attorney general had offered a $1.1 million reward for information leading to his capture.
Solis is a cousin of one of the Knights Templar’s main alleged leaders, Enrique Plancarte Solis. Saul Solis served as director of public safety in the Michoacan town of Turicato in 2003-‘05 and ran for the federal congress in 2009 as a Green Party candidate, finishing fourth in his district with about 11,000 votes.
Authorities said a judge had issued an arrest warrant for Solis on charges of organized crime and drug trafficking at the time of the vote.
President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against organized crime in 2006 in his home state of Michoacan, where much of the violence had been attributed to La Familia. Knights Templar became a splinter group after the leader of La Familia, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, was killed in a shootout with federal police last December.
A second La Familia leader, Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, was arrested in June, leading Calderon’s government to say it had all but dismantled the gang. But violence continues in Michoacan and other parts of western Mexico where Knights Templar is trying to control territory.
Both groups claim to be devoted to God and to be fighting poverty and injustice under a strict code of conduct.
Late Monday, four gunmen died in a clash between drug cartels in the Michoacan towns of Caracuaro and Tiquicheo, the army said in a statement. It said residents told authorities several vehicles packed with gunmen had been seen in the area earlier Monday.
Drug violence has claimed more than 35,000 lives across Mexico since 2006, according to government figures. Others put the number at more than 40,000.
In northern Mexico, the army announced the detention of two more suspects in a casino fire that killed 52 people last month in the northern city of Monterrey.
The two men captured at a bar in Monterrey late Monday confessed to being members of the Zetas drug cartel and participating in the attack, federal prosecutors said.
Six others, including a Nuevo Leon state police officer, previously were arrested in the case and 16 more suspects remain at large.
Last week, the parents and a brother of a police officer involved in the casino investigation were shot to death at their Monterrey home. Authorities said the attack could have been revenge because the officer helped identify some of the alleged attackers.
© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Stocks plummet as outlook in Europe dims 
westerly on September 20 at 7:21 p.m.
Seems like 30 miles from US border, Mexico is more dangerous than Iraq or Afghanistan…..wasted American soldiers deaths over there…..a lost war..like Vietnam….no one remembers Vietnam?? Except the vets…
The_Seer on September 20 at 7:30 p.m.
Smells like Agent Orange in here…
The blame for these deaths lies partially with our local U.S. Attorney, Tom Rice (and Obama judicial appointment), and the decision of his office to shutter medical marijuana dispensaries in Spokane. Our federal government would rather have patients in Washington states purchase their medicine from Mexican Cartels.
That is what should be remembered.
force_vector on September 20 at 7:40 p.m.
Yeah, sure “seer”, it’s Tom Rice’s fault, not murders / cartel members / drug dealers. When planes crash, it’s the grounds fault too.
Evil_vortex_of_Spokane_politic on September 20 at 9:00 p.m.
Are they taking another chapter from the SPD training and operations manual?
woamike on September 20 at 10:48 p.m.
“Our federal government would rather have patients in Washington states purchase their medicine from Mexican Cartels.”
Let me translate a couple of words from this strawman argument into english:
“patients” = potheads ///// “medicine” = dope
Get your degree in “strawman creation”? You are one of the most prolific strawmen creators on this board. Perhaps it was part of your training in Marxist ideology and advanced propaganda techniques.
Btw, nicely stated vector.
Diana on September 21 at 6:17 a.m.
wormlike, I hope you will never get cancer and experience the side effects of chemo and radiation like my father did. But if you do and are sick, weak and vomiting for hours on end, you can continue to carry on about Marxism ideology and strawmen and see how that works out for you.
My dad wasn’t a pothead. He was a patient. And pot (“dope”) was the only medicine that helped him.
The_Seer on September 21 at 8:42 a.m.
ahhhh, wormlike, Mister “The Government should not be involved in the private decisions of adults unless it offends my unexamined sense of morality.”
Typical Tea Bagger.
Keep you hands out of our women’s wombs and our stash box.
woamike on September 21 at 11:13 a.m.
Another strawman from the master propagandist himself. My, you are good at this aren’t, you. . .
Typical Marxist.
Keep your hands off our liberty.
P.S. People will stop caring abour “your” women’s wombs when you stop the convenience killing of the innocent babies develping in them. You know, the ones with the beating hearts and all that. Nice “choice”.
woamike on September 21 at 11:58 a.m.
Diana,
Nice appeal to emotion.
This fact remains: the efforts to widely legalize and liberalize the production, sale and use of pot under the guise of “medical necessity” are a ruse. People just want to get “high” (low?) on pot and they want to do it with society’s blessing, just like alcohol. Legalizing/main-streaming “medical” pot is just a means that gets them to their eventual desired ends.
Just go to Denver for example. The place is covered with “medical” pot shops advertising the “qualities” of the various types of pot they peddle. There are ads everywhere for people to pay $99 to get an evaluation and then a “prescription” for nearly every ailment, real and imagined. It’s really quite a booming business. Never seen so many college age kids with such divers medical conditions. Either that or there’s a ton of people on chemo where the “ONLY” drug on the planet that helps them is pot.
Just what we need here in Spokane: societal sanction for yet another mind-alterning drug. Pot: the drug of choice of slackers everywhere and adults stuck in a high school mentality.
BTW, pot legalization is not a critical issue for me. But, all of the dishonesty and disingenuousness surrounding the legalization and main-streaming of “medical” pot disgusts me.
Diana on September 21 at 12:59 p.m.
Bagger wrote: “You know, the ones with the beating hearts and all that.” Nice appeal to emotion.
So, wormlike, you want the Big Government hands out of everything, except my reproductive life and what is between me and my doctor. How is that the government’s business? Or your business, for that matter? Please be specific.
Oh, and in spite of being an angry little bagger, keep your hands off my liberty.
woamike on September 21 at 1:59 p.m.
Dorkana, (since you call me “worm”mike,)
I don’t give a rat’s who or what you choose to copulate with.
I have no interest in what is between you and your doctor and neither should the government.
Just stop calling the decision to terminate the life (kill) a fetus (developing human baby) inside it’s mother’s womb for sake of convenience a “choice”. Have the stones to say what it really is.
I have no desire to infringe on your liberty, but what of the liberty of the life that (unfortunately) is growing and developing in your baby basket?. I guess you believe human babies don’t get liberty until they draw their first breath. Until then it’s open season on them, right?
Disgusting.
BTW, why do we have laws where a killer gets a double-punch when he also kills that “thing” in his pregnant victim’s womb? Surely, you’re against that law since it’s just a “choice” and not a human being. After all, how can you murder a “choice”?
Diana on September 21 at 2:44 p.m.
wormlike, way to hijack the thread.
I see you writing blah blah blah against Big Government. Unless, of course, it’s something that doesn’t affect you or if you disagree with it.
The bottom line is mind your own business. If you don’t want an abortion, don’t have one.
woamike on September 21 at 3:11 p.m.
“if you don’t want an abortion, don’t have one”.
And thus she wraps up her argument for abortions of convenience.
Diana on September 21 at 3:29 p.m.
Actually, I wrapped up my argument when I said mind you’re own business.