July 28, 2010
France – Al-Qaida No. 2 slams France’s ban on Islamic veils
France – French detectives put on leave after death threats
Brazil – Plane robbed on runway before take off in Brazil
Mexico – AP Impact: Mexico justice means catch and release
Mexico – 4 journalists reported missing in northern Mexico
Mexico – Police find 8 severed heads in northern Mexico
Puerto Rico – Violent nationalist group leader welcomed in PR
France
Al-Qaida’s No. 2 has slammed France’s push to ban the Islamic full-face veil and urged Muslim women in a new audio message on the Internet to defend their headdress in a holy war against the “secular Western crusade.” Ayman al-Zawahri says the drive by France and some other European nations is a discrimination against Muslim women. In the 47-minute recording released on militant websites on Wednesday, al-Qaida’s deputy leader also eulogized the terror network’s reputed No. 3 official, who was killed with his family in a U.S. strike in Pakistan in May. Al-Zawahri praises Mustafa al-Yazid’s sacrifice and goes on to claim that although killed al-Qaida militants in Iraq outnumber U.S. soldiers 100-to-1, the U.S. will still withdraw from Iraq in defeat.
France
Almost an entire detective squad in the French city of Grenoble has been put on leave after officers received death threats from underworld figures. Three officers involved in the fatal shooting of a local man earlier this month have been moved out of the unit. nother 20 were told to spend time with their families after the threats. French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to wage war on the criminals after the threats, which follow rioting in the city over the shooting. In the past week there have been running battles in Grenoble between police and rioters, following the fatal shooting earlier this month of 27-year-old Karim Boudouda.
Brazil
Brazilian authorities say gunmen used a pickup truck to block an air taxi from taking off at a small airport and stole money and documents it was carrying for the country’s federation of banks. Federal police say about eight men broke through security at the airfield in the northeastern city of Caruaru late Monday and rammed the truck into one of the small plane’s wings as it taxied on the runway. The men fired warning shots and ordered the pilots to turn over the money and documents. The police statement issued Tuesday does not say how much cash was stolen. It says the pickup truck was found abandoned near the airport. No arrests have been made.
Mexico
It’s practically a daily ritual: Accused drug traffickers and assassins, shackled and bruised from beatings, are paraded before the news media to show that Mexico is winning its drug war. Once the television lights dim, however, about three-quarters of them are let go. Even as President Felipe Calderon’s government touts its arrest record, cases built by prosecutors and police under huge pressure to make swift captures unravel from lack of evidence. Innocent people are tortured into confessing. The guilty are set free, only to be hauled in again for other crimes. Sometimes, the drug cartels decide who gets arrested. Records obtained by The Associated Press showed that the government arrested 226,667 drug suspects between December 2006 and September 2009, the most recent numbers available. Less than a quarter of that number was charged. Only 15 percent saw a verdict, and the Mexican attorney general’s office won’t say how many of those were guilty.
Mexico
Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission called on the government Tuesday to find four Mexican journalists reported missing in or near the violence-wracked northern state of Durango. The journalists include two cameramen from the Televisa network, a reporter for Multimedios television and a reporter for the newspaper El Vespertino. “The lack of investigation into attacks on journalists has made them more vulnerable in doing their work,” the government’s rights commission said in a statement. The four disappeared Monday in the Laguna region, which includes Durango and areas of the neighboring state of Coahuila. The commission said three of them were “picked up” — a tactic frequently used by drug gangs in which victims are forced into waiting vehicles — around noon Monday, and the fourth was snatched that night. The area has been wracked by drug gang violence. Prosecutors say officials at a prison in Gomez Palacio — the Durango city where some of the journalists are based — allowed drug cartel gunmen to leave the penitentiary temporarily and provided them guns and vehicles to carry out executions.
Mexico
The severed heads of eight men were found left in pairs along highways in the northern Mexico state of Durango, state prosecutors said Tuesday. The bodies had not yet been located, but the victims appeared to have been between 25 and 30 years old, officials said. Durango has been the scene of brutal turf battles between drug gangs. Prosecutors said over the weekend that officials at a Durango prison let drug cartel gunmen to leave penitentiary and lent them guns and vehicles to carry out executions. Also Tuesday, prosecutors in the central state of Puebla reported that three federal police agents were shot to death on a highway in a confrontation with gunmen. The assailants escaped. In the northern border state of Chihuahua, prosecutors said a second cousin of Gov.-elect Cesar Duarte was shot to death by attackers in the city of Parral. The victim, lawyer Alberto Porras Duarte, was slain while waiting in a vehicle outside his office.
Puerto Rico
Throngs of supporters greeted a Puerto Rican nationalist leader Tuesday as he returned from nearly 30 years in prison for participating in a group that used violence against U.S. control of the island. Carlos Alberto Torres, 57, pushed through hundreds of people who waved Puerto Rican flags and promised they would keep fighting for the Caribbean territory’s independence. Among the supporters was Torres’ stepmother, who received clemency in 1999 while serving a similar sentence for conspiring against the U.S. government. “This has to be the best day of my life. After 30 years, after many struggles, to come back home,” Carlos Alberto Torres told the crowd in a brief statement before leaving the airport. Torres was paroled Monday from a federal prison in Illinois on charges of seditious conspiracy and carrying a firearm. He expects to resume painting and making pottery, said Eduardo Villanueva, spokesman for the Puerto Rican Committee for Human Rights. He had been excluded in 1999 when President Bill Clinton offered clemency to 16 members of the Armed Forces of National Liberation, a group that authorities linked to bombings of U.S. civilian and military targets from 1974 to 1983. The attacks killed at least six people and wounded dozens.
