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Mexico's top drug lord wanted to bomb US property in Mexico City
 For a map, click here By Chris Covert Rantburg.com Joaquin Loera Guzman discussed attacking US buildings in Mexico City to "send the gringos a message", according to Mexican and English language news and official accounts. Transcripts of wiretaps of conversations among Loera Guzman, known by his Mexican alias El Chapo, or Shorty, and a recently extradited associate, Jesus Zambada Garcia AKA El Rey or The King, Margarito Flores, a presumed Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) informant and others revealed that Loera Guzman was frustrated enough by US law enforcement efforts against his drug empire to discuss committing acts of terrorist violence against US interests in Mexico City, including US legations and consulates. Loera Guzman is now easily the number one Mexican drug trafficker, with narcotics operations that stretch from South America and into the United States. His group is the Sinaloa drug cartel which last year formalized an alliance with the Gulf Cartel, and moved drug shipping operations from the west coast to the east coast. The Sinaloa and Gulf cartels, according to Twitter and other informal accounts have recently moved into the Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulpas border crossing in a bid to end Los Zetas dominance in the area. Jesus Lambada was arrested in October 2008 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. He was one of the leaders of the Pacifico cartel, a west coast drug gang with ties to the Sinaloa Cartel and with other minor drug gangs including Jalisco Nueva Gente, the group which lost two of its top leaders to Mexican Army counternarcotics operations last month in Jalisco state. Jesus Lambada is expected to stand trial in New York. The Pacifico Cartel fell apart with the death of Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel at the hands of Mexican Army operatives in the fall of 2010. Wiretapped conversations in December 2008 included another drug trafficker, Ismael Zambada-Garcia, telling Flores to contact men in America coming back from the war, to try to gain American weapons, big American weapons like rocket launchers. and not one, but 10 or even 20 units. Flores then attempted to contact his DEA handler to provide black market prices so that he would appear knowledgeable about US weapons. One of the hallmarks of drug cartels attempting to use explosives and bombings against specific targets has been their inability to acquire sufficiently high quality explosives to do the job. The La Linea car bomb in Juarez in July of 2010 used Tovex, which is a commercial grade dynamite used in mining. Other car bombs, particularly in the east coast of Mexico have made use of gunpowder from fireworks and hand grenades tied to car fuel tanks. La Linea is the enforcement wing of the Juarez cartel. The only other car bomb to have caused injury during the six months following the Juarez car bomb took place in San Luis Potosi state in the fall of 2010, when a local police chief was killed. Chris Covert writes Mexican Dug War and national political news for Rantburg.com Posted by: badanov 2012-04-05 |
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