Alleged teenage gunman arrested
Source: Agencies |
November 14, 2010, Sunday
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MEXICAN police on Friday detained a minor accused of working as a gunman for a drug cartel after shocking videos and photos surfaced online of fresh-faced boys mugging for the camera with guns and corpses.
One video, briefly posted on YouTube, showed a youth, apparently in his teens, confessing to working for a branch of the Beltran Leyva cartel. While the authenticity of the video could not be determined, cartels in Mexico frequently post such interrogation videos to expose their rivals' crimes.
The youth tells an unseen questioner that his gang was paid US$3,000 (19,887 yuan) per killing.
"When we don't find the rivals, we kill innocent people, maybe a construction worker or a taxi driver," the youth is heard saying.
Pedro Luis Benitez, the attorney general of central Morelos state, told a local radio station on Friday that police had detained a minor who allegedly worked as a gunman for a drug cartel and were looking for another. He did not say whether the minor who was detained or the one being sought had appeared online.
While Benitez did not give the age of the suspects, he implied they were young enough to be playing with toy guns.
"It is easy for them (criminals) to give them a firearm, making it appear as if it were a plastic weapon and that it is a game, when in fact it is not," Benitez said.
Local media reported police were seeking a 12-year-old killer nicknamed "El Ponchis," but there was no confirmation of that from prosecutors.
President Felipe Calderon, who launched the offensive against cartels in 2006, acknowledged several months ago that "in the most violent areas of the country, there is an unending recruitment of young people without hope, without opportunities."
Suspects under 18 are prosecuted in a separate legal system for youthful offenders for most crime in Mexico. But there are growing calls for both and the nation's overcrowded adult prison system to be revamped.
Mexico has more than doubled the number of people in federal prisons in the last two years as part of the country's crackdown on drug cartels, the country's top policeman said Friday. While the federal prison system had about 4,500 inmates in 2008, there are now 11,000.
"Where more disorder exists, there will be more violence," said Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna. "The penitentiaries can be places where not only do people complete their punishments, but where future delinquent conduct is prevented."
More than 28,000 Mexicans have been killed since late 2006 in drug-related violence, and 2010 is on track to be the bloodiest so far.
One video, briefly posted on YouTube, showed a youth, apparently in his teens, confessing to working for a branch of the Beltran Leyva cartel. While the authenticity of the video could not be determined, cartels in Mexico frequently post such interrogation videos to expose their rivals' crimes.
The youth tells an unseen questioner that his gang was paid US$3,000 (19,887 yuan) per killing.
"When we don't find the rivals, we kill innocent people, maybe a construction worker or a taxi driver," the youth is heard saying.
Pedro Luis Benitez, the attorney general of central Morelos state, told a local radio station on Friday that police had detained a minor who allegedly worked as a gunman for a drug cartel and were looking for another. He did not say whether the minor who was detained or the one being sought had appeared online.
While Benitez did not give the age of the suspects, he implied they were young enough to be playing with toy guns.
"It is easy for them (criminals) to give them a firearm, making it appear as if it were a plastic weapon and that it is a game, when in fact it is not," Benitez said.
Local media reported police were seeking a 12-year-old killer nicknamed "El Ponchis," but there was no confirmation of that from prosecutors.
President Felipe Calderon, who launched the offensive against cartels in 2006, acknowledged several months ago that "in the most violent areas of the country, there is an unending recruitment of young people without hope, without opportunities."
Suspects under 18 are prosecuted in a separate legal system for youthful offenders for most crime in Mexico. But there are growing calls for both and the nation's overcrowded adult prison system to be revamped.
Mexico has more than doubled the number of people in federal prisons in the last two years as part of the country's crackdown on drug cartels, the country's top policeman said Friday. While the federal prison system had about 4,500 inmates in 2008, there are now 11,000.
"Where more disorder exists, there will be more violence," said Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna. "The penitentiaries can be places where not only do people complete their punishments, but where future delinquent conduct is prevented."
More than 28,000 Mexicans have been killed since late 2006 in drug-related violence, and 2010 is on track to be the bloodiest so far.
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