Please look at the brutality of Mexican drug cartel members. THen look at the article above about a senior US officials arrested for helping them. Their massive money is starting to corrupt officials in the US as wella s Mexico.
Mexican legislative candidate, family killed
- STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Bodies of Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon, wife and 2 sons found inside their home
- Discovery brings campaigns for statewide offices in state of Tabasco to halt
- Fuentes' wife shot in head; their sons, 10 and 13, had been asphyxiated
- Officials release no motive for slayings; speculation centers on drug cartel or robbery
updated 5:34 p.m. EDT, Sun September 6, 2009
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- A legislative candidate was killed, along with his wife and two children, bringing campaigns for statewide offices in the southeastern state of Tabasco to a halt, the state-run news agency Notimex reported.
PRI candidate Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon was killed, along with his wife and their two sons.
The bodies of Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon, his wife and two young sons were found inside their home in the capital of Villahermosa on Saturday.
According to local reports, Fuentes' wife was shot in the head, and the boys, ages 10 and 13, had been asphyxiated. Less clear was the candidate's fate. Some reports said that his body had signs of torture and had a wound on his neck, which may have been from a gunshot.
As of Sunday, authorities had not released a motive for the crime, though speculation of a drug cartel hit or a robbery circulated in Tabasco.
Fuentes' party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, immediately announced a campaign moratorium for all of its candidates for the state's October 18 elections. Other political parties followed suit.
"The PRI cannot go out at this moment and ask citizens for their vote when it finds itself with a broken heart because of the homicide of its candidate," Tabasco PRI director Adrian Hernandez Balboa said, according to Notimex.
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In response, the Tabasco state government offered all political candidates protection during their campaigns if they requested it, a statement from the office of Gov. Andres Granier Melo said.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon called Granier to offer his condolences and show his support for the investigation, the statement said.
The weekend slaying was not the first time an entire family has been killed in Tabasco.
In February, a Tabasco police official who had arrested a drug trafficker a week earlier was killed together with his mother, wife, children and nieces and nephews. His brother, also a state police officer, was wounded, as were two others.
The day before Fuentes and his family were killed, unknown gunmen fatally shot two state police officers in Villahermosa and injured two others.
Please look at the brutality of Mexican drug cartel members. THen look at the article above about a senior US officials arrested for helping them. Their massive money is starting to corrupt officials in the US as wella s Mexico.
Mexican legislative candidate, family killed
- STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Bodies of Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon, wife and 2 sons found inside their home
- Discovery brings campaigns for statewide offices in state of Tabasco to halt
- Fuentes' wife shot in head; their sons, 10 and 13, had been asphyxiated
- Officials release no motive for slayings; speculation centers on drug cartel or robbery
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- A legislative candidate was killed, along with his wife and two children, bringing campaigns for statewide offices in the southeastern state of Tabasco to a halt, the state-run news agency Notimex reported.
PRI candidate Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon was killed, along with his wife and their two sons.
The bodies of Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon, his wife and two young sons were found inside their home in the capital of Villahermosa on Saturday.
According to local reports, Fuentes' wife was shot in the head, and the boys, ages 10 and 13, had been asphyxiated. Less clear was the candidate's fate. Some reports said that his body had signs of torture and had a wound on his neck, which may have been from a gunshot.
As of Sunday, authorities had not released a motive for the crime, though speculation of a drug cartel hit or a robbery circulated in Tabasco.
Fuentes' party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, immediately announced a campaign moratorium for all of its candidates for the state's October 18 elections. Other political parties followed suit.
"The PRI cannot go out at this moment and ask citizens for their vote when it finds itself with a broken heart because of the homicide of its candidate," Tabasco PRI director Adrian Hernandez Balboa said, according to Notimex.
Don't Miss
In response, the Tabasco state government offered all political candidates protection during their campaigns if they requested it, a statement from the office of Gov. Andres Granier Melo said.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon called Granier to offer his condolences and show his support for the investigation, the statement said.
The weekend slaying was not the first time an entire family has been killed in Tabasco.
In February, a Tabasco police official who had arrested a drug trafficker a week earlier was killed together with his mother, wife, children and nieces and nephews. His brother, also a state police officer, was wounded, as were two others.
The day before Fuentes and his family were killed, unknown gunmen fatally shot two state police officers in Villahermosa and injured two others.
Retired high-ranking immigration agent arrested in Arizona on suspicion of cocaine smuggling
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Richard Padilla Cramer was arrested at his home in Green Valley, Ariz., 25 miles south of Tucson, and appeared before a federal judge, who denied bail.
No one answered the phone at Cramer's home Friday and it was unclear whether he had a lawyer.
The charges stem from a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency investigation dating back to 2006.
Authorities say Cramer helped a large-scale drug trafficking organization move cocaine into the United States, according to a criminal complaint made public Friday.
The complaint says that Cramer provided members of a drug smuggling organization with information from confidential law enforcement databases that told them whether one of their members was a government informant.
The complaint also says Cramer and the smuggling organization invested about $400,000 in a 660-pound shipment of cocaine. The cocaine was shipped from Panama and went through the U.S. en route to Spain, where it was seized in June 2007.
An informant told DEA agents that Cramer had "very powerful friends" among DEA agents in Mexico and a strong relationship with one particular member of the smuggling organization, according to the complaint.
The complaint also says that during an August 2007 meeting, a member of the smuggling organization convinced Cramer to retire from ICE and begin working directly for the organization in drug smuggling and money laundering.
The case is being handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami, where federal prosecutors say the majority of the acts occurred. Authorities say Cramer will be extradited to Florida.
Cramer was the former resident agent in charge of the ICE office in Nogales in southern Arizona, according to agency spokesman Vincent Picard, who did not know how long Cramer worked there or how many agents he oversaw.
"It's a criminal complaint, not a conviction," Picard said.
An Associated Press investigation recently found that U.S. law officers who work the border are being charged with criminal corruption in numbers not seen before, as drug and immigrant smugglers use money and sometimes sex to buy protection, and internal investigators crack down.
Based on Freedom of Information Act requests, interviews with sentenced agents and a review of court records, the AP tallied corruption-related convictions against more than 80 enforcement officials at all levels — federal, state and local — since 2007
It's unclear if any of them ranked as high as Cramer, and Picard said his agency did not have that information.
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