Diplomatic Briefing
Your exclusive news aggregator handpicked daily!Archive for Mexico
Newsline: Mexican embassy to help repatriate crash victims
The Mexican embassy in Washington says it plans to assist in repatriating the bodies of nine suspected illegal immigrants killed when the van they were packed in rolled in South Texas. Authorities say the vehicle designed to carry eight people had at least 19 occupants when it crashed Tuesday night after the driver sped away from a Border Patrol traffic stop in Palmview, about 10 miles from McAllen. The embassy was contacting relatives of the victims. Most of the dead were from the southern state of Oaxaca. The embassy would not release identities because of privacy issues.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/04/11/3876164/mexican-embassy-to-help-repatriate.html
Newsline: Venezuela charges four with kidnap of Mexico envoy
Under pressure after a string of attacks on diplomats, Venezuela charged four people on Saturday, including a former police officer, with kidnapping the Mexican ambassador and his wife in the capital earlier this year. Carlos Pujalte and his wife were grabbed by gunmen as they left a reception in a wealthy Caracas neighbourhood at around midnight on January 29. They were held captive for several hours before being freed in a slum on the other side of the city. The case underlined Venezuela’s high crime rate – one of the biggest issues in an election year – and came less than two months before another incident involving diplomats: last week’s killing by police of a Chilean consul’s teenage daughter. In a statement, the attorney general’s office said three men and one woman in their 20s had been charged with offenses including kidnapping and robbery. It said two of the men and the woman were arrested last month in Caracas by the CICPC investigative police, and that the 21-year-old woman was found in possession of a gold chain linked to the separate kidnapping of a local politician’s relative. It said two cars were seized, including a Honda Civic thought to have been used during that abduction, the kidnapping of the Mexican ambassador and his wife, and a third abduction. The fourth suspect was identified as a 28-year-old former Caracas policeman who was detained separately by CICPC officials last month in central Miranda state. Venezuelan police have often been accused of being involved in serious crimes, contributing to the high numbers of armed robberies, kidnappings and murders that have turned Caracas into one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFBRE82N0DW20120324
Book review: Castro knew from Cuban Embassy in Mexico JFK was about to be killed in 1963
Cuban leader Fidel Castro knew that President John F. Kennedy was about to be assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, a former CIA agent has claimed in his new book. Castro was clearly aware that Oswald had told staff at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City that he was going to murder the then US President Kennedy to prove his allegiance to communist cause, according to author Brian Latell, the United States spy agency’s former chief intelligence officer for Latin America. In fact, on the morning of November 22, 1963, the day Kennedy was killed, Castro had ordered a senior intelligence officer in Havana to stop listening for non-specific CIA radio communications and concentrate instead on “any little detail, any small detail from Texas”, Latell claims in his new book. The author has based his book on interviews with former Cuban spies, backed up by declassified US government papers.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Castro-knew-JFK-was-about-to-be-killed-in–63–Book/925740/
Newsline: Mexican Ambassador Freed After Abduction In Caracas
A Mexican diplomat in Venezuela says the country’s ambassador has been freed by captors hours after he and his wife were kidnapped. Mexican Embassy spokesman Fernando Gondinez tells the Venezuelan news website Noticias 24 that Ambassador Carlos Pujalte was kidnapped Sunday night in Caracas and was freed hours later. Gondinez says both the ambassador and his wife are in good condition. He did not offer details about how the abduction occurred or about the liberation.
http://news.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=209301
Newsline: Mexican officials call embassy attack report a fake
News stories saying authorities thwarted a plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Mexico are not true, the Mexican secretary of the navy said. At least two Mexican media outlets published a supposed internal report on the plot that had been leaked to the media. But the navy said the report is “fake.” The secretary of the navy reported in June 2010 that four people had been detained for allegedly being in possession of 20 kilograms of explosives in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. According to the stories published by the two Mexican media outlets, the finding was related to a plot by the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab to attack the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. Reports of a possible explosives cache came to the U.S. State Department in June 2010, according to a State Department source. A Somali citizen was arrested, but when Mexican authorities looked into the matter, they found nothing conclusive, said the source, who asked not to be identified. The suspect was then released, the source said. The Mexican president’s office and the Mexican Embassy in Washington told CNN they had no information regarding the alleged plot. Officials with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Washington also denied any knowledge of the report.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/18/world/americas/mexico-terror-attack-report/
Newsline: Mexican consulate faces blacklist accusations in Canada
A Canadian union is going to bat for temporary farm workers from Mexico whom, it says, are being blacklisted in B.C. by their consulate. The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1518 has filed charges with the B.C. Labour Relations Board alleging the Mexican consulate tried to covertly blacklist migrant workers at two B.C. farms after they voted to unionize. The Mexican consulate in Vancouver referred questions to an embassy spokesman in Ottawa, who did not return a call by press time.
Newsline: US Ambassador to Mexico sets date to depart
U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual will leave Mexico by May 18 as a result of his resignation two months ago amid furor over leaked diplomatic cables that angered the Mexican government. Pascual will take a job on that date as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, U.S. Embassy spokesman Alex Featherstone said. “One of his first tasks will be designing a new Bureau for Energy Resources that will integrate energy security with the conduct o fU.S. foreign policy,” Featherstone wrote in a message announcing the plans. Featherstone said John D. Feeley, the embassy’s deputy chief of mission, will take over as the embassy’s charge d’affaires until a new ambassador is nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate and accepted by the Mexican government, Featherstone said, describing that as “a long process.
http://vw.vrvm.com/tu/db_39926/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=BHkXVCJh&detailindex=1&pn=0&ps=2
Newsline: US Consulate in Mexico warns about highway travel
U.S. officials are warning Americans about the dangers of inter-city bus travel in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas following the discovery of graves with 72 bodies, some apparently of people pulled off buses by gangs. The U.S. Consulate General in Matamoros, Tamaulipas says between late March and early April it received three reports from U.S. citizens or their families regarding buses being boarded by criminals. It also says there are potential hazards with highway travel in private vehicles in the region, which is being disputed by cartels. Investigators uncovered the 72 bodies around San Fernando, where same number of migrants were massacred last August.
Newsline: U.S. ambassador to Mexico quits amid WikiLeaks furor
The U.S. ambassador to Mexico resigned Saturday amid furor over a leaked diplomatic cable in which he complained about inefficiency and infighting among Mexican security forces in the campaign against drug cartels. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Paris to meet with U.S. allies on Libya, said Carlos Pascual’s decision to step down was “based upon his personal desire to ensure the strong relationship between our two countries and to avert issues” raised by President Felipe Calderon. Clinton didn’t say specifically what she was referring to, but a furious Calderon has publicly criticized Pascual’s cable, which was divulged by the WikiLeaks website. Pascual’s resignation — less than two weeks since President Barack Obama met with Calderon at the White House— appeared to be the biggest fallout yet from thousands of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables from around the world released by WikiLeaks. It was the first such public departure by a U.S. ambassador during the Obama administration. Mexico’s government offered a polite and muted response, offering “its best wishes to Ambassador Carlos Pascual in the duties he will undertake after concluding his post in our country.” U.S. Embassy cables released since have reported jealousies and a lack of coordination between various Mexican security forces. Their release has marred a relationship that both the United States and Mexico have for years touted as being stronger than ever.
http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/45085354?feedID=230&articlePage=3
Newsline: 10 charged in killings of 3 tied to U.S. consulate
Federal authorities have charged 35 members and associates of a gang that operates in the El Paso-Juárez area on racketeering charges, including the killings last year of a worker at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez and two others, the Justice Department says. Ten of the group, all Mexican nationals, were charged in the March 13, 2010, slayings of consulate employee Leslie Enriquez Catton, her husband, Arthur Redelfs, and Jorge Alberto Ceniceros, the husband of another consulate employee. Curiously, an alleged Barrio Azteca gang member who Mexican officials had said was a mastermind in the killings, Jesus Ernesto Chavez-Castillo, aka “El Camello,” isn’t among those charged despite being quietly extradited last September from Mexico to San Antonio in connection with the case. Chavez-Castillo had a closed, secret hearing in San Antonio before being shipped out of the city to an undisclosed location. Federal agents fanned out in West Texas and New Mexico to arrest 12 of the defendants who weren’t already in custody, officials said.
http://mobile.mysa.com/mysa/db_41009/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=SjJQ0Gb3&detailindex=2&pn=0&ps=3
