By Erica Laster

Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – Nuevo Laredo, the busiest city along the United States-Mexico border with a population of over 360,000 is adhering to a near complete news blackout.  Drug cartels have forced the population and news outlets to stop reporting events occurring from drug related violence.   The Televisa affiliate in Nuevo Laredo suffered from a grenade attack thrown at the front door of its building less than two weeks ago.   However, both Televisa and its competitors failed to report on the attack.

Using telephone calls, news releases and emails, drug smuggling organizations dictate the boundaries of what may be printed or aired to the public.  “We are under their complete control,” claimed a veteran reporter speaking anonymously.  Another editor claimed, “The cartels have eyes and ears inside our company.”

All of those who agreed to speak with the Washington Post insisted on anonymity and that any interviews take place at empty bars away from their offices.

Four journalists were recently kidnapped after covering a protest resulting from a warden’s alleged release of armed inmates.  In murder for hire, 3 massacres occurred with the prisoners given access to jail guard’s vehicles and weapons. While many of the dead were rival gang members, authorities confirmed that 17 young people were killed in an attack on a birthday party after prisoners shot randomly into the crowd – and then returned to their cells.  Ricardo Najera, a spokesman for the office of the attorney general indicated that ballistics matched four of the guns used in the shooting as the same assigned to guards in the northern Mexico jail.

Government officials and military representatives are also at the mercy of drug cartels.  The mayor of Nuevo Laredo disappeared for four days, returning with the refusal to discuss violence resulting from drug cartels.  Federal police, prosecutors and the military general presiding over city soldiers have refused to answer reporters’ questions or issue statements on drug violence.   With the arrest of 62 cops allegedly suspected of helping drug cartels, the country is facing a serious crisis.

“Intimidation and coercion have been taken to an extreme level.  This drug war is also a war of information. The cartels are now telling reporters what they can and cannot print, and the drug organizations themselves are the content providers,” the Latin America director of the Committee to Protect Journalists said. According to Director Carlos Lauria, 30 journalists have disappeared or been murdered since Mexico’s President launched a U.S. backed offensive against drug crimes.

Photo Courtesy of  WordPress.com

For More Information Please Visit:

NY Times Mexican Officials Say Prisoners Acted As Hit Men 25 July 2010

Washington Post In Mexico’s Nuevo Laredo, Drug Cartels Dictate Media Coverage 2 August 2010

CNN 62 Cops Linked to Drug Cartels Arrested In Mexico 29 July 2010

By Erica Laster                    Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

MEXICO CITY, Mexico – In a raid on a drug trafficking house in a wealthy suburb of Guadalajara Thursday night, soldiers shot and killed Ignacio Coronel Villareal (Nacho Coronel), a top Mexican drug cartel leader.  His death comes the same day as the United States embassy in Mexico City announced the closure of the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, a city located across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The consulate will close beginning today and remain closed “until the security review is completed.”  The consulates’ closure comes amid rising concerns over border violence between the cities.  This past March, a vehicle containing a U.S. employee at the consulate, a Mexican citizen with ties to the consulate and the employees’ husband was gunned down, killing all three after leaving a children’s party.  Mexico and the United State’s bordering states have seen a rise in unchecked violence and death in the past 4 years.

Nacho Coronel was wanted in the U.S. with a $5 million reward offered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for any information leading to his arrest. A 12 count indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice revealed accusations that Nacho and 42 others imported almost 200 metric tons of cocaine and heroin into the U.S.  An estimated $5.8 billion in proceeds were returned to Mexico from drug sales in Canada and the U.S.  Known as the “King of Crystal,” the FBI believed that Coronel was “the forerunner in producing massive amounts of methamphetamine in clandestine laboratories in Mexico, then smuggling it into the U.S.”

Mexico based security consultant, Alberto Islas, told reporters that as the “most sophisticated drug dealer in terms of logistics and money laundering,” Nacho Coronel’s death would probably result in a momentary “dip” in supplies to the U.S.

Nacho’s right hand man, Francisco Quinonez, was also arrested by soldiers in Thursday night’s raid.  Quinonez alone accompanied Coronel to his mansion in the western city of Guadalajara.  General Ruiz Villegas told reporters that Coronel opened fire on military soldiers, wounding one and killing another in his attempt to escape.

While his death deals a heavy blow to his Sinaloa cartel, it signals a massive victory for Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Some weary Mexicans have balked at President Calderon’s policies. Many more have accused him of being allied with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, a fugitive since his escape from prison in 2000, and the previous leader of Sinaloa cartel.

In 2006, President Calderon sent approximately 45,000 soldiers to reclaim areas of the country heavily controlled by drug traffickers. More than half that number, a staggering 26,000, have died since then in drug-related violence.

Photo Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal

For More Information Please Visit:

Wall Street Journal Top Mexican Trafficker Killed In Raid – 30 July 2010

MSNBC US Consulate In Ciudad Juarez Closes For Security – 30 July 2010

Reuters U.S. Closes Consulate in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez – 29 July 2010

Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

Last Thursday, the Federal Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit’s three judge panel upheld the conviction and 97 year sentence of Charles McArthur Emmanuel, also known as Chuckie Taylor. Emmanuel is the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, and is notorious for leading a violent paramilitary unit, Anti-Terrorism Union, ordering the torture of dozen’s of his father’s political opponents between 1997and 2003.

The panel also affirmed the constitutionality of the Torture Act, a 1994 law allowing prosecution for torture acts committed overseas. Emmanuel’s attorney’s argued that the torture law was broader than the Convention Against Torture treaty which authorized his prosecution. Attorney’s also claimed the provision making use of a firearm during the crime an additional violation should not apply to overseas actions. The criminalization of foreign government actions they argued, was outside the jurisdiction of the United States. The panel held that Congress’s power to criminalize torturous acts was “a valid exercise of congressional authority,” under the Torture Act, rejecting all of the arguments.

United States Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus wrote that “The facts of this case are riddled with extraordinary cruelty and evil.” Emmanuel, now 33, a Boston born United States citizen was convicted in 2008. His convictions included the use of gruesome techniques including electric shocks, cigarette burnings, the use of scalding water, shoveling biting ants onto prisoners and using water filled holes on torture victims. Five Liberian torture victims sued Emmanuel after his criminal trial, winning $22.4 million in damages. Emmanuel blasted his charges “deceptive propaganda,” claiming the U.S. was using him as a “poster boy for human rights abuse.”

Associated Press reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tracked Emmanuel for years for possible illegal arms violations. After attempting to get a passport by using a fake name for his father on the application, Emmanuel was arrested at a Miami airport in February of 2006. Emmanuel pled guilty later that September. Emmanuel’s father remains on trial for war crimes committed in Sierra Leone in The Hague, Netherlands. His father is facing 11 counts of violations of the Geneva Convention, crimes against humanity and efforts to terrorize the civilian population of Sierra Leone.

For More Information Please See:

Jurist Federal appeals court upholds sentence for son of Liberia ex-president  16 July 2010

Associated Press Court upholds torture conviction of Taylor’s son  15 July 2010

By Erica Laster
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Despite being the first country to abolish slavery in the Americas, the recent earthquake leaving Port-Au Prince in ruins has increased fears of a soar in child slavery.  Jean-Robert Cadet, a Haitian advocate an author suspects that the number of child slaves will double from its previous number of 300,000 in the country.  The 10 Americans caught at the Dominican border with 33 Haitian children in February only serves to fuel these concerns.

ABC News reported that according to UNICEF, there are approximately 300,000 child slaves in Haiti, also known as “restaveks”, a Creole term meaning “stay-with.”  Haiti’s restaveks are part of a hundred year system which impoverished families use, sending their children away to wealthier Haitian families, who often subject the children to verbal, physical and sexual abuse the Dissident Voice reports.  Poverty forces many Haitian families to sell their children for money or material goods in order to survive.  Some however, simply give their children away without payment, an action taken to save on the cost of feeding and caring for their child.  

Despite Haiti’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on December 29, 1994, little progress was made in eradicating the problem of child slavery in the country.  Now, many people may seek to capitalize on the desperation of families and the inability of children to find and re-unite with their families.  With poverty on the rise in this country devastated by an earthquake with quickly depleting resources, these same children may escape to richer countries, but only to serve as slaves.

“Once children enter the family, they become a domestic slave and they are at the mercy of everyone in the house. The only thing worse is if the child is a girl, because there is sexual abuse and the risk of pregnancy once she reaches puberty,” says Jean-Robert Cadet, advocate and author of “Restavek.”

According to Cadet, 80% of the slaves are girls.  Cadet himself was given to a Haitian family as a restavek at the age of 4 after the death of his mother. In the 1970’s, the family moved on to the United States.

After killing more than 300,000 people, the earthquake has left countless more homeless, with children at great risk for survival, violence and kidnapping.  Cadet leaves for Haiti on Monday to monitor the tent camps of earthquake victims and restavek children’s treatment.

For more information, please see:

CNN Child Slavery a Growing Problem In Haiti, Advocate Says  11 July 2010

BBC News Haiti’s hidden ‘child slaves’  20 March 2007

Dissident Voice Child Slavery In Haiti 3 February 2010