A Dirty War

 

In 2004, Newspaper Tree reprinted an article from the Dallas Morning News [link] that outlined charges that federal officials with ICE in El Paso allowed an informant to participate in murders in Juarez.

Narco News has been following the story as well, describing in detail the allegations of a cover-up that reach the highest levels of government. The allegation is simple -- in their zeal to make a case, ICE and a federal prosecutor allowed the informant to participate in a dozen killings, and now are trying to cover up their complicity.

The website obtained a document [link] outlining the debriefing of the informant, code named Jesus Contreras carried out on Feb. 12, 2004, by an assistant legal attaché for the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico.

Newspaper Tree presents excerpts from the document. The full story can be read online at Narco News [link]

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Excerpts from the document:

“Another execution that I remember was on September 11, 2003, when I was in Chicago, Illinois. Santillan called to tell me that they needed the house, referring to the Parsioneros house [in Juárez], to “grill some meat,” [kill someone] so I called Alex to take care of this. Upon returning from Chicago both Alejandro Garcia Cardenas and Santillan mentioned to me that they had killed a person because a mule, in other words a person who took drugs across the border, had been arrested on the bridge as he tried to take a load of drugs and that this person who was arrested sent his wife to ask him for money to pay for a lawyer and instead of giving her the money the dead person [killed later by Santillan and his goons] killed the wife and the girl who was three (3) to five (5) years old. I believe that Luis Portillo or maybe Vicente Carrillo Fuentes gave the order and Santillan executed the order in order to earn merit in that organization, as he has always been willing to do these kind of jobs.”

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“At that point, [Mexican state police commander Miguel] Loya told them to lift their shirts over their faces so they wouldn’t see the boss [Santillan]. At that point, Loya put tape around their head, but they could still breathe and one of them began to moan loudly so Loya shot him in the head with a pistol with a silencer, but he didn’t die immediately. Upon hearing this the other one began to struggle and was shot in the head as well. After they were dead Alex and I put them under the staircase of the Parsioneros house and later they were buried. These were killed because they were careless with their work taking the drugs across the border.”

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“... Later on Monday, December first (1), [2004] I went to the Parsioneros house and saw two (2) corpses and I asked Alex what had happened and he told me that on Sunday November 30, 2003, they were brought by the commander Loya [who oversaw the House of Death for Santillan], along with Perez, Erick Cano and another five (5) judicial police as well as Santillan. That later Saddam and a guy nicknamed Clinton, who is Saddam’s nephew, arrived. They were kicking them on the floor until they killed them. Saddam also hit them with a pistol and Alex gave him a hammer to hit them because Saddam wanted to shoot them with a pistol but that would make too much noise.”