Algerian court has jailed two former harbour-masters of the port of Algiers for criminal association and signing contracts in breach of the law,

Algerian court has jailed two former harbour-masters of the port of Algiers for criminal association and signing contracts in breach of the law, press reports said Thursday.


The two men, Bourouai Abdelhak and Ali Farrah, were respectively sentenced to six and four years in prison. They were also convicted of wrongfully distributing benefits.
In all, 10 people were accused in the case, of whom six were jailed and four were acquitted.

The verdict, against which defence lawyers said they would appeal, arose from the illegal practice of handing out contracts to private cargo handling firms to work inside the port.

Port managers had been operating in breach of regulations for a decade, according to the prosecution.

READ MORE - Algerian court has jailed two former harbour-masters of the port of Algiers for criminal association and signing contracts in breach of the law,

Two men wanted in connection with a double stabbing early Saturday morning that left one man dead and another wounded were captured Wednesday at a relative's home in Cincinnati,

Two men wanted in connection with a double stabbing early Saturday morning that left one man dead and another wounded were captured Wednesday at a relative's home in Cincinnati, and police are now interviewing the suspects.

Warrants had been issued Saturday charging 32-year-old Glenn Cross Jr., of Kearneysville, with murder for the fatal stabbing of 21-year-old Andre Jackson, of Martinsburg. Additional warrants were issued Saturday charging 34-year-old Thomas Anthony Grantham Jr., of Martinsburg, with malicious wounding and attempted murder in connection with the stabbing of the second victim, 26-year-old Jacques Taylor, of Martinsburg, who survived the attack. Grantham also is accused of attempting to run over Jackson with his vehicle, which resulted in the attempted murder warrant being filed.

The attack occurred early on April 23. Deputy U.S. Marshal Michael P. Ulrich said in a news release that the two murder suspects allegedly hunted down Jackson and Taylor after a verbal altercation in the parking lot of the Brickhouse Bar and Grill off Mid Atlantic Parkway in Martinsburg.

Jackson and Taylor were followed until they stopped on Rock Cliff Drive, when they were assaulted with knives. The victims were found in the 1900 block of Rock Cliff Drive after the double stabbing by members of the Berkeley County Sheriff's Department and West Virginia State Police, but the suspects had fled prior to the arrival of police.

As a result of the vicious stabbing, Jackson ultimately succumbed to his wounds and Taylor was taken to City Hospital.

Grantham and Cross will be charged as fugitives from justice in Ohio and will eventually be extradited back to West Virginia.

The Berkeley County Sheriff's Department was contacted by the U.S. Marshals Service at about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in regard to the suspects' arrests by the Southern Ohio Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team.

After being notified of the arrests, Sgt. T.E. Boyles and Deputy Michael P. St. Clair, investigators with the Berkeley County Sheriff's Department, departed immediately to travel to Ohio, Berkeley County Sheriff Kenneth "Kenny" Lemaster Jr. said late Wednesday night.

The investigators will be tasked with collecting evidence and interviewing the suspects. While in Ohio, they will work with authorities there and with the Berkeley County Prosecuting Attorney's Office to bring the suspects back to West Virginia, Lemaster said.

On Monday, the Mountain State Fugitive Task Force, a local U.S. Marshals Service-led fugitive task force, was asked to assist with the apprehension of Cross and Grantham. The investigation conducted by members of the task force and area law enforcement developed a lead that Grantham and Cross were staying with family in the Cincinnati area, Ulrich said in the news release.

READ MORE - Two men wanted in connection with a double stabbing early Saturday morning that left one man dead and another wounded were captured Wednesday at a relative's home in Cincinnati,

Drug cartels and their affiliated gangs are among those increasingly seizing control of Mexican prisons and practicing "self-rule," prison

Drug cartels and their affiliated gangs are among those increasingly seizing control of Mexican prisons and practicing "self-rule," prison observers say.

The Los Zetas drug cartel has the run of the prison in Saltillo, 190 miles southwest of Laredo, Texas, in what is known as "autogobierno" or self-rule, USA Today reported Thursday.

It dates back decades and forms of it exist in correctional facilities the world over, the newspaper said.

A report from the National Human Rights Commission shows self-rule on the rise, being practiced in 37 percent of Mexican prisons, up from 30 percent in 2009.

The report defines self-rule as inmates being permitted to manage internal functions "such as controlling keys, organizing activities (and) cleaning and overseeing dormitories, among others."

Security experts say self-rule exists mostly in state-level facilities and grew out of decades of corruption, neglect and underfunding.

"It's an expression of the enormous corruption that there is in these kinds of public security fields," said Vicente Sanchez, a professor at the College of the Northern Border in Tijuana.

In Saltillo, self-rule is in the hands of the Los Zetas, one of the most powerful and violent of Mexico's drug cartels.

Mexico's war on the cartels has seen hundreds of members imprisoned, but once incarcerated cartel members often take over a prison and continue involvement in their drug operations, officials said.

Self-rule, "Means having total control over an inmate population," along with "the ability to communicate with the outside without restrictions," said David Ordaz of Mexico's National Criminal Science Institute.

READ MORE - Drug cartels and their affiliated gangs are among those increasingly seizing control of Mexican prisons and practicing "self-rule," prison

Troops in Venezuela surrounded a jail where inmateswere holding 22 hostages, including the prison director, to protest against an alleged tuberculosis outbreak.

National guard units with helmets and shields blocked access to the Rodeo II prison in Guatire, just outside the capital Caracas, as officials attempted to negotiate a peaceful end to the two-day siege.

Prisoners seized the director, Luis Aranguren, and 21 other officials on Wednesday after an inmate with tuberculosis-type symptoms was taken to another jail for medical tests.

They demanded a medical inspection of the facility, which holds 1,200 inmates in cramped cells, and complained that their warnings of a possible epidemic over the past four months had been ignored even after the disease allegedly killed an inmate.

The deputy interior minister, Edwin Rojas, was due to visit the jail to talk to the hostages and try to broker an end to the stand-off without bowing to what authorities called kidnap pressure.

Holding hostages was "not the most adequate way" to make grievances known, said Rojas. The prisoner who was removed for medical tests had pneumonia, not tuberculosis, and a medical team was on stand-by to enter the jail once hostages were freed, the minister added.

"We believe in peaceful dialogue, in peaceful coexistence and the respect of human rights, not only of the prisoners but also of those who work in the prison system."

The prisoners, in messages sent via their families, said they feared reprisals and wanted guarantees for their safety. Relatives were due to read on TV a letter from prisoner leaders elaborating on demands and grievances.

The government has promised to build new, humane prisons but most of Venezuela's 48,000 inmates languish in old, degraded facilities. Humberto Prado, head of the Prisons Observatory watchdog, said the system was designed to hold only 12,500. Conditions are primitive and violence is rife, with hundreds killed every year.

In a tacit pact with authorities some gangs had started strangling rivals, rather than shooting or stabbing them, so the deaths could be registered as suicide, Prado wrote in the newspaper Tal Cual.

Carlos Nieto, head of another watchdog group, A Window for Freedom, said the fact a mass hostage taking could last for days showed that prisoners rather than authorities controlled jails.

READ MORE - Troops in Venezuela surrounded a jail where inmateswere holding 22 hostages, including the prison director, to protest against an alleged tuberculosis outbreak.

800 inmates escaped on Friday from two Tunisian prisons after fires were set in cells

800 inmates escaped on Friday from two Tunisian prisons after fires were set in cells, the official news agency said.
Soldiers and security forces quickly fanned out in a search of the fugitives and at least 35 were caught within hours, TAP said, citing military sources.
TAP reported that 522 inmates from the prison in Kasserine escaped after a fire in two cells, and another 300 inmates escaped from the Gafsa prison.
The two towns are both in Tunisia's center-west region, some 150 kilometers (about 95 miles) apart. Personnel at the prison in Gafsa were on strike at the time, likely making the mass exodus by inmates easier.
The North African nation has been hit by social unrest since the country's long-time autocratic ruler was ousted Jan. 14 in an uprising.
Some 11,000 inmates escaped from Tunisian prisons shortly after Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled into exile. Of those, several thousand have been caught and nearly 2,000 turned themselves in after the Justice Ministry warned the escape could worsen their cases, TAP reported.
Earlier, in the capital Tunis, police fired tear gas at hundreds of Islamists protesting what they said were offensive comments toward Islam by two teachers.
Protesters chanted "God is Great," and carried banners including one reading "We do not pardon those who insult the prophet."
Several hours of peaceful protest degenerated when some demonstrators sought to take on police, who immediately fired tear gas.
The demonstration on the main Avenue Bourguiba was the latest since Ben Ali was brought down, hounded out of the country by protesters angry over unemployment, corruption and repression.
Tunisia's uprising prompted protests around the Arab world.

READ MORE - 800 inmates escaped on Friday from two Tunisian prisons after fires were set in cells

111 U.S. citizens were killed in Mexico last year, nearly half of them on or near the Texas border

111 U.S. citizens were killed in Mexico last year, nearly half of them on or near the Texas border, as the country's gang-fueled violence worsened, according to the U.S. State Department.
The recently released reports don't specify how or why the Americans were murdered, nor does it name victims. But 80 percent of them were killed in border states where narcotics violence is worst - 39 alone in Ciudad Juarez, which shares the Rio Grande with El Paso, and other nearby towns.
The impact on U.S. citizens visiting or living in parts of Mexico has steadily worsened since President Felipe Calderon deployed the army and federal police in late 2006 in an as yet unsuccessful attempt to crush the rising reach of the gangs.
The number of U.S. victims last year was more than triple the toll in 2007. Over a four-year period, 283 Americans were reported murdered, according to State Department figures.
In the same lapse, more than 35,000 Mexicans have been killed, including about 15,000 last year. The Mexican government says most were gangsters. But hundreds of innocent civilians also have been killed.
"Bystanders, including U.S. citizens, have been injured or killed in violent incidents in various parts of the country, especially, but not exclusively in the northern border region, demonstrating the heightened risk of violence throughout Mexico," the latest State Department travel warning observes.
The warning notes that most of the country, including major beach resorts, remains safe.
"There is no evidence that U.S. tourists have been targeted by criminal elements due to their citizenship," advises the travel warning, which was issued last week. "Nonetheless, while in Mexico you should be aware of your surroundings at all times and exercise particular caution in unfamiliar areas."
Victims of underworld
Many residents along the border have dual U.S.-Mexico citizenship. Some of the murdered Americans may have spent most of their lives in Mexico. Other American border residents frequently cross south of the line to visit friends and family in troubled Mexican towns and cities.
Better than half of the 2010 U.S. victims were killed in Juarez and in Tijuana, which borders San Diego. Both cities are tumultuous binational communities that have become primary underworld battlegrounds.
Among the Americans slain in Juarez last year were Lesley Enriquez, a civilian employee at the U.S. Consulate there, and her husband Arthur Redelfs, an employee of the El Paso County jail. U.S. investigators have arrested members of the Aztecas, a transborder gang that works with the Mexican criminal organizations, in the killings.
In early November, U.S.-born Eder Andres Diaz, 23, and naturalized American Manuel Acosta, 25, both students at the University of Texas at El Paso, were gunned down in Ciudad Juarez. Both were living in Juarez while attending the university.
Not counted in the tally is David Hartley, a 29-year-old oil company employee who disappeared in September after reportedly being attacked by gunmen as he and his wife jet-skied in Mexican waters of Lake Falcon.
His wife said she saw him fatally shot in the head, but Hartley's body has never been recovered. Then again, neither have the bodies of perhaps several thousand Mexicans who have simply disappeared in the violence.
While counseling caution on those traveling in much of Mexico, the U.S. government's warning strongly urges against non-essential travel to Tamaulipas, the state that borders Texas from Laredo to the Gulf Coast.
The warning also emphasizes that Monterrey, Mexico's third largest city, has become risky as well for "local and expatriate communities."
"Local law enforcement has provided little to no response," the warning notes of Monterrey's violence. "In addition, police have been implicated in some of these incidents."
The American toll so far this year includes Brownsville native Jaime Zapata, an agent with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement who was killed in a February ambush on the busy highway connecting Mexico City to the south Texas border.
Body count rises
A dozen alleged members of the Zetas have been arrested in Zapata's killing.
Zapata was slain little more than two weeks after South Texas-based Christian missionary Nancy Davis, 59, was fatally shot by suspected gangsters near San Fernando, a Tamaulipas farm town 80 miles south of the border at Brownsville.
The town of San Fernando has been a well-identified center of terror since August, when 72 mostly Central American migrants were slaughtered at a rural warehouse outside the town.
Despite government vows to pacify the region following that massacre, the gangsters retained control of it. In recent months, the thugs reportedly have kidnapped and murdered highway travelers and others, burying their remains in a farm village.
So far, 183 bodies have been pulled from clandestine graves near San Fernando this month as officials investigate a long running gangster operation that included pulling travelers from buses.

READ MORE - 111 U.S. citizens were killed in Mexico last year, nearly half of them on or near the Texas border

Drug gangs and their hitmen -- groups such as the Aztecas and the Mexicles -- often continue their battles behind bars in the city, located across the border from El Paso, Texas and right at the heart of Mexico's raging drug war.

Where tensions run high, walls have climbed higher to try to stop rival Mexican gangs from taking the blood-stained chaos from the streets of Ciudad Juarez with them into prison.
Drug gangs and their hitmen -- groups such as the Aztecas and the Mexicles -- often continue their battles behind bars in the city, located across the border from El Paso, Texas and right at the heart of Mexico's raging drug war.
"The (six-meter, 20-foot) walls went up in late 2009," prison spokesman Hector Conde told AFP.
"Before, there were only chain-link fences that inmates would jump over pretty easily. There were riots all the time," often leaving dozens dead and requiring helicopter-backed security operations to break them up, he said.
Conde declined to enter the block housing members of the Aztecas, a notorious gang of hitmen for the Juarez cartel.
"Some of the Aztecas were just moved to another facility recently, so these guys are really aggravated. They could carry out reprisals if you go in there," he warned.
Across the way, out of sight, were members of the Mexicles gang. They work for the Sinaloa cartel led by Mexico's most famous fugitive, Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman.
Officials blame the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels for most of the violence in Juarez as they fight for control of the lucrative drug trafficking routes into the United States.
Last year, 3,100 people died in violent attacks in this northern city of some 1.2 million -- roughly 60 each week on average.
A surge of drug-related violence has left almost 35,000 people dead in Mexico since the government of President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown on the cartels in 2006, according to official figures.
The murder rate climbed to more than 10 a day in Juarez in February 2009, prompting Calderon to deploy more than 5,000 troops to the city. Things were calmer for a few months but the killings soon picked up again.
Some of the murders are particularly gruesome, decapitated bodies, corpses hung from bridges. Children, even pregnant women, have been among the dead but most are young gang members.
With factory salaries starting at less than $50 a week, the financial lure of the drug gangs is huge in Juarez -- one of the main thoroughfares for the cocaine that feeds the ever-strong US market.
Physical separation may help prevent jailed gang members from starting riots, but critics warn against maintaining gang labels behind bars.
"That gives them territory inside the prison and makes it an extension of what is happening outside on Ciudad Juarez streets," Gustavo de la Rosa, from the Chihuahua state human rights commission, told AFP.
The gangs work with military-style organization and often control the jails imprisoning them, he said.
After checking no one was listening, a guard told AFP there were around 2,400 inmates at the prison, 700 of them Aztecas housed in one block.
The prisoners were separated based on tattoos linking them to their gangs: the Aztecas with pyramids and Aztec symbols and the Mexicles sporting skulls and their gang name, said prison pastor Victor Martinez.
Tensions were lower in his section of the jail, which the prison authorities had decided was the best place to house convicted evangelical Christians.
"I feel safer here than on the streets or other parts of the prison," said Otoniel Lucero Pena, a 46-year-old in for trafficking marijuana. He said he had never belonged to a gang.
Prisoners such as Pena gained most from the wall, Martinez said.
Five years ago, the Aztecas tried to make some of the evangelical prisoners work for them. When they refused, they attacked them, Martinez said.
"They started to beat drums to signal the start of a riot or clash. Then they jumped over the metal fence of the Christians' sector, where there were 140 prisoners at the time. They killed three of them but the others managed to escape to the women's area."

READ MORE - Drug gangs and their hitmen -- groups such as the Aztecas and the Mexicles -- often continue their battles behind bars in the city, located across the border from El Paso, Texas and right at the heart of Mexico's raging drug war.

"El Piolin" Now Under Higher Security

The man accused of leading the attack that left a Brownsville ICE agent dead is now under higher security.

Julian Zapata Espinoza, also known as El Piolin, was being held by the agency that oversees federal investigations in Mexico, but late last week he was handed over to federal police.

A judge signed the order saying the move was done for safety reasons and to ensure that Zapata Espinoza remained in custody while authorities continue investigating the case against him.

Zapata espinoza is accused of leading the group of Zetas that carried out the murder of ICE Agent Jaime Zapata back in February.

Agent Zapata and his partner were ambushed along a highway in San Luis.

 

READ MORE - "El Piolin" Now Under Higher Security

jail inmate in Arizona said he attacked a guard so he wouldn't be freed and become an assassination target for members of a drug cartel, authorities said.

Alexandro Guerrero, 26, awaiting release from the Pinal County Adult Detention Center April 17, punched a detention officer in the face and continued hitting and kicking him to the ground, The Arizona Republic reported Tuesday.

Pinal County Sheriff's Office spokesman Tim Gaffney said the Yuma inmate, who was serving time for an outstanding failure-to-comply warrant, told authorities at one time he was involved with a drug cartel in Mexico known as "Los Zetas."

Guerrero said the gang labeled him a snitch and put out a "hit" after hearing he had leaked information about them to an unnamed law enforcement agency, Gaffney said.

"This criminal brutally assaulted one of our finest detention officers because he had a death threat against himself and he believed he would be killed by the cartels upon his release. Our deputies and detention officers already have a very difficult job and it is made tougher by the impact of drug and human smuggling," Pinal Sheriff Paul Babeu said.

The detention officer suffered a broken nose and a wound requiring numerous stitches, the newspaper said.

Guerrero was booked back into the detention center on three counts of aggravated assault on a detention officer and is being held on a $50,000 cash-only bail.

READ MORE - jail inmate in Arizona said he attacked a guard so he wouldn't be freed and become an assassination target for members of a drug cartel, authorities said.

St. Paul police gang investigators had been tracking violence involving the 18th Street gang for more than a year when new information deepened their resolve: 11 girls were to be "jumped in" to the gang

St. Paul police gang investigators had been tracking violence involving the 18th Street gang for more than a year when new information deepened their resolve: 11 girls were to be "jumped in" to the gang April 18.

They executed 17 search warrants on homes of people associated with the gang, but police decided to take a different approach from arresting them all, said Cmdr. Paul Iovino, who heads the gang unit.

Instead, police invited the teens and young adults, along with their families, to an informational meeting last Thursday at the Neighborhood House, a West Side social services agency.

"The message was, 'Parents, your kids are involved in gang activity, and it's not acceptable and won't be condoned in the city of St. Paul,' " Iovino said Tuesday. Various community organizations were on hand to talk about resources for getting the young people out of gang life, he said.

As for the girls who were supposed to be initiated into the gang, Iovino said, "To the best of our knowledge, we think we did thwart it."

Gang unit investigators heard April 6 from a St. Paul middle school about information that someone had given a counselor, according to an affidavit in support of a search warrant. Two women, ages 18 and 20, had plans to "jump in" 11 girls to the gang April 18 (Iovino said the number 18 holds significance to the gang), the affidavit said.

One concern was the potential for gang members to "sex in" new female gang members, Iovino said.

READ MORE - St. Paul police gang investigators had been tracking violence involving the 18th Street gang for more than a year when new information deepened their resolve: 11 girls were to be "jumped in" to the gang

Mexican police have freed 51 migrants who had been abducted and were being held by criminals in the north-eastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

Mexican police have freed 51 migrants who had been abducted and were being held by criminals in the north-eastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
'Among those rescued there were 14 Guatemalans, two Hondurans, two Salvadorans, six Chinese and 27 Mexicans,' Mexican authorities said late Monday.
They victims were being held against their will in Reynosa, Mexico, across the US border from McAllen, Texas.
A total of 119 people have been rescued in Tamaulipas over the last week.
From April 1-19, police found 34 mass graves in Tamaulipas holding remains of 177 bodies, including several people believed to have been passengers forced off buses by the criminal gang Los Zetas.
Criminal gangs reportedly rob and extort migrants, induce them to smuggle drugs into the United States or force them into service for the gangs. Many are killed.
Also Monday, police found 17 bodies in a mass grave in the city of Durango, raising to 75 the death toll in the area in recent weeks.

READ MORE - Mexican police have freed 51 migrants who had been abducted and were being held by criminals in the north-eastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas.