The high heels and dark glasses worn by prisoner Sandra Avila Beltran were already against regulations, but it was the Botox injections given to her in her cell that finally cost two prison officials their jobs.
The head of Mexico City’s main women’s jail and its medical chief have been sacked amid revelations that they allowed a plastic surgeon to enter the prison and administer beauty treatments to the alleged cocaine trafficker.
Sources within the prison authority said the treatments consisted of several Botox injections to the face, administered over several hours, and that a liposuction operation was planned to take place at the jail in the near future.
Avila Beltran, 50, has long been alleged to enjoy special privileges allowing her to wear non-regulation clothing to keep up appearances behind bars.
The woman nicknamed Queen of the Pacific was arrested in Mexico City in September 2007 and charged with conspiracy to traffic drugs and money-laundering. Authorities said she was a key link between the Sinaloa cartel and the Colombian suppliers of cocaine. She insisted she made her living by renting houses and selling clothes.
The life of the highest profile alleged female trafficker has enthralled Mexicans. Veteran investigative journalist Julio Scherer wrote a book about Avila Beltran based on prison interviews in which she told how she grew up surrounded by narcotics and had love affairs with several drug kingpins.
“People can think what they like about me,” she told him. “But I cannot be convicted for my personal relations with narcos or whoever else.”
Avila Beltran was acquitted by a Mexican court in December, but prosecutors are appealing against that decision.
The US is also seeking her extradition to face charges associated with the seizure of 9 tonnes of US-bound cocaine found on a fishing boat in a western Mexican port in 2001. Juan Diego Espinoza Ramirez, her Colombian boyfriend at the time of her arrest, has already been extradited in connection to that drugs haul.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
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