Mexico’s army said on Thursday it had detained a third general for questioning, hours after a judge placed the two other officers under a form of house arrest pending an investigation for possible links to the Beltran Leyva drug cartel.
A Mexican Department of Defense statement did not say specifically whether retired General Ricardo Escorcia was detained in connection with same allegations pending against the other two generals, who were brought in on Tuesday.
However, it did say that the detention order for Escorcia’s was issued “simultaneously with the two previous detentions, with the aim of having him testify in the investigations” being carried out by civilian prosecutors.
Escorcia retired from active service in 2010 after reaching mandatory retirement age. He previously served as head of the military base in Cuernavaca, a city just south of the Mexican capital that has been considered Beltran Leyva territory. The leader of the cartel, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines at an apartment complex in Cuernavaca in 2009. The marines were reportedly called in to look for the capo after the army appeared to be slow to act on US intelligence indicating the drug lord’s location, according to a leaked US embassy diplomatic cable from late 2009.
The army said that Escorcia was detained by military personnel and turned over to the Attorney General’s Office, which had no immediate comment on whether he is named in the same probe as the other two generals.
The office said in a statement earlier on Thursday that the other two army officers — retired General Tomas Angeles Dauahare and General Roberto Dawe Gonzalez — will remain under arrest at least 40 days while prosecutors strengthen their case.
The investigation against Angeles Dauahare and Dawe Gonzalez is based on a case from 2009 that includes “the testimony of several people on trial, including some soldiers,” the office said.
An official at the Attorney General’s Office said the generals protected members of the Beltran Leyva group, which has been battling the Sinaloa cartel since 2008, when they ended an alliance. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to discuss the case.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon named Angeles Dauahare as assistant defense secretary in 2006. He left the post in 2008, when he retired. He is the highest ranking military official to be linked to drug traffickers under the current administration. Dawe Gonzalez is currently assigned to a military base in Colima State.
Angeles Dauahare’s lawyer, Alejandro Ortega, said on Thursday he had not been given access to court files or been allowed to talk to his client. He said the general told his wife he was being accused of taking money from associates of Edgar Valdez Villareal, who was allegedly the top hit man for Beltran Leyva. Valdez Villareal was arrested in 2010. Ortega said the general supported himself with an army pension and owns a house and an apartment. He said the general’s wife also owns a house she inherited.
A few senior military officers have been arrested for alleged links to traffickers during Mexico’s long struggle to control the cartels. Retired General Juan Manuel Barragan Espinosa was detained in February for alleged links to organized crime and General Manuel Moreno Avina and 29 soldiers who were under his command in the border town of Ojinaga, across the border from Presidio, Texas, are being tried on charges of torture, homicide, drug trafficking and other crimes. In 1997, General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo was arrested when he was Mexico’s drug czar. He was charged with protecting then-cocaine kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes.
More than 47,000 people have been killed in drug violence since Calderon deployed thousands of soldiers to drug hotspots, according to government figures.
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
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not