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Old 12-03-2010, 09:59 PM
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Jeanfromfillmore Jeanfromfillmore is offline
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Default Teen says Mexican cartel made him kill

Teen says Mexican cartel made him kill
14-year-old says he helped behead four people while drugged
In cargo pants and a T-shirt, the skinny, American-born 14-year-old looked like he should be in middle school. Instead he was surrounded by three armed Mexican soldiers in ski masks and camouflage as he told reporters that he helped a Mexican drug gang behead four people.
Mexican officials say they arrested the youth known as “El Ponchis” late Thursday at an airport south of Mexico City with a 19-year-old sister who is accused of helping him dump the bodies. Authorities said he was caught with two cell phones that held photographs of tortured victims.
Many youths have been used by drug cartels in their bloody battles against the government and each other, but the story of El Ponchis may be the most shocking. A YouTube video that emerged a month ago sparked talk of a child hit man — said by some to be as young as 12.
“I participated in four executions, but I did it drugged and under threat that if I didn’t, they would kill me,” the boy said calmly when he was handed over to the federal prosecutor yesterday morning, showing no remorse.
Authorities identified the curly-haired suspect by his first name only — Edgar.
He told reporters early yesterday that he was kidnapped at the age of 11 and forced to work for the Cartel of the South Pacific, a branch of the splintered Beltran Leyva gang, and that he had participated in at least four decapitations.
Authorities said that the siblings were detained at an airport near Cuernavaca in Morelos state with paid tickets to flee the country.
Morelos Gov. Marco Adame Castillo said that the boy was born in San Diego, Calif., and that Mexican officials were researching whether he has dual nationality. A U.S. Embassy official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of embassy policy said that American officials had not yet confirmed his citizenship.
The boy’s sister said they were headed for Tijuana, where they planned to cross the border and seek refuge with their stepmother in San Diego. Their mother sent them money for the tickets, she said, but it was not clear where their parents are.
The army did not say whether the children had passed security when they were detained. Neither has been formally charged.

The two are suspected of working for Julio “El Negro” Padilla, who has been fighting for control of the drug trade in Morelos, formerly part of the territory under the Beltran Leyva gang, which broke up with the killing of leader Arturo Beltran Leyva by Mexican marines a year ago. The battle among remnants of the gang has caused an unprecedented spike in violence in Morelos and in neighboring Guerrero state, where the resort city of Acapulco is located.
El Ponchis’ sister said she was the girlfriend of Padilla and part of a group of girls called Las Chabelas, who helped dump bodies on streets and freeways in and around Cuernavaca, a city about 56 miles south of Mexico City. She said her brother introduced them.
An adult sister picked up at the airport appeared with the two yesterday, but authorities said she has no ties to drug trafficking.
Stories of a hit boy, maybe as young as 12, spread after a YouTube video appeared last month with teens mugging for the camera next to corpses and guns. One boy on the video alleged that El Ponchis was his accomplice. State and federal authorities refused to confirm that El Ponchis even existed.
In the video, the youth told an unseen questioner that his gang was paid $3,000 for each killing.
“When we don’t find the rivals, we kill innocent people, maybe a construction worker or a taxi driver,” the youth is heard saying.
Figures obtained by The Associated Press from Mexico’s attorney general’s office show that the number of youths 18 and under detained for drug-related crimes has climbed steadily since President Felipe Calderon started his assault on cartels in 2006. There were 482 that year and 810 in 2009. There were 562 in the first eight months of this year, on track to surpass last year.
Calderon has acknowledged that “in the most violent areas of the country, there is an unending recruitment of young people without hope, without opportunities.”
The federal government has said the cartels are recruiting ever younger assassins to replace those killed or arrested in the current wars among the gangs and with the government. The government also has said that cartels prefer underage youths because they draw shorter sentences if caught.
Unlike the United States, Mexico has no system for trying juveniles as adults, though a bill that would establish such a provision is before the Mexican Senate. In Mexico, juveniles are sentenced to youth-detention centers and are freed at age 18.
http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2010...ill-ar-589610/

U.S. teen arrested as cartel hitman in Mexico
CUERNAVACA, Mexico — Soldiers in Mexico have captured a 14-year-old U.S. citizen suspected of being a drug gang hitman as he attempted to travel to the United States.
Edgar Jimenez, known as "El Ponchis," is believed to work for the South Pacific drug cartel in Morelos state, outside Mexico City, the army said on Friday. Media reports last month on the search for a boy with the same nom de guerre said he could be as young as 12.
The boy was caught late Thursday as he boarded a plane in the city of Cuernavaca. He was traveling to the border city of Tijuana with two of his sisters, one of whom is believed to be the lover of one of the cartel's bosses, the army said.
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He was brought to a regional office of the Mexico's attorney general's Office in Cuernavaca on Friday and told reporters there that he participated in at least four decapitations.
He said he was "drugged and under threat that if I didn't, they would kill me."
"El Ponchis" made headlines last month as reports of his grisly murders, including beheadings, surfaced. He acknowledged having killed at least seven people under the influence of drugs provided by a cartel leader, according to an army statement.
The Mexican daily newspaper La Razon said in November that "El Ponchis" was paid $3,000 for each murder he committed.
The three Jimenez siblings had allegedly wanted to cross to San Diego, where they have relatives.
Crimes committed by minors, ranging from shoplifting to murder for the cartels, have risen across Mexico this year, state officials say. Parents in the violent cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana on the U.S. border say children as young as eight want to grow up to be drug lords, as the thrills and wealth of the trafficking world touches their lives.
Cartel teens confess on YouTube
Last month, police in Mexico detained another minor accused of working as a gunman for a drug cartel after shocking videos and photos surfaced online of fresh-faced boys mugging for the camera with guns and corpses.
One video, briefly posted on YouTube, showed a youth, apparently in his teens, confessing to working for a branch of the Beltran Leyva cartel. While the authenticity of the video could not be determined, cartels in Mexico frequently post such interrogation videos to expose their rivals' crimes.
The youth tells an unseen questioner that his gang was paid $3,000 per killing.
"When we don't find the rivals, we kill innocent people, maybe a construction worker or a taxi driver," the youth is heard saying.
At the time of the first boy's detention, the attorney general for the central Morelos state told a local radio station that authorities were looking for a second suspect, but did not say if either of the boys appeared in video posted online.
'Terrible acts'
The attorney general, Pedro Luis Benitez, also did not reveal the ages of the suspect, but implied they were young enough to be playing with toy guns.
"These minors are still not fully developed and so it is easy to influence them, to give them a gun, pretending it is plastic, that it is a game," Benitez said.
When asked directly about the teenage hitmen he said: "They're persuaded to carry out terrible acts; they don't realize what they are doing," he added.
President Felipe Calderon, who launched the offensive against cartels in 2006, acknowledged several months ago that "in the most violent areas of the country, there is an unending recruitment of young people without hope, without opportunities."
Suspects under 18 are prosecuted in a separate legal system for youthful offenders for most crime in Mexico. But there are growing calls for both that and the nation's overcrowded adult prison system to be revamped.
Mexico has more than doubled the number of people in federal prisons in the last two years as part of the country's crackdown on drug cartels, the country's top cop said last month. While the federal prison system had about 4,500 inmates in 2008, there are now 11,000.
More than 28,000 Mexicans have been killed since late 2006 in drug-related violence, and 2010 is on track to be the bloodiest so far.
http://news1.ghananation.com/law-and...in-mexico.html
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