Mexican
Authorities have arrested a former US Soldier, 32 year-old Luis Ricardo
Gonzalez Garcia (also known as Javier Aguirre Cardenas) who led a 16 member
gang of kidnappers and was based out of Monterrey. Garcia served in the US military from 1998 to
2002, then as a police officer in Texas from 202-2009 before going rogue and moving
across the borer. The gang allegedly
worked in Nuevo Leon (Monterrey is the capital), Coahuila and Tamaulipas and
was responsible for a rash of kidnappings for ransom.
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| Mexican Federal Police on Patrol |
According to the AFP, The suspected
gang leader is accused of ordering the September 25 kidnapping of Jorge Luis
Martinez Martinez, the 70-year-old father of the mayor of the town of Zuazua, a
suburb of Monterrey.
The victim was found dead five days
later in the neighboring state of Coahuila even though a ransom had been paid
for his release.
The 16 gang members were detained
in eight separate operations in Nuevo Leon and Coahuila in the past month.
This goes against the theory that
the rash of kidnappings in Mexico in the past few years were the work of the
drug cartels, particularly the Zetas, and more to the theory that they were, in
part, the work of other opportunist criminals who came into the power vacuum
created by the drug wars unleashed when the Zetas broke from the Gulf Cartel
that had used the Zetas as enforcers.
The new Mexican government had
vowed to quietly attack those responsible for crimes against ordinary citizens
(like kidnap victims and victims of extortion), instead of operating a raging
all-out war against only the cartels. It
seems that they have done so and it is effective. Here’s hoping it continues and life for ordinary
citizens along the border and in Monterrey, one of the most beautiful – and
formerly most peaceful and least crime ridden – cities in North America begins
to get back to normal.
Full story an photo credit: http://www.france24.com/en/20131112-mexico-says-former-us-soldier-led-kidnap-gang
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