War on drugs

Did the CIA Torture an Undercover DEA Agent for a Mexican Drug Cartel?

Mexico’s first two seasons revolve around the 1985 murder of undercover DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, who was abducted, tortured and slain by the Guadalajara Cartel he was investigating. Mining thrilling drama from reality, the Netflix series is a true story about bravery and villainy that’s overflowing with larger-than-life figures, be it the bold Camarena, the ruthless cartel kingpins Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero, or the resolute DEA agents intent on bringing to justice those responsible for their comrade’s killing—the latter group led by Walt Breslin, a take-no-prisoners American tasked with leading the retaliatory mission against the drug lords.

Unlike most of those featured in Netflix’s hit, Walt Breslin isn’t a real person but a composite character based largely on DEA agent Hector Berrellez, the supervisor of the inquiry into Camarena’s assassination. And in Amazon’s new The Last Narc, Berrellez tells his own harrowing tale of taking on Guadalajara’s kingpins—and in the process delivers revelations about the U.S. government’s own culpability in the death of one of their own.

War on drugs

7 of 2015’s most outrageous drug war killings

An as yet unnamed man killed by police in Rawlins, Wyoming, on December 30, after they were called to a convenience store about a person believed to be selling drugs in the parking lot, and Burlington, Vermont, resident Kenneth Stephens, 56, shot and killed by a state trooper and a DEA agent on December 22 when he met them with a rifle as they raided his apartment, were the last two people to make the Drug War Chronicle’s drug war death toll tally, bringing it to 56 for the year.

This is the fifth year the Drug War Chronicle has tallied drug war deaths. There were 54 in 2011, 63 in 2012, 41 in 2013, and 39 in 2014. That’s an average of just a hair under one a week during the past five years.

War on drugs

Female mayor of Temixco assassinated less than 24 hours after taking office ‘killed for less than $30,000’

The female mayor assissinated within 24 hours of being elected on an anti-corruption campaign was killed by a group paid $29,000, it has been reported. Gisela Raquel Mota Ocampo, the first woman elected as Mayor of Temixco in Morelos, Mexico, assumed office on New Year’s Day.
According to Mexican newspaper Reforma, the group was paid $29,000, although it is unlear if that was collectively or individually.
Officers embarked upon a car chase with the suspected killers, which left two of them dead, while “three others – which included a minor, a 32-year-old woman, and an 18-year-old man – were captured alive,” reported The Intercept.