Category

People

• Latin America, People, War on Drugs

  Peruvian Judge Hernán Saturno Vergara assassinated

  07.20.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Peruvian Judge Hernán Saturno Vergara, who has been involved in the prosecution of drug dealers alleged to have links to the Tijuana Cartel in Mexico, was shot dead in a Lima restaurant on Wednesday evening, only shortly after having dismissed his police protection for the night.

  The 60-year-old had been having dinner with his cousin, Hugo Miguel Vergara, when he let his bodyguard go for the night because of some family matters he wanted to discuss. Soon after, two men entered “Bunker” restaurant and opened fire. The judge died on the spot after being hit by four bullets, while his cousin was rushed to hospital where he is now recovering.

• North America, People, War on Drugs

  Terrence “Big Chef” Jones

  07.18.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Terrence “Big Chef” Jones, an aspiring rapper from Brooklyn, New York, has been arrested on drug trafficking charges after detailing pretty much his whole operation on a CD he released.

  According to the New York Daily News, “Big Chef” - or should that be “Big Mouth”? - bragged on “Hood Hop” that he was “the 500-gram cooker” and “bag twister” and then proceeded to name his drug ring colleagues in the liner notes.

  The CD cover was a photograph of Bushwick Houses, a multi-building, 3,000-person housing project, where he and his “Murda Crew”, along with four other gangs, sold crack.

  Unfortunately for Jones, the Brooklyn North narcotics unit happened on one of the 1,500 copies he claims to have sold, assisting them in their 16-month long investigation into the building complex. Operation Bushwhack not only netted the 33-year-old, but also 20 other people.

  He now faces charges of conspiracy to distribute narcotics, and criminal sale and possession of a controlled substance, as well as the prospect of some time in, er, the Big House.

  (via SOHH.com)

• North America, People

  John M. Fabrizi

  07.17.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  John M. Fabrizi, the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, received some unwanted attention last month when his name came up in the summary of an FBI interview with a suspected drug trafficker that had been filed by federal prosecutors with a U.S. District Court.

  Juan Marrero had told investigators that his associate and fellow indictee Shawn Fardy, a Democratic town committee member, had video footage of the mayor using cocaine and that he had also provided Fardy with 15.5 grams on behalf of Fabrizi. Although prosecutors publicly apologised to Fabrizi after these details had made their way from the unsealed court document onto the pages of The Connecticut Post, the damage had been done.

  At first Fabrizi tried to avoid the issue, only saying that on “a social basis, I made some poor decisions I can’t make excuses for.” But it wasn’t long before he would be forced into making an excuse, albeit rather a flimsy one.

  When Fardy was originally charged in May with conspiracy to possess cocaine and intent to distribute, the mayor had said that he didn’t know the town committee member “personally”. But about a week after Fabrizi was mentioned in the court document the Post then revealed that in late 2004 Fabrizi had made at least 13 phone calls on his city-issued mobile phone to Fardy.

  Faced with the evidence, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information request back in March by the Post, he explained that he had used a “poor choice of words.” So what would a better choice of words have been then? Fardy was a friend of his brother and he had “talked to him on a number of occasions” over the last few years, including the time when, as a justice of the peace, he had performed a marriage for Fardy.

• People

  Pinochet a Drug Trafficker?

  07.11.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Startling new evidence points to suggestions that General Augusto Pinochet, the former President of Chile was involved in the production and trafficking of narcotics.

  A report in the New York Times details the accusation which were levelled against the former dictator and his son by Gen. Manuel Contreras who ran the Directorate of National Intelligence (The secret police) in Chile during the 1980s.

  According to Contreras, the production of cocaine under the direction of General Pinochet took placein Talagante in Chile and the transport for the drugs was organised by the General’s son, Marco Antonio.

• North America, People, War on Drugs

  Penny Spence

  07.10.06 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  Penny Spence faces a mandatory 25 years in a Florida prison because police found 49.5 pills of Endocet, the prescription generic version of the painkiller Percocet, in her car after she crashed into a tree last year.

  With echoes of the Richard Paey case, because the pills belonging to her recently deceased mother weighed more than 28 grams - including the large amounts of Tylenol in them - she faces the mandatory minimum sentence for drug trafficking even though police don’t have to prove she actually sold any on. They had originally charged her with possession but then upped the charges.

• Asia, People

  Bernard Liu

  07.10.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Bernard Liu is a former drug henchman and also a witness in a government investigation into illegal narcotics on the island of Cebu in the Philippines.

  After the recent murder of congressman, Ananias Dy, who was also a witness in the government investigation, Bernard Liu has been urged by authorities to give himself up for his own protection.

• North America, People

  Former Blackwater USA employee blames painkiller addiction for $1 million blackmail attempt

  07.09.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Laura Holdren-Nowacki, a former fleet vehicle manager for Blackwater USA, who threatened to release details about the brutal killing of four of the private military contractor’s security guards in Iraq in March 2004 unless she was paid $1 million, had all her medical bills paid and was given a 2006 Chevrolet Suburban, blamed her blackmail attempt on her addiction to painkillers.

  The families of the slain men ambushed in Fallujah, whose mutilated bodies were found hanging from a bridge, have sued the company for their wrongful deaths, accusing the company of not properly training or equipping them for the assignment.

  The 35-year-old, who had earlier this month threatened a senior Blackwell executive that she would publicly release documents if her demands were not met, later admitted that she in fact didn’t have any documents relating to the men’s deaths. Police had raided her house and found documents from Blackwell, although they were said not to be important.

• Latin America, People, Smuggling

  Brazil: Luciano Geraldo Daniel arrested, Tiago Teixeira evades police

  07.07.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Brazilian federal police have arrested Luciano Geraldo Daniel, the man they say is the biggest cocaine supplier in the country, a day after police in Rio De Janeiro stormed two slums in search of Tiago Teixeira, a drug lord who they suspect of ordering the killings of up to 18 people whose bodies have been found scattered all over the city.

  Daniel was captured Thursday at his ranch, 215 miles west of Sao Paulo, after police briefly skirmished with four of his men. Chemicals, weapons and 330 pounds of cocaine paste were discovered on his property. Authorities say he smuggles 650 pounds of cocaine paste into Brazil from Bolivia every month thanks to a helicopter owned by colleague Floriano Nolasco da Silva who, along with two of his men, were arrested in Santa Catarina state, further south of Sao Paulo.

• Latin America, People, The Media

  Death threat for Colombian journalist Herbin Hoyos Medina

  07.06.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has issued a news alert detailing another apparent death threat against a Colombian journalist, this time against Herbin Hoyos Medina, who works for Caracol Radio in the capital Bogotá.

  On the first of July he interviewed some accused drug traffickers who were being held in a maximum security prison awaiting extradition to the United States, who had accused Colombian and U.S. authorities of setting them up. Later that day a message was posted on his website from an unknown group accusing him of protecting criminals and threatening his young family with “consequences without precedent” unless he left the country within three days.

• North America, People

  No longer homeless but still drinking

  07.05.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Is it a good idea for homeless people who are also chronic alcoholics to be given permanent accommodation by the government but still be allowed to drink as much as they want?

  Officials from King County and the City of Seattle, Washington certainly think so after they gave the go ahead for the controversial “1811 Eastlake Project” that was finally opened in December 2005. According to the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), which manages the apartment block housing 75 formerly homeless men and women, services also provided include:

  * State-licensed mental health and chemical dependency treatment
  * On-site health care services
  * Daily meals and weekly outings to food banks
  * Case management and payee services
  * Medication monitoring
  * Weekly community building activities

  Not only does the DESC think this is a good way of getting off the streets the “unsympathetic homeless” who “beg, drink, urinate and vomit in public”, as executive director Bill Hobson described them in a profile of the project in The New York Times, it will also save taxpayers money.