A man accused of helping a Mexican drug kingpin dispose of hundreds of victims by dissolving their bodies in acid was arrested in the border city of Tijuana, authorities said on Friday.
A Mexican military statement said Santiago Meza Lopez confessed to disposing of at least 300 bodies over a decade, but authorities provided no further evidence to back the claim. Officials contend he dumped the bodies in graves, poured acid on them and let them dissolve underground.
The victims are believed to be rivals of Teodoro Garcia Simental, an alleged former lieutenant of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel, authorities said.
PHOTO: AP
Soldiers and police paraded Meza, 45, before reporters at a cement-block shack on the outskirts of Tijuana where he allegedly disposed of the bodies. Two grave-sized holes had been dug near the walls.
The security officers had Meza tell reporters how he allegedly got rid of the bodies, prodding him to speak up whenever he mumbled.
Meza, who has not yet been charged, was arrested along with three other people on Thursday at a Tijuana hotel. He told reporters on Friday that he got paid US$600 a week for his work and repeated his claim that he had disposed of 300 bodies.
This month, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) identified Garcia as one of 10 men it believed were battling for drug trafficking routes through Tijuana. The DEA said Garcia was the chief rival of alleged Arellano Felix cartel leader Fernando Sanchez Arrellano.
Mexican officials have blamed the power struggle for a surge in violence in Tijuana, the birthplace of the Arellano Felix cartel.
The two men split in April after a shootout between their followers in Tijuana left at least 14 people dead, Mexican and US officials said.
The Arellano Felix cartel rose to power in the 1980s. Since 2002, four brothers who led the cartel have been killed or arrested, most recently Eduardo Arellano Felix, who was captured in October in his Tijuana home.
Mexico’s drug violence has surged and grown more gruesome in recent years, particularly in northern border cities Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. Drug violence claimed more than 5,300 lives last year.
In one case last year, authorities said they found human teeth and other remains inside barrels of acid left on a Tijuana street.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS