MEXICO: 12 bodies, 7 Beheaded, Found In Tourist Town Manzanillo

A dozen bodies including seven that were headless and mutilated were discovered over the weekend in western Mexico’s seaside resort of Manzanillo, apparent victims of the country’s epidemic of drug violence, local officials said on Sunday.

It was a shocking turn of events for an area popular with American and other foreign tourists, which until now had largely been spared from the bloody drug wars wracking other parts of Mexico.

Seven bodies were found early Saturday in an abandoned taxi on the road from Manzanillo to the town of Cihuatlan.

The bodies were “mutilated, apparently decapitated, and one of the victims was a woman,” the port city’s police chief Carlos Heredia said.

On the vehicle was a message signed by the increasingly powerful Jalisco New Generation drug cartel, he said.

That cartel is blamed for a surge in murders in the tiny Pacific state of Colima, where Manzanillo is located.

On Sunday, five half-naked bodies were found dumped in a forested area, a municipal police commander said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief reporters.

The bodies showed signs of torture and were left with two green cards signed by the Jalisco New Generation cartel, he said.

The Colima state attorney’s office said in a statement it was “seeking those responsible for depriving five people of their lives, whose bodies were found Sunday afternoon” on the highway between Manzanillo and Minatitlan.

Authorities have not said if the two sets of victims were related. None have yet been identified.

The past six months have seen an increase in killings linked to disputes within the Jalisco cartel, police records showed.

On January 16 and 17, six people were shot to death in three separate incidents in Manzanillo. Authorities believe all were linked to organised crime.

With drug baron Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s recent extradition to the United States, his powerful Sinaloa cartel is expected to face a rising challenge from the Jalisco gang, a onetime ally now estimated to be worth $50 billion.

The Jalisco group’s incursions into Sinaloa territory have turned Colima state into the Mexican region with the highest homicide rate, with 72 killings per 100,000 inhabitants last year.

The gang, also known by its Spanish initials CJNG, has also launched bold attacks on the police and military.

In March and April 2015, the cartel killed 20 police officers in two separate ambushes in western Jalisco state. In May of that year, the gang used a rocket-propelled grenade to down a military helicopter, killing seven soldiers and a policewoman.

The latest killings in Manzanillo came less than a week after a mass shooting in another normally peaceful Mexican resort, this one on the Caribbean coast.

Gunfire erupted early Monday at a music festival in Playa del Carmen, south of Cancun, leaving at least five people dead and 15 injured, the mayor said. Three of the dead were foreigners.

Authorities attributed the attack to a turf war between drug cartels.

MEXICO: Jailbreaker Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Henchmen Arrested

Mexico's government on Wednesday announced the capture of six people believed responsible for the July prison break by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, including the elusive drug lord's brother-in-law and the suspected mastermind of the escape.

Attorney General Arely Gomez said the alleged mastermind is a member of Guzman's legal team who had access to the Altiplano prison near Mexico City, and was able to notify the capo of the operation's progress and receive instructions. The person also purportedly relayed orders and payments to others involved in the escape.

Other suspects arrested included Guzman's brother-in-law, believed to have supervised construction of the mile-long (1.5-kilometer) escape tunnel and organized transportation; a person who negotiated the purchase of the plot of land where the tunnel emerged; and an airplane pilot.

"Today we are able to affirm that the group responsible for planning, organizing and carrying out the escape from outside the prison) has been broken up," Gomez said.

She confirmed that after the escape, the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel boss traveled by land to the city of Queretaro where officials say he caught a small plane to a mountainous region of Sinaloa, his home state and stronghold.

The attorney general added that two Cessna aircraft left from Queretaro. She did not give details or take questions, but a federal official who was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity said one of the flights was apparently a ruse to throw any pursuers off the scent. Authorities recently detained a second pilot in the case.

Gomez did not name any of the suspects but said they planned, organized and carried out the jailbreak in cahoots with officials inside the maximum-security lockup.

About 23 prison officials and employees have also been arrested; some face criminal charges.

Security agents have focused their manhunt in recent weeks on Sinaloa and neighboring Durango state, part of Mexico's notorious drug-producing Golden Triangle region. Officials say Guzman was injured in the leg and face there while evading a dragnet in rugged terrain.

"El Chapo's" July 11 escape through a tunnel dug to the shower in his cell was his second brazen flight from prison. In 2001, he slipped out of another maximum-security facility, purportedly hidden in a laundry cart.

The latest jailbreak made him once again Mexico's most-wanted fugitive and was a huge black eye for the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto, which had dismissed the possibility that Guzman could escape a second time.

Washington had called for Guzman's extradition to face charges in U.S. federal courts, fearing that Mexico might have trouble keeping him behind bars. But Mexican officials said he would only be extradited after first serving out long prison sentences for crimes committed in his home country.