The decapitations have been going on just south of San Diego for a long time and last week several more.
Old News
Nine headless bodies found
Sun Nov 30, 2008 4:59pm EST
TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Nine decapitated bodies were discovered on Sunday in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, a hot spot in an increasingly gruesome war between drug cartels.
The bodies, along with their removed heads, had been left in a vacant lot beside a factory, witnesses and police told reporters.
Mexico is facing spiraling drug violence, especially along its border with the United States. Cities like Tijuana, south of San Diego, are seeing horrendous levels of crime, with bodies set on fire, cut up and dumped in acid and strung over highways.
Beheadings, kidnappings and daylight shootings have become common as vicious drug cartels fight over smuggling routes into the United States.
President Felipe Calderon has sent some 40,000 troops and federal police across Mexico to try to stop the killings. But despite major drug seizures and arrests, the killings continue.
John P. Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said marijuana, not heroin or cocaine, is the "bread and butter," "the center of gravity" for Mexican drug cartels that every year smuggle tons of it through the porous U.S.-Mexico border. Of the $13.8 billion that Americans contributed to Mexican drug traffickers in 2004-05, about 62 percent, or $8.6 billion, comes from marijuana consumption.
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Alleged acid disposal man for Mexico gang nabbed
By Marina Martinez, Associated Press
Saturday, 24 January 2009
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 yesterday.
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.
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.