Cambodia: Close Compulsory Drug Detention Centers

Respect Rights and Expand Voluntary, Community-Based Treatment

January 25, 2010

© 2002

Downloadable Resources:

Download press release in Khmer (PDF)

Related Materials:

“Skin on the Cable”

“Where Darkness Knows No Limits”

An Unbreakable Cycle

Drug Policy and Human Rights

Individuals in these centers are not being treated or rehabilitated, they are being illegally detained and often tortured. These centers do not need to be revamped or modified; they need to be shut down.

Joseph Amon, director of the Health and Human Rights division at Human Rights Watch

People who use drugs in Cambodia are at risk of arbitrary detention in centers where they suffer torture, physical and sexual violence, and other forms of cruel punishment, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Detention centers, mandated to treat and ‘rehabilitate' drug users, instead subject them to electric shocks, beatings with electrical wire, forced labor, and harsh military drills.

In the 93-page report, "Skin on the Cable," Human Rights Watch documents detainees being beaten, raped, forced to donate blood, and subjected to painful physical punishments such as "rolling like a barrel" and being chained while standing in the sun. Human Rights Watch also reported that a large number of detainees told of receiving rotten or insect-ridden food and symptoms of diseases consistent with nutritional deficiencies.

"Individuals in these centers are not being treated or rehabilitated, they are being illegally detained and often tortured," said Joseph Amon, director of the Health and Human Rights division at Human Rights Watch. "These centers do not need to be revamped or modified; they need to be shut down." According to the report, people are frequently arbitrarily arrested without a warrant or without reasonable cause, often on the request of a relative or as part of periodic police round-ups of people considered "undesirable." They are often lied to - or simply not informed - about the reasons of their arrest. They have no access to a lawyer during their period in police custody or during the subsequent period of detention in the centers. Military drills, sweating while exercising, and laboring are the most common means used to "cure" drug dependence in these centers, which are operated by various government entities, including military police and civilian police forces. "Vocational training" activities which take place in some centers appear motivated by benefits to the center staff as opposed to detainees. The report highlighted the large number of children and individuals with mental illnesses also detained within the centers. Both groups, according to the report, were subject to similar physical abuses.

Human Rights Watch called on the Royal Cambodian Government to permanently close its drug detention centers and conduct a thorough investigation of acts of torture, ill treatment, arbitrary detention, and other abuses occurring in them. Torture and inhuman treatment are prohibited by both the government's international human rights obligations and the Constitution of Cambodia.

"The government of Cambodia must stop the torture occurring in these centers" said Amon. "Drug dependency can be addressed through expanded voluntary, community-based, outpatient treatment that respects human rights and is consistent with international standards."

Selected accounts from individuals interviewed for "Skin on the Cable":

"I think this is not a rehab center but a torturing center." - Kakada, former detainee

"[A staff member] would use the cable to beat people...On each whip the person's skin would come off and stick on the cable..." - M'noh, age 16, describing whippings he witnessed in the Social Affairs "Youth Rehabilitation Center" in Choam Chao

"[After arrest] the police search my body, they take my money, they also keep my drugs...They say, ‘If you don't have money, why don't you go for a walk with me?...[The police] drove me to a guest house.... How can you refuse to give him sex? You must do it. There were two officers. [I had sex with] each one time. After that they let me go home." - Minea, a woman in her mid 20's who uses drugs, explaining how she was raped by two police officers

"[Shortly after arrival] I was knocked out. Other inmates beat me....They just covered me with a blanket and beat me...They beat me in the face, my chest, my side. I don't know how long it lasted...The staff had ordered the inmates to beat me. The staff said, ‘The new chicken has arrived, let's pluck its feathers and eat it!'" - Duongchem, former detainee

This press release also available in: Khmer

Report Says Afghan Anti-Drug Effort Lacks Strategy

Image by ChuckHolton via Flickr

By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — The United States-led counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan, which is critical to hopes of cutting off the flow of money to the Taliban and curtailing rampant corruption in the central government, lacks a long-term strategy, clear objectives and a plan for handing over responsibility to Afghans, the State Department inspector general said in a report issued Wednesday.

“The department has not clarified an end state for counternarcotics efforts, engaged in long-term planning, or established performance measures,” said the 63-page report, an audit of work done by the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Among other things, the report found that the military and civilian lacked clear delineation of roles; that civilian contracts for counternarcotics work were poorly written and supervised from thousands of miles and many time zones away; and that the United States embassies in Afghanistan and Pakistan did not coordinate well on the problem.

The effectiveness of drug-control efforts is critical to President Obama plan for the Afghanistan war, which entails sending additional troops to Afghanistan.

The Taliban finance many of their operations through the illicit drug trade, forcing payments for the cultivation, processing and shipment of opium, and netting $70 million to $400 million a year, according to estimates from the U.S. Defense Department and the United Nations. Afghanistan produces roughly 90 percent of the world’s illicit opium.

The report calls it essential that the threat of eradicating that trade come from a force controlled by the Afghan government. But it adds that the State Department has no clear “strategy for transitioning and exiting from counternarcotics programs in Afghanistan.”

American officials have harshly criticized corruption in the government of President Hamid Karzai. Much of that, the officials say, has to do with officials’ enriching themselves from the flow of narcotics. Mr. Karzai has promised to prosecute people involved in the drug trade.

Despite what it says is a consensus that eradication of poppy crops is essential, the report notes that in midyear a decision was made to shift from eradication efforts to financing interdiction of drug traffickers.

While the United States military has begun engaging more heavily in counternarcotics efforts, the inspector general found that “there is no agreement on appropriate roles for either civilian agencies or the U.S. military.”

The report also found that while contractors performing counternarcotics work are generally meeting the terms of their contracts, those contracts are often “poorly written, with overly optimistic goals” and “vague performance measures.”

Partly because the United States Embassy in Kabul is shorthanded, there is no monitoring from inside the country of seven counternarcotics contracts valued at $1.8 billion, the report said. Instead, monitoring is conducted “many thousands of miles away in a different time zone.”

The report, initiated by the Middle East branch of the inspector general’s office, said coordination in the Kabul embassy of the various entities involved in antinarcotics efforts was “generally ad hoc and informal.”

Coordination between the American embassies in Kabul and Islamabad, it said, was “limited.”

It also listed the profound handicaps undercutting that effort, “including a weak justice system, corruption and the lack of political will” in the Afghan government, and the overpowering economic incentives that lead farmers to grow poppies.

Among other things, the report recommends setting “a defined end state” for counternarcotics programs; establishing benchmarks for the shift toward an Afghan takeover of those programs; and establishing in-country monitoring of contractors.

The report was based on meetings with embassy personnel in Kabul and Islamabad, visits to Kabul and four Afghan provinces, and meetings with United Nations, United States military and coalition government officials.

U.S. Charges 3 in Drug Case With Helping Al Qaeda

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By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed narcotics and terrorism conspiracy charges on Friday against three West Africans they said were associates of Al Qaeda and a related terrorist group, marking the first time such charges had been brought against people said to be linked to Al Qaeda.

The men, who were taken into custody on Wednesday in Ghana and flown to the United States on Thursday night, were arrested after a four-month investigation in which paid informants working with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration posed as members of a Colombian terrorist group, according to court papers.

Federal authorities have long maintained that Al Qaeda has been involved in drug trafficking, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

The two informants approached the defendants and sought their assistance in transporting and providing security for cocaine shipments as large as a ton from West Africa, through North Africa and on to Spain, according to the papers. One informant posed as a Lebanese radical who represented the Colombian group, the FARC, and the other as a member of the group.

Image by katutaide via Flickr

“Today’s allegations reflect the emergence of a worrisome alliance between Al Qaeda and transnational narcotics traffickers,” Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney in Manhattan said in a statement announcing the arrests. “As terrorists diversify into drugs, however, they provide us with more opportunities to incapacitate them and cut off the funding for future acts of terror.”

The three men in custody were identified as Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman. They were charged with conspiracy to commit narco terrorism and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorist groups — Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The court papers in the case, an 18-page criminal complaint unsealed in United States District Court in Manhattan, detail the international sting operation that ensnared the three men, all members of what prosecutors described as “a criminal organization operating in the West African countries of Togo, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Mali.”

The group had close ties to Al Qaeda, which was to provide security for the last leg of the drug shipment’s journey through the North African Desert, according to the complaint.

The two informants met with the men several times from September to December to negotiate the terms and plan the shipments, sessions that were secretly recorded by the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to the complaints. The complaints said the informants also communicated with the defendants by telephone and e-mail as they made arrangements.

Mr. Touré initially cited a transportation price of $2,000 per kilogram of cocaine, as the men discussed shipments ranging from 500 to 1,000 kilograms, the complaint said. But he later upped the price to $10,000 a kilo, citing his own costs and expenses, including paying people along the route. While the informants initially balked, they eventually agreed, according to the complaint.

The three defendants identified themselves to the informants as associates of Al Qaeda and said they had provided similar services to the terrorist group in the past, officials said.

The men were set to be arraigned Friday afternoon before Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV in United States District Court in Lower Manhattan.

A defense lawyer for Mr. Abelrahman, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, said he was reviewing the charges.

“Mr. Abelrahman will benefit from the full panoply of rights guaranteed to him under the Constitution of the United States and the laws governing criminal procedure,” he said.

James M. Roth, a lawyer for Mr. Toure, declined to comment; Mr. Issa’s lawyer, Julia Gatto, could not be reached for comment.

The three men were charged under statutes passed in 2006 that give federal drug agents the authority to prosecute narcotics and terrorism crimes committed anywhere in the world if a link between a drug offense and a specified act of terrorism or a terrorist organization can be established.

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• Ghanaians linked to drugs, terrorism flown to U.S. for trial (cnn.com)

Islamic militants boosting role in drug trade - Washington Times

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Claude Salhani THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The sea lanes of the South Atlantic have become a favored route for drug traffickers carrying narcotics from Latin America to West and North Africa, where al Qaeda-related groups are increasingly involved in transporting the drugs to Europe, intelligence officials and counternarcotics specialists say.

A Middle Eastern intelligence official said his agency has picked up "very worrisome reports" of rapidly growing cooperation between Islamic militants operating in North and West Africa and drug lords in Latin America. With U.S. attention focused on the Caribbean and Africans lacking the means to police their shores, the vast sea lanes of the South Atlantic are wide open to illegal navigation, the official said.

"The South Atlantic has become a no-man's sea," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity owing to the nature of his work.

A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) confirmed the new route.

"The Colombians have shifted their focus from sending cocaine through the Caribbean, and they saw an opportunity to sell cocaine in Europe, transshipping it through the South Atlantic from Venezuela and then to Africa, through Spain and into Europe," DEA spokesman Michael Sanders told The Washington Times. "That's what we're seeing. It's just a new location. That's the route they're taking, for the most part."

The Washington Times reported in March that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese Shi'ite group, is deeply involved in the drug trade. Increasingly, however, Sunni groups linked to al Qaeda are also dealing in narcotics to finance their organizations, specialists say.

"It's a weapon against the infidels in the West," said Chris Brown, a senior research associate at the Potomac Institute outside Washington. "As long as the target of the drug trade is the infidels, they have no problem doing it."

Concerns center on groups such as al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), which operates primarily in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. North African officials say they worry that AQIM is amassing large sums of money from the drug trade to use in financing attacks, with the object of frightening away tourists, undercutting local economies and, ultimately, secular regimes.

Much of the drug trafficking passes through Venezuela, said Jaime Daremblum, the director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the Hudson Institute and a former Costa Rican ambassador to the United States.

"Caracas has become the cathedral of narco-traffickers," he said.

Colombian and Peruvian drugs pass through Venezuela en route to Africa and then are transshipped to European markets, anti-drug specialists say. The FARC guerrilla movement, which seeks to destabilize the government of Colombia, is involved and has links to the Islamists in North Africa, they say.

"Most of the drugs that are available in Spain come from Venezuela," Mr. Daremblum said.

Venezuelan Ambassador to Washington Bernardo Alvarez said the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has nothing to do with the trafficking and actively fights against it.

"Do not forget that Venezuela is between the biggest producer of drugs [Colombia] and the biggest consumer of drugs [the U.S.]," Mr. Alvarez said in an e-mail. To accuse Venezuela of responsibility "would be like saying the U.S. government is blessing the trafficking of weapons to Mexico, considering that around 90 percent of the weapons confiscated in Mexico originate in the U.S."

The ambassador added, "Venezuela has adopted a comprehensive anti-drug strategy that includes prevention, drug seizures, arrests and extraditions of criminals, destruction of clandestine airstrips, and the monitoring of possible drug routes.

"Venezuela has cooperative anti-drug agreements with 37 countries, including France, Spain and Portugal. Venezuela's fight against drugs has been recognized and lauded by the Organization of American States and even the International Criminal Police Organization."

Michael Shifter, vice president for policy of the Inter-American Dialogue, a center in Washington that focuses on Latin America, said, "Venezuela is a major transshipment point" for drugs, but he said the problem is complex.

"The drug traffickers are having a field day," he said. "The FARC is clearly involved, but there are a lot more actors."

Intelligence officials and other specialists said some of the deals between Islamist groups and narco-traffickers are negotiated in the West African country of Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony where corruption is rampant.

In a recent report, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said there is "a real risk of Guinea-Bissau becoming Africa's first narco-state."

The ICG, a think tank based in Washington and Brussels that focuses on conflict prevention and amelioration, added that "in the absence of effective state and security structures, the country has become a prime transit point for drug trafficking from Latin America to Europe."

The Middle East intelligence official said the CIA tries to monitor the trafficking but cannot stop it in a country where Islamists and drug dealers buy impunity by paying hefty bribes to officials.

The official suggested that a joint tracking center be set up to coordinate data on air and plane shipments on both sides of the South Atlantic.

"If the South Americans know of a ship or plane coming to Africa, they can inform us, and we will track it from here," the official said.

Mr. Sanders of the DEA said his organization "knows there are extremist groups in West Africa, but at this point we don't know if they're playing a role in narcotics trafficking."

• Sara A. Carter contributed to this story from Washington.

Mexican Pot Gangs Infiltrate Indian Reservations in U.S. - WSJ.com

By JOEL MILLMAN

Washington State Patrol

Washington State Police got to this marijuana harvest before the Mexican gangs did.

WARM SPRINGS, Ore. -- Police Chief Carmen Smith says he knows three things about suspected drug trafficker Artemio Corona: He's from Mexico, prefers a Glock .40-caliber handgun, and is quite possibly growing marijuana on the Indian reservation that Mr. Smith patrols.

Last year, Mr. Smith's detectives identified Mr. Corona as the alleged mastermind behind several large marijuana plantations on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in central Oregon. These "grows," as police call them, had a harvest of 12,000 adult plants, with an estimated street value of $10 million. Five suspects were arrested and pleaded guilty to federal trafficking charges. But their alleged boss, Mr. Corona, who has not been indicted, remains a "person of interest" to federal authorities and hasn't been found.

On the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington, tribal authorities hunt for illegal marijuana farms hidden deep in the forest. WSJ's Joel Millman reports.

Cultivating marijuana in Indian country represents a new twist in the decades-old illicit drug trade between Mexico and the U.S., the world's largest drug-consuming market. For decades, Mexican drug gangs grew marijuana in Mexico, smuggled it across the border, and sold it in the U.S. But in the past few years, they have done what any burgeoning business would do: move closer to their customers.

Illicit pot farms, the vast majority run by gangs with ties to Mexico, are growing fast across the country. The U.S. Forest Service has discovered pot farms in 61 national forests across 16 states this year, up from 49 forests in 10 states last year. New territories include public land in Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Alabama and Virginia.

The area where Mexican gangs seem to be expanding the fastest is on Indian reservations. In Washington state, tribal police seized more than 233,000 pot plants on Indian land last year, almost 10 times the 2006 figure. Pot seized on Washington's reservations accounted for about half of all pot seized on both private and public land last year. Police are finding pot farms on reservations stretching from California to South Dakota.

"These criminal organizations are growing in Indian country at an alarming rate," says Chief Smith. "The [growers] on our reservation were sent directly from Mexico."

At Chief Smith's reservation, police found trash piles that included crushed Modelo-brand beer cans and tortilla packages. They also recovered cellphones with a flurry of calls to and from Michoacán, Mexico -- an important drug-producing state. One grow in Washington state's Yakama Reservation featured a makeshift shrine to Mexico's unofficial patron saint to smugglers, Jesús Malverde, complete with votive candles and a photograph of the mythical figure.

Part of the trend is due to unforeseen consequences of stepped-up security on the U.S. border to slow the tide of illegal immigration from Mexico. Tighter borders make it harder to smuggle pot north, creating the need to produce the cash crop closer to market.

U.S. officials say the quality, and thus price, of U.S. grown weed is much higher than that grown in Mexico. The Mexican variety, typically full of stems and leaves, with a lower content of THC, the active narcotic in marijuana, brings in about $500 to $700 a pound, estimates Washington State Patrol Lt. Richard Wiley, who monitors marijuana grows on the state's public lands. By contrast, a pound of Washington-grown marijuana can command $2,500 locally or up to $6,000 on the East Coast.

Arrests for a marijuana 'grow' valued at $10 million, from top to bottom: Héctor Castillo, Oscar Castillo-Zapién, Evan Michael Nelson and Alejandro Zapién

Warm Springs Tribal Police Department

Warm Springs Police Department

Warm Springs Police Department

Warm Springs Police Department

Marijuana is a lucrative business for Mexican cartels, generating at least $9 billion a year in estimated revenues, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. Mexican gangs are relying even more on income from pot, U.S. drug authorities say, as they burn through cash fighting each other and the Mexican government, which has launched a crackdown. The math is tempting. Start-up expense for about dozen plots, with 10,000 plants each, is well under $500,000, U.S. officials estimate, including the cost of hiring 100 workers to plant marijuana and then several "tenders" to water them for three to four months until harvest. Incidental costs might include generators, PVC pipe and food supplies for the growers. Those plants could fetch about $120 million on the open market. With such impressive profit margins, a cartel can afford to have dozens of grows spotted and eradicated for every one that it harvests successfully.

The tighter U.S.-Mexican border is also prompting an unwillingness by illegal farm workers to cross back and forth. These migrants have decided to stay put in El Norte rather than return to Mexico after harvest -- creating a year-round labor force in rural areas. In a down economy, those workers face long stretches of unemployment -- leaving them easily swayed by offers to make quick cash growing marijuana.

That seems to be happening in Indian country. Chief Smith, who is a Wichita tribal member from Oklahoma but came here for the job, says the cartel growing pot on his reservation was paying tenders $2,000 a month each to water and watch their plots.

Indian reservations are full of transients, either people from other tribes whose members have married into local families, or undocumented farmworkers from Mexico. "Around here it's not easy to tell who's a tribal member and who's Hispanic," says Police Chief Keith Hutchenson of Idaho's Coeur d'Alene Tribe. That makes it easier for Mexican drug traffickers to blend in, he adds.

A decade ago, police in Washington state say most of the state's pot was grown by hobbyists indoors, using high-powered lamps. But that has changed in recent years to larger, outdoor grows that are more "corporate," run by sophisticated Mexican gangs.

At first, the Mexican growers began using remote public parkland in California, and have since expanded toward neighboring Oregon and Washington. Both states have two things gangs need: lots of unguarded forest land and lots of cheap Mexican labor.

Mexico-based cartels exploit several conditions unique to reservations, starting with chronically understaffed tribal police departments. Overlapping jurisdictions between tribal courts and outside agencies -- from the local sheriff to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration -- confuse the issue of who should take the lead in prosecuting crimes.

Federal authorities coordinate with tribal authorities on issues related to investigations, search warrants and other criminal proceedings, says Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen Bickers of Portland, who prosecuted the men growing pot on the Warm Springs Reservation.

Another attraction is the sheer size of the jurisdictions. Colville Reservation is 2,200 square miles and patrolled by just 19 tribal police officers. The ancestral homes of tribes such as Oregon's Umatilla, Idaho's Nez Perce and Washington's Yakama have thousands of acres of often uninhabited land, and also abut huge tracts of public land.

The cartels often mix the marijuana plants in with other crops, such as corn, or plant them deep inside forests amid pine and oak trees to make them difficult to detect from air patrols.

The reservations aren't only home to marijuana farms but are becoming sites for gun trafficking. At the Yakama homeland, a 1.4-million-acre reservation near Toppenish, Wash., a Mexican gang allegedly has planted hundreds of acres of marijuana and run guns to Mexico. U.S. investigators say the guns have ended up in the hands of Mexico's most feared paramilitary drug group, Los Zetas.

There is enough gun trafficking that Washington state now ranks fourth as a supplier of weapons to Mexican drug gangs after Texas, California and Arizona, according to police. "A weapon bought here for $1,000 can be sold for $3,000 or even $6,000" south of the border, says Michael Akins, lead investigator for a multiagency drug task force, called Operation Green Jam. "That might buy cocaine for $3,000 a pound, which then could be sold in Washington for $20,000 a pound."

State police believe gunmen from Los Zetas, a group initially formed by deserters from Mexico's army and famed for its brutality, are already in Washington to provide security during harvests. In 2008 police recovered a small arsenal of powerful weapons near the Yakama grows.

"AR-15s and Berettas, mostly. At least a dozen," says Lt. Wiley, of the Washington State Patrol.

There is enough money involved in growing to tempt some legal residents. In September, law-enforcement officials in Benton County, Wash., busted three men working at a private ranch owned by Jose Luis Cardenas, a legal immigrant from Mexico. He allegedly earned $3,000 from a drug gang to rent his barn for eight days, the Benton County officials said. Stalks of fresh marijuana were dried and picked by workers arranged in a circle, like an old-time shucking bee, according to state police. Mr. Cardenas, who was charged with harboring and abetting illegal production of a controlled substance, is in custody, and didn't respond to requests for comment.

The operations can be elaborate. One site at the Yakama reservation sat more than a dozen miles from the nearest paved road. Tapping water from an abandoned livestock trough, growers had workers string more than 1,000 yards of plastic irrigation pipe down to a cistern that fed a primitive treetop sprinkler system.

Tribal police uncovered another irrigation network in July at the Colville Reservation, just south of the Canadian border. After damming a small spring, guerrilla cultivators strung drip irrigation pipe hundreds of yards to marijuana fields. At one spot, the gang dug a rustic cistern from the crater of a fallen ponderosa pine. Nearby, they ran a gasoline-powered generator hitched to a pump that took spring water to a second cistern almost a mile away. The jury-rigged spillway nourished a total of 24,000 plants along the mountain slope.

That grow at Colville was found deep in the backwoods, where the tribe harvests timber for two reservation lumber mills. Colville Police Chief Matt Haney suspects immigrant workers hired to replant trees end up doing reconnaissance work for drug organizations.

"We've got over a million acres and forest fires are common," the chief explains. "Mexican laborers are hired by the U.S. Forest Service to do replanting, and work for the tribe's timber operations, too. They notice where there are streams, where there aren't streams. What can be reached by road, what can't. They share that information with some very sophisticated growers."

Warms Springs Reservation police say the drug gangs planting marijuana on the reservation since 2007 may have had Mexican workers spotting sites for them. Workers are often hired by tribal enterprises, including a small company that collects pine cones and fronds to fashion into Christmas tree ornaments.

John Webb, a tribal police detective, says collecting pine cones gives outsiders an excuse to be on the reservation -- something normally not allowed -- and form friendships.

Mr. Webb doesn't know whether pine-cone collecting prompted Oscar Castillo Zapién to come to Warm Springs. But in September 2008, Mr. Castillo was arrested for assault after allegedly firing his Glock semiautomatic pistol into a van departing from his home, striking one passenger in the neck. Eventually police linked him to the outdoor marijuana grows, together with at least three cousins, Héctor Castillo, Alejandro Zapién and Alfredo Olivera.

The men told authorities, as part of a plea bargain, that they reported to Artemio Corona, who was also a relative. In court papers, some of the suspects claimed to have been terrorized by Mr. Corona, who they say threatened them with his own Glock as he supervised work in the secret marijuana gardens.

At first, the Mexican suspects thought operating on tribal land shielded them from prosecution, says Mr. Webb. While the tribal court declined to prosecute, federal authorities were eager to take the case. To avoid the cost of trial, the U.S. attorney in Portland allowed the five defendants to plead guilty to a relatively minor charge of "conspiracy to manufacture marijuana," and receive sentences of up to 70 months in prison. Four are now serving time in U.S. federal prisons. One received probation.

Tribal police in Washington and Oregon say they expect Mexican gangs to keep reappearing every year during the summer harvest season. Says Chief Smith: "If we ever catch them, we'll run them off the reservation."

Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com

U.S. hit list of suspected Afghan drug lords draws protests - washingtonpost.com

Image by ChuckHolton via Flickr

PUBLIC OUTRAGE FEARED Justice system will be undermined, officials say

By Craig Whitlock
Saturday, October 24, 2009

KABUL -- A U.S. military hit list of about 50 suspected drug kingpins is drawing fierce opposition from Afghan officials, who say it could undermine their fragile justice system and trigger a backlash against foreign troops.

The U.S. military and NATO officials have authorized their forces to kill or capture individuals on the list, which was drafted within the past year as part of NATO's new strategy to combat drug operations that finance the Taliban. The list is thought to include people with close ties to the Afghan government and others who have served as intelligence assets for the CIA and the U.S. military, according to current and former U.S. and Afghan officials.

Afghan counternarcotics officials expressed frustration that U.S. and NATO military leaders have refused to divulge the names on the list, a decision that they said could undercut joint operations to hunt down opium traffickers.

Gen. Mohammad Daud Daud, Afghanistan's deputy interior minister for counternarcotics efforts, praised U.S. and British special forces for their help recently in destroying drug labs and stashes of opium. But he said he worried that foreign troops would now act on their own to kill suspected drug lords, based on secret evidence, instead of handing them over for trial.

"They should respect our law, our constitution and our legal codes," Daud said. "We have a commitment to arrest these people on our own."

For years, the NATO-led military coalition in Afghanistan ignored the opium trade, saying their mission was to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda, not drug dealers. Afghanistan's poppy fields supply about 90 percent of the world's opium.

At a meeting in Budapest last October, however, NATO defense ministers reversed their strategy and authorized their forces to confiscate narcotics and target drug labs as well as kingpins who provide monetary or other support to the Taliban.

Target list of 50

Since then, the U.S. military has developed a target list of about 50 drug kingpins thought to support the insurgency and has ruled that they can be killed or captured "on the battlefield," according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report released in August.

Two unnamed U.S. generals in Afghanistan told the committee's staff members that the list complies with international law and the U.S. military's rules of engagement because it contains only drug lords with "proven links" to the insurgency. To add someone to the list, the Pentagon requires "two verifiable human sources and substantial additional evidence," according to the Senate report.

U.S. Army Col. Wayne M. Shanks, chief of public affairs for coalition forces in Afghanistan, declined to answer questions about the list or to say whether anyone on it has been killed or captured.

The military "is concerned when we see a nexus between insurgent activity or financing and drug trafficking in Afghanistan," he said in an e-mail. "We regularly conduct operations to limit the insurgents' ability to intimidate, or otherwise threaten the Afghan people."

Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister, said that he had long urged the Pentagon and its NATO allies to crack down on drug smugglers and suppliers, and that he was glad that the military alliance had finally agreed to provide operational support for Afghan counternarcotics agents. But he said foreign troops needed to avoid the temptation to hunt down and kill traffickers on their own.

"There is a constitutional problem here. A person is innocent unless proven guilty," he said. "If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?"

Need for secrecy

At the same time, Jalali said he could understand why U.S. and NATO officials would want to keep their target list a secret from their Afghan counterparts. Corruption in the Afghan government is widespread, and some high-ranking officials are suspected to be involved in the drug trade.

Jalali said the Afghan government once kept its own secret list of drug traffickers. The list was considered highly sensitive, he said, because many of the suspects had ties to influential Afghan leaders, while others had served as intelligence assets for the CIA or the U.S. Defense Department.

"Many of these people were empowered by the international community when they were fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda after 9/11," said Jalali, now a professor at the National Defense University in Washington. "There was no political will to go after them."

In general, NATO forces have taken a more aggressive approach against Afghan drug operations in recent months, particularly in southern poppy-growing provinces.

In Kandahar, U.S. and British troops are joining a new task force consisting of Afghan police officers, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and officers from Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency. The task force's mission is to seize heroin stockpiles, blow up drug labs and investigate corrupt Afghan officials.

New approach praised

U.N. officials, who closely monitor the drug trade in Afghanistan, praised the new cooperative approach. They said the joint police-military operations were especially timely because opium production has dropped by more than one-third since 2007 because of a supply glut on the global market.

Jean-Luc Lemahieu, Afghanistan director for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said the decline represented a one-time opportunity to make a permanent dent in production levels. He said NATO's help in going after drug labs and stockpiles had proven effective, but he cautioned the military against taking the fight a step too far.

"Extrajudicial killing is not something you want to see," Lemahieu said. "Let's be very, very clear. Don't expect the military to do the job of a police officer. It won't work."

Afghanistan's nascent judicial system, however, has struggled to enforce the law against traffickers. And when it does win convictions, cases can still fall apart.

In April, five traffickers who had been sentenced to long prison terms received pardons from President Hamid Karzai, who said he intervened "out of respect" for their family members. One defendant was the nephew of Karzai's campaign manager.

"We have some people, powerful people, inside and outside government, who can freely smuggle drugs," said Nur al-Haq Ulumi, a member of the Afghan parliament from Kandahar. "If we had an honest government, the government could track down and arrest these people -- everybody knows this."

But Ulumi said it would make things worse if coalition troops began to kill drug dealers. "Already, people feel that foreigners didn't really come here to reconstruct our country," he said. "They think the foreigners just came here to kill us."

Ahmad Big Qaderi, director general of prosecutions for the Criminal Justice Task Force, which oversees narcotics cases and is financed largely by the U.S. government, said NATO forces needed to trust his agency to prosecute drug dealers.

"We should go through the Afghan legal channels to convict criminals," he said. "We have professional staff here and all the mechanisms to prosecute the big fishes."

Report Shows Afghan Drugs Reach Deep in the West - NYTimes.com

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By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — The Afghan opium harvest is feeding a $65 billion global trade in heroin each year, which now kills many more people in NATO countries in a year than the number of NATO soldiers who have died on the battlefield in Afghanistan since 2001, Antonio Maria Costa, the senior United Nations official on drugs and crime, said Thursday.

“If we do not address this, it will be hard to solve all the other problems in Afghanistan,” Mr. Costa said, adding that the lucrative nature of the heroin trade is creating a “narco-cartel” in Afghanistan that includes corrupt government and security officials.

It is easier to try to uproot the heroin trade at its source, where opium is grown, than its destination, he said, particularly because heroin trafficking is disrupted less effectively in affluent Western countries, despite their financial and police resources.

Mr. Costa was summarizing a report from the office he heads, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which was released on Wednesday.

The opium crop from Afghanistan is refined to produce 375 tons of heroin, which makes up the bulk of the trade worldwide.

Drawing on figures supplied by the countries themselves, the United Nations report says that Iran intercepts 20 percent of the 105 tons of heroin that flows through its territory, Pakistan 17 percent of the 150 tons that comes in and Central Asian countries only 5 percent of the 100 tons that enters these nations.

Europeans consume about 88 tons of heroin per year, and the authorities seize only 2 percent of the heroin that enters Europe, mostly through Bulgaria, Greece and Romania, according to the report.

The annual death toll in all NATO countries from heroin overdoses is estimated to be more than 10,000, an annual total that is about five times higher the number of NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan in the past eight years, the report said.

The proceeds from the heroin trade help fuel the Taliban insurgency. When the Taliban were in power a decade ago in Afghanistan, heroin produced $100 million a year in taxes, the report said. The insurgents are now estimated to be gaining $160 million a year from trafficking in the drug.

Mr. Costa recommended that NATO forces concentrate on trying to dismantle the drug cartels in Afghanistan, instead of striking at individual farmers and crops.

By bombing drug laboratories, along with attacking traffickers and open drug markets, NATO troops have had limited success, he said, but they need to extend their reach.

U.S. arrests 303 in raid targeting Mexico's La Familia drug cartel - washingtonpost.com

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By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 23, 2009

U.S. authorities arrested 303 people Wednesday and Thursday in a nationwide sweep targeting the distribution network of La Familia, a fast-rising Mexican drug cartel known for its violence, messianic culture and control over the methamphetamine trade, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Thursday.

More than 3,000 federal, state and local agents participated in the U.S. law enforcement operation, the largest mounted against a Mexican cartel, Holder said.

The raids "dealt a significant blow to La Familia's supply chain," Holder said, netting cash, drugs, weapons and vehicles in 19 states. But U.S. officials did not say whether any cartel leaders were caught. "With the increases in cooperation between U.S. and Mexican authorities in recent years, we are taking the fight to our adversaries," Holder said.

Arrests took place in 38 cities, from Boston to Seattle, with 77 made in Dallas. The effort involved the Drug Enforcement Administration; the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Charges include drug and gun trafficking and money laundering.

Analysts said the operation appeared designed to allay skepticism among Mexico's political leaders about the U.S. government's commitment to Mexico's crackdown on cartels. The drug-related violence has taken about 15,000 lives since President Felipe Calderón entered office in 2006. Mexican authorities have arrested 80,000 drug suspects, and Washington has responded with $1.4 billion in aid under the Merida initiative, but some in Mexico have grown frustrated with the U.S. market's continuing demand for illegal drugs.

"Many Mexican leaders have viewed the Merida initiative as too little and too late," said George W. Grayson, a Mexico specialist at the College of William and Mary who has written about La Familia, "and so Washington is trying to make clear that we are good faith, genuine partners in the war against drugs."

La Familia, the newest of Mexico's five major cartels, has become entrenched in many U.S. cities after flourishing in Mexico through entrepreneurial zeal, brutality and promises to spin drug profits into "divine justice," or social benefits for its impoverished home state.

La Familia opposes the sale of methamphetamine to Mexicans, for example, but is responsible for the "vast majority" of the lucrative drug entering the United States from Mexico, said Michele M. Leonhart, acting DEA administrator.

The cartel, based in the southwestern Mexico state of Michoacan, has also benefited from a splintering of older cartels, and its effort to gain social legitimacy is combined with a savage program to kill, coerce and corrupt security and government personnel, Mexican analysts said.

In Washington, Holder said that U.S. authorities have targeted La Familia for 44 months. Under the effort, called Project Coronado, the federal government has arrested 1,186 people and seized $32.8 million, 2,710 pounds of methamphetamine, 1,999 kilograms of cocaine, 29 pounds of heroin, 16,390 pounds of marijuana, 389 weapons and 269 vehicles.

U.S. authorities indicted, but did not arrest, La Familia's operational chief, Servando Gomez-Martinez -- known as La Tuta.

Mexico Replaces Attorney General as Drug Violence Soars - WSJ.com

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MEXICO CITY -- President Felipe Calderón on Monday replaced his longtime attorney general, one of the key figures in his government's effort to bring Mexico's powerful drug cartels to heel, as the country's drug violence continues to spiral.

In a short speech, Mr. Calderón said Arturo Chávez, a former attorney general of northern Chihuahua state, was replacing Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora. Chihuahua's largest city, Ciudad Juárez, has become the epicenter of Mexico's drug violence. Just last week, gunmen took over a drug rehabilitation center there and executed 18 patients, marking a new and grisly milestone in the country's drug violence.

Mr. Calderón also announced changes at the agriculture ministry and at state oil company Pemex. Mr. Calderón named former Pemex Chief Financial Officer Juan José Suárez Coppel as the company's new chief executive, taking over from Jesús Reyes Heroles, a former energy minister. Mr. Suárez Coppel takes the reins at a tough time for the oil giant: Output has fallen to 2.5 million barrels a day from a peak of 3.4 million in 2004 amid a dramatic decline in output from Mexico's main oil field, Cantarell.

The changes come as Mr. Calderón tries to regain political traction following July midterm legislative elections in which his center-right National Action Party suffered a major defeat to the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, which now has the most seats in the lower house of Congress.

Since coming to power in 2006, Mr. Calderón has made the fight against Mexico's warring cartels the centerpiece of his policy. He has deployed an estimated 40,000 soldiers to cities like Ciudad Juárez to take on the drug gangs, using soldiers instead of often-corrupt local police.

More than 13,000 people have died since Mr. Calderon took office, according to newspaper estimates, most victims of internecine warfare between drug cartels fighting over drug routes to the U.S. and increasingly lucrative Mexican drug markets.

Mr. Medina Mora's departure is a boost for Public Security Minister Genaro García Luna: The two men had clashed over Mr. García Luna's plans to create a single national police force under his command. Mexico's Congress killed that plan, but Mr. García Luna has begun creating a de facto national police, his new Federal Police force.

"This shows beyond any doubt that Mr. García Luna is the one driving the drug-war policy and is closest to Mr. Calderón's beliefs and ideas," said Guillermo Zepeda, a criminal justice specialist at Mexico's Center for Development Studies, a think tank.

Mr. Medina Mora, a corporate lawyer, had been attorney general for the last three years. During the previous administration, he served as head of the CISEN, Mexico's equivalent of the U.S.'s Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Calderón said Mr. Medina Mora will continue to serve Mexico in a diplomatic post. Mr. Medina Mora is expected to be named Mexico's ambassador to the U.K., people familiar with the situation say.

Mr. Medina Mora posted some victories, such as the capture of an alleged methamphetamine dealer together with a record stash of $207 million in cash. Mr. Medina Mora also extradited a record number of alleged drug traffickers to the U.S.

But a year ago, his office was shaken by scandal when it was revealed that several top members of the attorney general's office's antidrug unit had been on the payroll of one of Mexico's most powerful drug gangs. Neither Mr. Medina Mora nor Mr. García Luna have been to recapture an alleged top drug dealer, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.

Mr. Chávez, a member of Mr. Calderón's center-right National Action Party, was Chihuahua's attorney general from 1996 to 1998. Jorge Montaño, a former ambassador to the U.S. and a native of Chihuahua, said Mr. Chávez did a good job, but lamented that the president hadn't reached out beyond the ranks of the PAN. "It's all the same gang," he said.

—David Luhnow contributed to this article.

Write to José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com

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U.N. Report Cites Sharp Drop in Opium Cultivation in Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com

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By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 2, 2009

KABUL, Sept. 1 -- Cultivation in Afghanistan of opium, the nation's most lucrative cash crop and a major funding source for the Taliban, has fallen sharply this year in large part because an excess supply of the drug has pushed down prices to a 10-year low, according to a U.N. report scheduled to be released Wednesday.

The Obama administration has changed course on its opium policy here, moving away from eradication efforts favored by the Bush administration that senior officials now say wasted millions of dollars. Instead, funding is being directed toward programs to persuade farmers to grow other crops. But more than those nascent efforts, U.N. officials said, the cause of the decline in opium cultivation this year was a deteriorating market for the drug.

"Overall, you could say we are now profiting from a fantastic market correction," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the Afghanistan office of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). "There is just too much supply around, so the attractiveness is diminishing."

The area under opium poppy cultivation fell this year by 22 percent, to 123,000 hectares, or about 304,000 acres, the second consecutive year of decline after a rapid growth of opium farming since the war began in 2001, according to the United Nations' 2009 Afghanistan Opium Survey. Twenty of the country's 34 provinces are considered poppy-free, two more than last year.

Much of the decline was in Helmand province, in the south, where U.S. Marines have launched an offensive against the Taliban. Helmand still accounts for nearly 60 percent of all opium grown in Afghanistan, and drug money continues to fuel the Taliban and the corruption that plagues the Afghan government.

Although the area under opium cultivation declined sharply, the drop in the production of the drug was less dramatic because farmers were able to extract more opium per poppy bulb. Driving both declines, officials said, is a drop in prices to levels not seen since the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from the late 1990s to late 2001. The report found a 40 percent drop in the total value of opium produced, down to $438 million, or 4 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. This helped push more than 800,000 people out of the opium business.

"There's only so much the Taliban can store in the caves," Lemahieu said.

The amount of surplus opium still stashed in Afghanistan is staggering, officials said. The U.N. report said the world's annual demand for opium derivates such as heroin is not more than 5,000 tons, but the drug stockpiles in Afghanistan may be double that. And these stockpiles are durable, Lemahieu said, able to last in good condition for 10 to 15 years. In some areas along the border with Pakistan, opium is used as currency, he said.

The drug industry is so prevalent in places such as Helmand that coalition commanders there say it is often difficult to distinguish between Taliban members, drug traffickers and criminal gangs, all of which take part in the business.

Col. George Amland, deputy commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which operates in Helmand, said that "all those people will coexist very happily as a partnership, while there is a level of chaos," but that his troops are attempting to interrupt and split the networks.

The U.N. report praised Afghan and NATO troops for destroying tons of chemicals, seeds, drugs and 27 labs this year, as well as for moving away from eradication as a policy.

"You've seen some pretty sizable operations down south in Helmand," said Col. Wayne Shanks, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul. "Our presence there and our activities in the area may have contributed to some of those figures" of declining opium cultivation.

U.N. officials estimate that the Taliban collects at least $125 million a year from opium production, including by taxing farmers and levying "protection" fees for cargo trucks transiting its territory. There are also signs that the group is increasingly involved in the high-end value aspects of the business, including converting opium to heroin and trading in precursor chemicals, such as acetic anhydride. Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UNODC, wrote in the report that there is "growing evidence" that "some anti-government elements in Afghanistan are turning into narco-cartels."

Still, officials said the Taliban is wary of compromising its Islamic ideology and placing in jeopardy funding sources from other Muslim countries by fully committing to the drug trade, Lemahieu said.

"Mullah [Mohammad] Omar is still the leader of the Taliban, and he is not a drug trafficker," Lemahieu said. "That ideological sharpness is so important for them. So you cannot compare them yet with the FARC," he said, referring to the Colombian guerrilla group heavily involved in cocaine trafficking.

The U.S. and British governments are rushing to develop programs before the planting season begins in October to encourage Afghan farmers to grow crops such as wheat and fruit instead of opium. The programs offer vouchers to buy cheap seeds and provide farm workers with infrastructure jobs. The U.N. report said a rural development program to employ farmers needs to be as ambitious as the military offensive.

"There is no need to bribe farmers to stay away from drugs: market forces are already doing this," the report said.

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War Without Borders - Mexico’s Drug Traffickers Continue Trade in Prison

By MARC LACEY

MEXICO CITY — The surveillance cameras captured it all: guards looking on nonchalantly as 53 inmates — many of them associated with one of Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels — let themselves out of their cells and sped off in waiting vehicles.

The video shows that prison guards only pulled out their weapons after the inmates were well on their way. The brazen escape in May in the northern state of Zacatecas — carried out in minutes without a single shot fired — is just one of many glaring examples of how Mexico’s crowded and cruel prison system represents a critical weak link in the drug war.

Mexico’s prisons, as described by inmates and insiders and viewed during several visits, are places where drug traffickers find a new base of operations for their criminal empires, recruit underlings, and bribe their way out for the right price. The system is so flawed, in fact, that the Mexican government is extraditing record numbers of drug traffickers to the United States, where they find it much harder to intimidate witnesses, run their drug operations or escape.

The latest jailbreak took place this weekend, when a suspected drug trafficker vanished from a Sinaloa prison during a party for inmates featuring a Mexican country music band. The Mexican government is considering isolating drug offenders from regular inmates to reduce opportunities for abuse.

The United States government, as part of its counternarcotics assistance program, is committing $4 million this year to help fix Mexico’s broken prisons, officials said. Experts from state prisons in the United States have begun tutorials for Mexican guards to make sure that there are clear ethical guidelines and professional practices that distinguish them from the men and women they guard. “There’s no point in rounding all these characters up if they are going to get out on their own,” said an American official involved in the training, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Although Mexican prisons call themselves Centers for Social Rehabilitation, “Universities of crime would be a better name,” said Pedro Héctor Arellano, who runs the prison outreach program in Mexico for the Episcopal Church.

Mexico’s prisons are bursting at the seams, with space for 172,151 inmates nationwide but an additional 50,000 crammed in. More arrive by the day as part of the government’s drug war, which has sent tens of thousands to prison since President Felipe Calderón took office nearly three years ago.

Inside the high concrete walls ringed by barbed wire, past the heavily armed men in black uniforms with stern expressions, inmates rule the roost. Some well-heeled prisoners pay to have keys to their cells. When life inside, with its pizza deliveries, prostitutes and binges on drugs and alcohol, becomes too confining, prisoners sometimes pay off the guards for a furlough or an outright jailbreak.

“Our prisons are businesses more than anything else,” said Pedro Arellano Aguilar, an expert on prisons. He has visited scores of them in Mexico and has come away with a dire view of what takes place inside. “Everything is for sale and everything can be bought.”

Guards Work for Inmates

For drug lords, flush with money, life on the inside is often a continuation of the free-spirited existence they led outside. Inmates look up to them. Guards often become their employees.

For more than a decade, Enrique, a strapping man with a faraway look in his eyes, worked in one of the roughest prisons in Mexico, imposing his will. He assigned prisoners to cell blocks based on the size of the bribes they made. He punished those who stepped out of line.

“I was the boss,” he declared. Not exactly. Enrique, whose story was corroborated by a prisoner advocates’ group, was actually an inmate, serving time inside Reclusorio Preventivo Oriente prison in Mexico City for trafficking cocaine. “It shouldn’t work the way it does,” said Enrique, now released, who asked that his full name not be published so he can resume life after his 12-year sentence.

Miguel Caro Quintero, a major drug trafficker wanted in Arizona and Colorado on charges of supplying multi-ton shipments of marijuana and cocaine to the United States, was jailed for 10 years in Mexico. Federal prosecutors accused him, like many drug lords, of continuing illegal activities from behind bars, using smuggled cellphones to maintain contact with his underlings on the outside and recruiting prisoners who were nearing the end of their sentences.

When his sentence in Mexico was up, he was sent off to the United States to face charges there, becoming one of more than 50 Mexicans, most of them drug offenders, extradited this year.

“When we keep a criminal in a Mexican prison, we run the risk that one way or another they are going to keep in contact with their criminal network,” Leopoldo Velarde, who heads extraditions for the federal attorney general’s office, said. “The idea is to stop criminals, not just jail them.”

Life in Reclusorio Preventivo Oriente prison’s Dormitory No. 9, where many top drug traffickers are held, shows the clout that influential inmates enjoy. The prisoners are a privileged lot, wearing designer clothing and enjoying special privileges ranging from frequent visits by girlfriends to big-screen televisions in their spacious cells, federal prosecutors told local newspapers after one of the inmates recently bought his way out.

Traffickers continue to run their operations through their lieutenants inside the prison as well as outside, using supposedly banned cellphones.

The government says it is moving aggressively to ship off dangerous criminals who are wanted in the United States and are likely to restart their criminal enterprises from jail. Once the legal requirements are met by both governments, the handcuffed suspects are flown by American government agencies to face trial in the United States. Usually the country that requests extradition pays expenses, but American officials said that who pays depends on individual cases.

Since Mr. Calderón came to office in December 2006, his government has surprised the United States by extraditing more than 200 criminal suspects, more than double the rate of predecessors. Based on the legal battles they begin to avoid extradition, it is clear that inmates fear going to the United States. Their support network, prison officials in both countries say, is considerably weaker there.

For years, the Justice Department lobbied Mexico to allow more criminal suspects to face trial in the United States. But until 2005, Mexican court rulings limited extradition to those cases in which neither the death penalty nor life in prison was sought, and Mexican pride about sovereignty made Mexican officials drag their feet. That changed with Mr. Calderón’s resolve to embark on a tougher drug war.

American officials say they are thrilled with the Mexicans’ more aggressive extradition policy. “The best way to disrupt and dismantle a criminal organization is to lock up its leaders and seize their money — so we will work with our Mexican counterparts to locate and extradite, when appropriate, cartel leadership to the United States for prosecution,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in July.

A Wave of Escapes

The jailbreak in May at the Cieneguillas prison in Zacatecas was just one of several escapes that showed how porous Mexican jails are. The Zetas, a paramilitary group known for its ruthlessness in protecting its drug turf, planned the escape, and have organized jailbreaks in at least four states, Mexican law enforcement officials said. Zacatecas prison has had at least three escapes in recent years.

The situation there is so bad, according to a local lawyer, Uriel Márquez Valerio, that inmates managed to invite a musical group into the prison in 2005 to celebrate the birthday of a drug trafficker, who several weeks later found a way to escape.

In recent weeks, the authorities have managed to catch three of the 53 escapees from May and have thrown 51 prison officials, including the director, into jail while the investigation into collusion in the escape continues. The prime piece of evidence against the prison employees was the surveillance system they were supposed to use to monitor inmates. The video, leaked by law enforcement officials and now available on YouTube, recorded the jailbreak in detail.

It was clearly an inside job, one that prompted Interpol to issue an international alert for 11 of the escapees, who were deemed “a risk to the safety and security of citizens around the world.”

One of the escapees, Osvaldo García Delgado, a 27-year-old trafficker with the nickname Vampire, said after he had been re-arrested that the Zetas planned the breakout. Carefully plotted for weeks, the operation was designed to release some top Zeta commanders. Scores of lower-level Zetas were taken along as well.

The Vampire told police interrogators that the prisoners were awakened early one morning and told to dress in their best clothes. He expressed surprise that the guards were doing no guarding that day but instead had become instrumental players in the escape plan.

The men carrying out the escape were dressed in federal police uniforms and drove what appeared to be police vehicles, with lights, sirens and official-looking decals affixed to the sides. There was a helicopter flying overhead as well, giving the operation the air of legitimacy. Since drug cartels frequently recruit law enforcement officials as allies, it is never clear in Mexico whether they will in fact enforce the law — or whether they are impostors.

In this case, the authorities later disclosed that the uniforms worn by the gunmen who carried out the escape were either outright fakes or outdated outfits. The vehicles, which screeched away from the scene with sirens blaring, were not actual police-issue either, the authorities said. All that said, investigators have not ruled out the possibility that corrupt law enforcement officials helped carry out the operation.

After the latest escape, federal authorities have begun interviewing prison workers to determine how Orso Iván Gastélum Cruz, who was arrested by the army in 2005, disappeared Sunday from jail in Sinaloa, where one of Mexico’s major drug cartels is based.

Last July, Luis Gonzaga Castro Flores, a trafficker working for the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, bought his way out of Reclusorio Preventivo Oriente prison, where he was described by the local media as the godfather of Dormitory No. 9, the area where many drug prisoners are kept.

Other detainees escape before ever getting to prison or while being transferred to court, often with the aid of their cartel colleagues as well as complicit guards. In March, an armed group opened fire on a police convoy outside Mexico City, freeing five drug traffickers who were being taken to prison.

The government acknowledges it does not have full control of its prisons, but it attributes part of the problem to its aggressive roundup of drug traffickers. Escapes are on the rise, a top federal law enforcement official, Luis Cárdenas Palomino, told reporters recently, because the government was locking up so many leading operatives that it was getting harder for the cartels to function.

A Space Crunch

Mexico’s prison system is a mishmash of federal, state and local facilities of varying quality. The most dangerous prisoners are supposed to be housed in maximum security federal facilities, but there is nowhere near enough space. So the federal government pays the states to take in drug traffickers and other federal prisoners in their far less secure lockups.

From August through December 2008, in the most recent statistics available, state prisons across Mexico reported 36 violent episodes with 80 deaths, 162 injuries and 27 escapes, the government said. There was no breakdown in those statistics of how much of the violence was linked to traffickers, but experts said prisoners involved in the drug trade tend to be the most fierce and trouble-prone of all.

“These are clear signals that the penal system, as it is currently organized, is not meeting its primary obligation of guarding inmates efficiently and safely while they serve their sentences,” the federal government’s recently released strategic plan on prisons said of the string of assaults and escapes.

To relieve the congestion and better control the inmates, the government is planning a prison-building spree that will add tens of thousands of new beds in the coming years. One goal, officials say, is to keep drug lords separate from petty criminals as well as the many people who have been imprisoned but never convicted, thus reducing their ability to recruit new employees.

The government is also focusing on personnel, boosting guards’ pay, putting them through a newly created training academy and screening them for corruption. Mexico recently sent several dozen of its guards to beef up their skills at the training academy used by the New Mexico Department of Corrections.

All of the trainees, even guards with 15 years’ experience, had to start with the basics, shining their boots, cleaning out dormitory toilets and listening to lectures on how conniving inmates can be in trying to win over weak-willed guards.

Some of those Mexican guards who are now active participants in Mexico’s deeply flawed penal system say they welcome the moves toward professionalism.

One prison guard acknowledged, “We have guns, but we know it is them, not us, who really control things.”