Tuesday 2 October 2012

CIA ambush may be one more chapter in Beltrán Leyva’s history of vengeance



The left-leaning Mexican journal La Jornada , which is published out of Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM), reported on September 28 that the August 24 ambush by Mexican federal police on a United States embassy vehicle may have been called out as a revenge attack by remnants the Beltrán Leyva cartel. That story has now been “broken” by an Associated Press (AP) “exclusive” on October 2nd.

If true, this  an unusual turn of events, given that, after years of suffering defeats at the hands of the Mexican government and rival cartels,  authorities had declared the Beltrán Leyva  cartel disbanded and, effectively, out of business. What isn’t odd, as we shall see, is that remnants of Beltrán Leyva might engage in extreme acts of vengeance.

A Mexican Navy captain called for help from within the U.S. embassy vehicle

To support its report, AP cited a Mexican official as saying that investigators are now looking at the Beltran Leyva Cartel as the source of the ambush. A senior U.S. official also pointed to “strong circumstantial evidence” that the police, who wounded two CIA agents in the attack, were working for organized crime. The CIA agents have since returned to the United States.