Tijuana police said Saturday they had found a man's severed head bound in duct tape beside a sign threatening members of a gang he allegedly belonged to. Three other bodies, all with bullet wounds, were also found on Friday in Tijuana.
In the nearby city of Tecate, an investigative police officer was found shot to death, and the body on another man — apparently an assailant killed while attacking the officer — was found nearby.Also Saturday, Mexico's Defense Department reported that a regional military commander, Gen. Jorge Cardenas Canton, had committed suicide after suffering a sudden depression.Cardenas Canton commanded army troops in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Like all Mexican military officers, part of his duties included combating drug trafficking

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Carmine Carini is back in jail, awaiting trial in a string of robberies.
Federal prosecutors say the 49-year-old Brooklyn man was free for less than a year before running into trouble.A judge ordered him held without bail Friday. He faces charges that he posed as a police officer and then barged into two homes on Staten Island demanding money and drugs, pistol whipping one startled homeowner. He is also charged with robbing an illegal gambling parlor in Brooklyn.
Carini was initially arrested in connection with one of the robberies last month. An accomplice is still at large.Carini served 23 years in prison for a mob-related killing in the 1980s. His conviction was overturned after two Mafia turncoats told investigators they had the wrong man.He was freed in May of 2007 after taking a plea bargain in which he agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter in exchange for a sentence of time served."Approximately one year after this defendant gets out of prison, where he had been for over 20 years, he turns right back to a life of crime and begins committing these robberies," Assistant U.S. Attorney Berit Berger said Friday in court.Carini's attorney, Sanford Talkin, said his client maintains that he is innocent.

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Jamaica experienced one of its most hellish days ever with the brutal gang rape of a mute woman, the slaying of three other women and the shooting of a fifth who was yesterday in hospital battling for life.The incidents shocked a country already jolted by a string of ruthless murders of children in recent weeks, the latest being that of 11-year-old Christopher Levi Suckra, a grade seven Petersfield High student whose naked, mutilated body was found Thursday morning in a canefield in Banbury,
Westmoreland. Police believe Suckra was also sodomised.
Yesterday's torment started when residents of the middle-class community of Mona in St Andrew found the mute woman naked and traumatised in their community.A resident gave the woman a sheet to cover herself while the police were called. The woman was taken to hospital where she was undergoing a series of tests yesterday.But while officers from the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) strongly suspect that the woman was raped, their investigations are being hampered as she cannot speak and was so shaken by her torture that she refused to use sign language when an expert was called in to communicate with her."She seems to be in shock. The poor thing would not even use sign language, so at this point we are moving slowly along with the investigation," an officer from CISOCA told the Observer yesterday.Police named the murdered women as Rosemarie Smith, also called 'Rasta', of Water Lane in Kingston; Shadel Holding-Witter, 40, of Kintyre in St Andrew; and 45-year-old Judith Lee.Smith was attacked at her home on Water Lane in Kingston about 4:00 am yesterday and shot several times. Her bullet-riddled body was found sprawled out in her yard, police said.Holding-Witter was also at home in the troubled Kintyre community when gunmen struck just before 7:00 am yesterday. Residents reported hearing a barrage of gunshots and when they went to investigate, the woman was found dead on her verandah. She was shot several times.Police say Lee was a prostitute who worked in the vicinity of Seymour Avenue in Kingston. Her badly bruised, nude body was found yesterday morning by residents who called the police. It also appeared that she was strangled, police said.The injured woman was shot by a gang of thugs who kicked in the door to the home she shared with her spouse, 76-year-old Rupert 'Papa' Jones, at John's Road in St Catherine early yesterday morning. Jones was shot and died on the spot.

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East Tyrone Brigade of the IRA, the most lethal but least criminally corrupt element of the Provisional IRA during the three decades of Troubles in the North, ignored its leadership orders and moved against drug dealers in Dungannon in September this year.The move followed the killing of Eamonn Hughes, 48, a local man who was stabbed to death after an evening of celebrations for his daughter Siobhan's 18th birthday. The working class housing estates in Dungannon, such as Lisnahull, where the Hughes family live, had become beset by the anti-social problems associated with heroin addiction in the recent years of the "peace process".This had never happened before in working class areas of the North, where paramilitary groups simply expelled or shot anyone using hard drugs. In the three years since the IRA stopped "punishment" shootings and beatings, heroin and other drugs have flooded into republican and loyalist areas.In places like Belfast, south Armagh and Derry, ex-IRA figures are lining their pockets from providing protection for the drug dealers. Tyrone is a different matter. The Tyrone IRA are old-fashioned, none from criminal backgrounds, and they had become increasingly angry at the influx of heroin into what had previously been largely safe places like Dungannnon.Two nights after the killing, the East Tyrone Brigade acted. In a classic decoy move, the local PSNI station was taken out of operation by a bomb scare -- using an entirely innocent party who found a suspected pipe bomb in his garden and brought it to the station. With police communications down, IRA units then simultaneously visited the homes of nine alleged drug dealers in the town. They were ordered at gunpoint to load up their families and possessions into their cars and leave the town. All did so.Heroin dealing has stopped in Dungannon, and so has much of the torment experienced by its inhabitants.
What the IRA did in Dungannon is illegal and cannot be condoned. But it is very hard to find a law-abiding citizen in the town or county who will condemn it. Heroin dealing, for years restricted to the inner city and troubled suburban estates of Dublin, has reached into every provincial town in Ireland. The killing of Eamonn Hughes was the last straw for the people of Dungannon. Every provincial paper in Ireland is now writing regularly about the social and criminal side-effects of heroin. Last week it was the turn of Kerry's Eye, which led with a story about two local men who had broken into the home of a bachelor farmer at Annascaul and stolen €2,000 to feed their heroin habit. The two drug addicts, Michael O'Driscoll, 29, and Keith Purcell, 34, burgled the farmer's home while he was out, stealing the money from the biscuit tin where he kept his cash. The two accused were given four weeks to pay the farmer €4,000 but when Purcell refused to do so, he was sentenced to 10 months' imprisonment. The grim reality is that heroin has now infected every part of Ireland and this has happened during the tenure of a Fianna Fail-led government which placed law and order as its number one priority. The Government did "deliver" on its promises of increasing the size of the garda force by 2,000 members to a record 14,000, providing whatever resources were sought and passing a raft of new criminal legislation, particularly during the tenure of Michael McDowell. It was McDowell who put forward the proposed legislation on allowing covert surveillance intercepts to be used in criminal cases -- legislation for which will come before the Cabinet on Tuesday.All this, however, has apparently done nothing to stop the mushrooming of heroin and other drug dealing in the State. It has singularly failed to stop the increasing violence of the gangs that supply the drugs. It did not prevent two young gangsters from pursuing Shane Geoghegan as he walked home in Limerick in the early hours of last Sunday morning and shooting him up to 15 times.
In the early part of last week, RTE commentators and guests were using the term "tipping point" about the murder of Shane Geoghegan -- comparing it to the murder of Veronica Guerin in 1996. The gang which murdered Shane Geoghegan was last week in the same situation in which John Gilligan's gang found itself in the aftermath of the murder of Veronica Guerin. There is massive public outrage. The identities of the gang leaders have been widely broadcast. Even the identities of the two young gunmen, one from Limerick one from Dublin, are well known to gardai and the people of Limerick. However, there the similarities might end.
In the immediate aftermath of Veronica's murder, the Government dithered, unsure what to do. At first there were vague promises of "crackdowns" on the gangsters but there was no action. The sense of public outrage grew and grew. Wreaths of flowers appeared on the railings outside the Dail. The palpable sense of anger forced the Government into action. They gave the green light to then Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne, who turned to his top investigator, Chief Superintendent Tony Hickey. He set his detectives to work and they methodically and remorselessly began to destroy John Gilligan and his gang. That point -- the direction to Hickey and his squad to go after Gilligan by whatever means necessary -- could be described as a 'tipping point'. The State followed up with criminal assets legislation, which has since become an international model for anti-organised crime operations.
The gang which murdered Shane Geoghegan are similar to John Gilligan's gang. They are uneducated petty criminals who have risen to power through the use of deadly violence against their opponents, including any innocent member of society prepared to give evidence or speak out against them. The Dundon-McCarthys countenance no opposition and have achieved the same status as the Gilligan gang in that they have been allowed to become a dominant force in the drugs trade. As Gilligan controlled the cannabis and cocaine trade in Dublin, so the Dundon-McCarthys control the trade of cocaine and heroin in Munster, reaching into the Dublin and even UK markets now.
With more resources at their disposal than ever before and the identical sense of public outrage throughout the country, there should have been evidence of some kind of 'tipping point' last week. If there was, it swung back the wrong way, in favour of the gangsters. The point may have come some time on Wednesday afternoon when the funeral of the captain of the Garryowen thirds rugby team finished. By teatime on Wednesday, RTE dropped Shane Geoghegan's murder as the lead item on its news bulletin. Strangely, it opted to lead its 5.30pm bulletin with raids by the PSNI on a network of apartments and houses in the North where herbal cannabis was being grown, an interesting story but not one of national importance.
This may be seen as the point at which Shane Geoghegan became an official statistic -- the 127th victim of gangland violence in the past decade for which the clearance rate stands at considerably less than 10 per cent. Last Monday and Tuesday, there were media appearances by Garda Commissioner Murphy, an assurance by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern that "no stone would be left unturned", and a subdued debate in Dail Eireann on Thursday. A reported 20 houses in Limerick and Dublin were raided and a small amount of drugs recovered. There were no arrests. Embarrassingly, Limerick gang figure Ger Dundon, sought on a warrant since October for failing to appear in court on road traffic offences, handed himself in for committal on a 10-month prison sentence.

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Nghia Trong Nguyen-Tran, known as Jackie Tran, did not violate the terms and conditions of his release from immigration detention. Tran has been fighting a deportation order but was released Oct. 21 on several conditions, including a curfew between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m. and a $20,000 bond. Police re-arrested Tran Oct. 28., following a probe of an early morning altercation at a party in Kensington more than two weeks ago. Cops alleged Tran violated his curfew when he was seen at the scene of the fight. Tran's friend Shaun Roberts testified police mistook him for his pal.
"There's a direct conflict in the evidence between the testimony of Const. Bertrand identifying (Jackie Tran) as the third occupant of the SUV that morning and the evidence of Shaun Roberts, who testified that he was the third occupant of the vehicle," wrote immigration officer Marc Tessler in an eight-page decision. Const. Scott Bertrand testified he was certain Tran was the man he spoke to while investigating the fight. "Despite of the confidence of the police I prefer the evidence of Mr. Roberts," wrote Tessler in his decision. Tessler indicated there's a semblance between Tran, and Roberts. He noted Bertrand identified Tran as the third man in the SUV from a very small photograph, 40 minutes after he saw Roberts. Tran's girlfriend Dawn Ngo testified she spoke with her boyfriend, who was at his mother's house, on the phone several times that night. She phoned him on a land-line starting at 8:15 p.m. to find him watching TV. Ngo testified Tran had too much to lose, including the $20,000 bonds paid by her family and friends, should he breach.
Tessler found Ngo's testimony to be credible. Tran's recent release is under the same conditions when he was freed last month. Police linked Tran, who came to Canada in 1993 and in 2004 was ordered deported to Vietnam, to a gang involved in at least eight murders after he was convicted of assault with a weapon and trafficking heroin the year before.

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Kanye West was reportedly arrested and released early Friday morning (November 14) after an alleged incident involving a photographer outside a nightclub in England. According to TMZ.com, West was arrested shortly after getting into a scuffle with a paparazzo outside the Tup Tup club in Newcastle.West, 31, was reportedly arrested at a hotel in nearby Gateshead and then released. While a police spokesperson declined to name the person involved (as is the custom in England) when reached for comment by MTV News on Friday morning, he did confirm that a 31-year-old man was “release with no further action after an alleged incident at the Tup Tup nightclub.”A rep for West had no comment on the incident when reached by MTV News Friday morning.
The London Paper blog reported that the photographer claimed he suffered a cut face and bruising after West pushed his camera into his face and shouted, “Get the f—ing camera off him.” According to TMZ, the photographer had previously made similar claims against a British soccer player, but those charges were also dropped.West, along with his road manager and bodyguard, Don Crowley, was arrested in September for getting into another altercation with a photographer at Los Angeles International Airport.West and Crowley were waiting for a flight to Honolulu, Hawaii, when they were met by a photographer and videographer, who were taking their photos. An altercation ensued, and the cameras of both paparazzi were damaged. The felony vandalism charges stemming from the incident were dropped because the property he damaged wasn’t valuable enough to warrant felony charges.

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Gangland kingpin Ashton was one of three men jailed for a total of more than 100 years for their part in gangland terror on Tyneside in 1998.They were caught after a two-year investigation by police who examined incidents going back to 1971.A grim picture emerged of gangland violence on Tyneside, including firearms offences, brutal assaults, drug-dealing, witness intimidation, large-scale benefit fraud and robbery.Ashton was jailed along with Robert Webber, of Stonecrop, Beacon Lough Estate, Gateshead, and Paul Steven Lyons, of Teesside.A gun battle and a bayonet attack were among Ashton and Webber’s attempts to kill former friend, Terence William Mitchell.The violence came to a head in January 1996 when Webber and Ashton, in a car, ambushed their victim as he arrived at a friend’s house.Shots were fired by Ashton and a gunfight broke out. Five loaded firearms were seized from the scene.
In 2004, he was ordered to hand over £209,000 assets made from his drug-dealing business.He was forced to sell six properties to cough up £350,000 of profits from crime, which was finally demanded by the High Court after his assets were frozen.
He is currently serving a 22-year sentence.Paul Ashton’s pensioner mother has joined him behind bars for smuggling heroin to him in jail.And now his mother Margaret Rose Ashton is also serving a sentence.It seemed like a show of motherly love when she made the trip from Tyneside to visit Ashton in York’s Full Sutton prison.But the visit by the granny was the ideal front for a heroin-smuggling racket, using her mouth to stash the class-A drug.And the 65-year-old, of Greenwood Gardens, Felling, Gateshead, has joined her son behind bars after being sentenced to 18 months in jail after admitting her crime.The pensioner was found guilty of attempting to smuggle more than six grammes of heroin into him.Ashton, of Gateshead, whose gangland empire was compared to the Kray twins, was jailed in 1998 for conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to supply class-B drugs, violent disorder and perverting the course of justice.His mother was paying a visit with her 15-year-old grandson and son-in-law when guards caught her with the drugs in May. Hull Crown Court heard two packages containing 6.22 grammes of diamorphine, with a street value of about £340, were discovered on her.She admitted bringing the package in to jail, but said she thought it contained cannabis.

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Armando Rodriguez, the main police reporter for El Diario newspaper in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua state across from El Paso, Texas, was shot as he was leaving his house to take his daughter to school, the newspaper said on its Web site.Suspected drug gangs shot dead a Mexican crime reporter near the U.S. border on Thursday, the latest journalist victim of a brutal drug war in which traffickers are targeting the media.Relatives of Rodriguez also confirmed his killing. It was not clear why he was targeted."Organized crime in Ciudad Juarez has tried to intimidate the church, schools and now journalists," Pedro Torres, the newspaper's deputy editorial director, told Mexican television.Ciudad Juarez is Mexico's most violent city and security has collapsed since the Pacific-coast Sinaloa cartel declared war on local drug baron Vicente Carrillo Fuentes and sent its hitmen to drive out his Juarez cartel. The Gulf cartel based around the Gulf of Mexico coast has joined the fight.
Mexican journalists reporting on drug gangs are often harassed by traffickers but attacks on the media have mounted since President Felipe Calderon launched an army-led crackdown on the cartels at the end of 2006.Since 2006, 15 journalists have been killed in Mexico, making it one of the world's most dangerous countries for the media, according to the U.S.-based nonprofit organization Committee to Protect Journalists.

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Boat captain Rickey Thompson, 42, was also ordered to serve another 32 years in prison for his role in the 2006 alien smuggling and narcotics trafficking conspiracies that resulted in the deaths of three immigrants, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.The drug smuggling involved 14 kilograms of cocaine, 2 kilograms of heroin and 83 pounds of marijuana.Thompson in July was convicted of three counts of second-degree murder; three counts of alien smuggling resulting in death; 15 counts of alien smuggling placing the lives of aliens in jeopardy; six counts of narcotics trafficking; two counts of possession of firearms and one count of illegal re-entry after deportation.Federal authorities say Thompson and his co-defendant Leon Brice Johnson, who in August was sentenced to 22-years in prison, conducted in two smuggling trips in 2006 between August and December.
During each trip, the two transported a group of illegal aliens and narcotics from Freeport, Bahamas, to Jupiter Island, aboard Thompson’s 33-foot speed boat. The aliens paid fees of up to $4,000 and were assured that Thompson would drop them off on the beach or in water no higher than their knees.However, that did not happen, and Johnson and Thompson forced the immigrants off the boat at gunpoint in deep, rough waters about 100 yards from the shore of Jupiter Island, the release states.Roselyne Lubin and Alnert Charles, both of Haiti, and Nigel Warren of Jamaica drowned off Jupiter Island during those smuggling trips.
The boat had grounded at Blowing Rocks Preserve and officials found a silver-colored handgun onboard, court records stated. Near the boat, officials found a large black duffel bag with marijuana and cocaine, court records state.

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Gustavo Lopez organized one of the most lucrative drug smuggling rings in the Rio Grande Valley.Working under the nickname "El Licendiado," he allegedly moved hundreds of pounds of cocaine and marijuana from Mexico to Atlanta.He reportedly laundered millions of dollars in proceeds through a chain of Valley auto parts businesses.And he managed a staff of more than 40 drug mules and cash runners whose ranks reportedly included moles in at least two law enforcement agencies, according to a 10-count federal indictment issued last month in Atlanta.But even if all of that turns out to be true, his attorney maintains, Lopez was nothing more than middle management."One man's manager is another man's flunky," lawyer Ralph Martinez said. "He may have done nothing more than echo what (his Mexican backers) were ordering."Lopez, 35, of Palmview, was arrested Oct. 29 as part of a two-year U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-led investigation targeting smuggling routes between the Valley and Atlanta.Agents have issued arrest warrants for 41 people believed to be working for him or his Mexican counterpart and childhood friend - Dimas "El Guerro" Gonzalez.Their reported accomplices include a former Hidalgo County sheriff's deputy caught with nearly $1 million in alleged drug proceeds in the outskirts of Atlanta and a yet unidentified "contact within a law enforcement agency with access to sensitive databases."In all, agents seized more than $22 million, 6,000 pounds of marijuana and 490 pounds of cocaine reportedly linked to their organization.And upon Lopez's arrest, he directed federal agents to a Pharr stash house containing more than a ton of marijuana."This is about as serious as it gets in drug trafficking cases," said U.S. Magistrate Peter Ormsby at a detention hearing last week, where Lopez pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of conspiracy, drug smuggling and money laundering.ICE agents testified they had surveilled Lopez and Gonzalez for months and recorded hours of phone conversations in which the two men took great lengths to separate themselves from the men and women allegedly moving their drugs.The two conducted almost all of their business during face-to-face meetings in Reynosa, ICE Special Agent Lupe Sanchez said. When they did talk on the phone, they spoke in coded language.But Lopez's attorney insists that his client's sole occupation was working as an auto parts salesman."He was never found with any of those drugs or any of that money," Martinez said in court.
Federal prosecutors allege Lopez's business - GLG Collision Auto Parts - also served his purported smuggling empire. They have initiated criminal forfeiture proceedings against the storefronts in Hidalgo, Donna and Brownsville and several bank accounts linked to the organization that they say were used to launder drug proceeds.
Lopez remains in federal custody pending a trial in Atlanta. A date has not yet been set.And many of the men who could shed more light on the allegations against him - including Gonzalez and former sheriff's deputy Emmanuel Sanchez - are believed to be hiding in Mexico to avoid arrest, federal authorities said.But just by what their investigation has uncovered thus far, federal authorities believe they have disrupted a major narcotics pipeline."Just a seizure of $23 million alone suggests a huge amount of drugs," said Agent Sanchez, who is not related to the former deputy. "And that's just what we found."

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Perry Wharrie (48), from Loughton, Essex, is wanted by the British authorities for disappearing after being released on licence from a life sentence for murder in 2005. The case was listed for hearing today, but lawyers for Wharrie applied for an adjournment to reply to affidavits about the British prison system. Two members of Hertfordshire Constabulary flew to the Dublin to observe Wharrie oppose the warrant.
Security was tight at the Four Courts today as Wharrie arrived under armed escort.
Mr Justice Michael Peart said it was unsatisfactory and inconvenient to the court that a party could seek an adjournment on the day of a hearing. “Two officers from the UK who have travelled over for the case have not been told this application was going to be made,” he said. Wharrie was jailed for life in 1989 for the murder of an off-duty policeman in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, who tried to disarm a robber during a raid on a bank van. He was one of a three-man gang who had held up a security van outside a bank. Off-duty police officer Francis Mason attempted to tackle one of the armed men but was fatally shot in the back by a second. Wharrie was released in April 2005 and a year later disappeared, breaching the terms of his parole by leaving a specific address in Essex and leaving the jurisdiction.
Wharrie vanished until July 4th last year, when he and three other English men were arrested in west Cork over the €440 million euro drug smuggling operation.
Their boat, laden with drugs, capsized in rough seas after one of the gang had filled the two high-powered petrol outboard motors with diesel. After a 10-week trial Wharrie and two other men were given a total of 85 years in prison over the drugs operation. Wharrie and Martin Wanden (45) of no fixed address, were both jailed for 30 years while Joe Daly (41), of Bexley, Kent, was given a 25-year prison sentence. A fourth man, Gerard Hagan (24), of Liverpool, pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in November.

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Gardai have arrested one of the main figures in one of Limerick's feuding criminal gangs on foot or a committal warrant.Gerard Dundon, a senior member of the McCarthy-Dundon gang, was being sought to serve a 10-month prison sentence for more than 30 road traffic offences.Reports this morning say he turned himself in to Gardai last night and is expected to be questioned about the murder of Shane Geoghegan last weekend.Detectives believe the McCarthy-Dundon gang was responsible for the fatal shooting of the Garryowen rugby player, who was apparently mistaken for a top drug dealer aligned to the rival Keane gang.

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The Bexar County Sheriff's Office has about a half a dozen officers in their Street Crimes Unit who have to cover the entire county. For the past year, however, their focus has been taking down the gangs they say are terrorizing the Northeast Side.
"I've never seen so many assault weapons," one neighbor told News 4.Just last week, a 3-year old was shot as she slept. The shooting which led parents to question whether or not their children can be safe in their own homes.
"It's picked up a lot over on the Northeast Side of town," said Kris Saxon of the Bexar County Sheriff's Office.During the day, the signs of gang violence are everywhere."You can see the house is riddled with bullets," Saxon said, pointing to a home in the area. "There's bullet holes up there. They returned fire. There's bullet holes up there. And look how many kids are out here."But deputies say the real danger for the children is at night."At night under the cover of darkness, it's a totally different world," explained Saxon.It's a world where two very different groups are constantly clashing. "The gang members from New Orleans and the gang members from San Antonio do not get along. They don't like each other," explained Saxon. "I think that has to do with different lifestyles."Deputies say Hurricane Katrina brought a storm of violence into San Antonio almost immediately after the evacuees arrived."I remember within a week of the evacuees getting here, I arrested three gang members from New Orleans out on the Northeast Side of town in a stolen car with guns, and they just did a burglary," Saxon told News 4.In the year following Katrina, assault calls went up more than 14% in the area."Oh, they're involved in everything," added Saxon. "They fight in the middle of the street. They're involved in burglaries, robberies, homicide. We get drive-by shootings. We get carjackings. They're dealing drugs to further enhance their gang."News 4's crew was in the car as deputies got into a high speed chase with a man. The man later admitted to having drugs, which deputies said he probably bought from a gang member.
The deputies told News 4 the number of Katrina gang members in San Antonio is actually falling. But they said with that, comes another problem."Now you can look around, and you can see for yourself, 95% of them are empty and trashed out," Saxon said, referring to homes in the neighborhood.

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Italian shopkeepers pay about 250 million euros (203 million pounds) a day to Mafia protection rackets and loan sharks and fear the current downturn could allow the mob to further tighten its stranglehold on the vulnerable economy.The warning came on Tuesday from the Italian shopkeepers' association Confesercenti, many of whose members are frightened into paying the "pizzo" -- as protection money is known -- to the various regional crime groups in southern Italy."The economic crisis makes the Mafia even more dangerous," said Confesercenti Chairman Marco Venturi, presenting a study called "Crime's Hold on Business.""Mafia businesses threaten to use the economy's weakness and uncertainty to strengthen their position," he said, urging banks and government to secure credit so that desperate firms do not turn to loan sharks, though an estimated 180,000 already have.The four biggest mafias -- Calabria's 'Ndrangheta, Sicily's Cosa Nostra, Naples' Camorra and Puglia's Sacra Corona Unita -- make up "a huge holding company with total turnover of about 130 billion euros and profits approaching 70 billion euros."This chimes with recent data suggesting that these groups' combined earnings would make them the biggest company in Italy, equivalent to a large chunk of the country's economic output.Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said last month that the 'Ndrangheta alone, which, with its hold on the European drugs market, has outgrown the Cosa Nostra, makes 45 billion euros a year, which he said was "almost 3 percent of GDP."The new study focussed on Mafia activities directly relating to the business world, from protection money and usury to night clubs, restaurants, building, butchers, fish markets, bakeries and even funerals -- a commercial empire worth about 92 billion euros a year or 6 percent of the economy, the association said

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Joseph 'Benbow' Barrett, alleged leader of the Jones Town-based Joe Benbow gang, and his three co-accused, held for the recent seizure of four illegal guns, appeared in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate's Court yesterday. Barrett was charged by police early last week following investigations into the seizure of the guns and more than 20 rounds of ammunition. Also charged are Trudy-Ann Warren, 31, of South Anderson Crescent in Kingston, Marsha Marie Alexandria Johnson, 24, and Wayne Johnson, 35, also called 'Howard Johnson', a taxi operator, both of Benbow Street in Jones Town, St Andrew. All are charged with conspiracy to deceive customs, importation of firearms, conspiracy to import prohibited goods, conspiracy to import firearms and ammunition and conspiracy to import restricted goods. Allegations are that Warren went to the Norman Manley International Airport to collect a package. She declared the package contained baby clothes, but police already knew that it contained four 9mm pistols and 26 rounds of ammunition. A sting operation was set up and Warren was seen entering a vehicle occupied by Marsha and Wayne Johnson. The car was intercepted and they told police the package was to be delivered to Barrett in Port Royal. One Glock-40, one 9mm Browning, one Springfield 9mm and one .45 Ruger pistol and ten .45 rounds and sixteen 9mm rounds were seized. Subsequent investigations led to a search for Barrett who surrendered to police the same day in his attorney's presence. Barrett is also charged with breaching the conditions of bail he received in connection with a murder and shooting. The police say he allegedly failed to obey the conditions of the house-arrest order. The matter returns to court on November 21.

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Gang leader, identified as Dave Sterling, alias 'Machine Man', was shot dead when he allegedly pointed a firearm at the police along Collie Smith Drive in Trench Town.
Among the 53 detained in the early morning raids by the police on Thursday was a man who the police said was earlier this week 'installed' as head of the Rat Bat gang, less than a week after the death of Machine Man.Police did not release the name of the reputed gang leader but said he was behind a series of criminal activities in Kingston, including murder, rape and extortion.The detainees, which include two women, were still being processed late yesterday afternoon.
Yesterday, the placard-bearing demonstrators accused the police of targeting their communities, even as a group of officers kept watch from the opposite side of the road."Them a terrorise we and we not warring with anybody," a lanky youngster said. "Machine Man take care of we; is him send whole heap of people pickney go school and them kill him, for what?" a bleached-out face woman asked.
"Them come lock up the people them from yesterday (Thursday) and is them same people keeping the peace in the place," said another woman, clad in a skimpy outfit as she stood at the entrance to Delacree Park.Sections of Spanish Town Road, Crescent and St Joseph Roads and Coral Lane, where the raids were carried out on
Thursday morning, have been tense since Machine Man's death last Friday.According to the police, the Rat Bat gang and men from other sections of the community located between Spanish Town and Waltham Park roads have been involved in an ongoing fight for turf.More than a dozen people have been murdered in the bloody rivalry since the start of the year, the police said.

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Robert Myers, who was convicted in August of first-degree murder, attempted murder and shooting into an occupied vehicle, received two sentences of life without the possibility of parole and other life terms on Thursday. 22-year-old man accused of hunting down rival gang members has been sentenced to life in prison for his role in a three drive-by shootings in 2004. Myers is one of three people charged in separate shootings in the San Diego communities of Linda Vista, Mission Valley and Skyline. The others are brothers Dejon Satterwhite, 19, and Edward Eugene Thomas, 21, both of whom are scheduled to go to trial Nov. 17. All three were juveniles at the time of the shootings but were charged as adults. Prosecutor Michael Runyon has said the defendants were on a “hunting trip” to find and kill rival gang members over a weekend in August 2004. Killed were Richard Wilson, 22, of Lemon Grove and Lee Smith Jr., 16, a Morse High School junior. Others were injured. Runyon said there was no evidence the murder victims were gang members

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Three key leaders of two violent Southeast Asian street gangs were arrested Thursday in a series of raids in San Diego and Riverside County, the state Attorney General's Office announced yesterday. Two of the three were arrested in San Diego. Their names were not released. Agents seized rifles, a sawed-off shotgun and a Tec-9 machine pistol while serving seven search warrants Thursday morning. Ammunition and night-vision equipment were found. The San Diego police gang unit and Mid-City officers assisted in the raids. Although the two gangs are based in San Diego, many members have relocated to the Temecula Valley, according to the state Department of Justice gang unit. Before Thursday's raids, police had arrested 27 gang members and associates on suspicion of murder, robbery, burglary, identity theft and other crimes. Last year, one of the gangs was involved in a shootout with agents and police in City Heights. Authorities said Tri Minh Vo and a companion, Cao Lam, entered an apartment and shot six people, killing one of them. Agents who were conducting surveillance on Vo at the time heard the shooting and pursued the gunmen.
In a shootout that followed, a Department of Justice agent was injured and Lam was killed. The agent has since recovered.

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Minoru Nozaki, who is currently being held on suspicion of robbery, has reportedly submitted a written confession to the Metropolitan Police Department admitting to the murder of Masaharu Tochino. The MPD suspects Nozaki, 50, a former high-ranking member of a group associated with the Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate, and two of his associates committed the murder. Tochino went missing after visiting a Tokyo legal office for work reasons on Sept. 7, 2006. His body was found near a mountain path in a Japanese cypress forest in Fuji, Shizuoka Prefecture, on Oct. 1 that year. The MPD had been investigating the matter as a case of abandonment of a body.

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Jorge H. Arbaje-Diaz, 30, and two other men, Felix Rodriguez and Alfredo Antonio Acosta, were added as defendants to an indictment that charged that a “violent robbery crew” carried out more than 100 armed robberies of drug traffickers over a five-year period and took more than 750 kilograms of cocaine and $4 million.
The indictment adds the names of Officer Arbaje-Diaz and the two others to an indictment originally unsealed on May 6. With the indictment unsealed on Friday, 13 people have now been charged in the case. Eleven of those, including Officer Arbaje-Diaz, have been arraigned and have pleaded not guilty. Two will be arraigned next week.The group operated between May 2003 and August 2008 in at least six states, including New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, prosecutors charged. They said the group used torture and death threats to get information from the drug dealers.
Officer Arbaje-Diaz used his position to gain access to the victims’ homes, where he and other defendants handcuffed them at gunpoint and threatened to arrest them if they did not say where their drugs and money were stored, according to a statement from the United States attorney’s office. Officer Arbaje-Diaz, 30, took part in robberies that netted thousands of dollars and multiple kilograms of cocaine, heroin and marijuana valued at $200,000, the statement said. On at least one occasion, the officer, a three-year veteran assigned to transit duties in the Bronx, wore his uniform and carried his badge, weapon and handcuffs, the statement said. The new indictment charges Officer Arbaje-Diaz, Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Acosta with conspiracy to violate the Hobbs Act, which outlaws the obstruction of commerce “by robbery or extortion”; possession of and conspiracy to distribute cocaine; and firearms charges. If convicted on all counts, they would face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.At his arraignment on Friday, Officer Arbaje-Diaz was ordered held without bail, and his next court appearance was set for Dec. 15, said Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the United States attorney’s office. The officer’s lawyer, Gregory Cooper, was not immediately available for comment. The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, called Officer Arbaje-Diaz’s alleged actions “despicable” and “the highest form of betrayal.”“It is a huge disappointment, to say the least, to the department,” Mr. Kelly said in a news conference. He said the department would examine the background checks that were done before Officer Arbaje-Diaz joined the force. He has been suspended without pay.

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