NEW WORLD ORDER....

[Pennyworth]

Paul Pennyworth wrote:Elcoteq closing Juarez, Mexico, plant Friday, 27 April 2007 As part of its action plan to restore the company's profitability and competitiveness, Elcoteq has decided to rationalize its manufacturing capacity in Mexico. The plan is to close down the manufacturing facility in Juarez, Mexico, and to move its production mainly to China and partly to Elcoteq's other Mexican facility by the end of 2007. Production transfer will take place so that all existing projects in Juarez will be completed as planned and new projects will be ramped up in China and Monterrey, Mexico. The closure of the plant will create one-time costs totaling 9 million euros. In addition to the rationalization activities in Mexico, geographical area Americas will relocate its Irving, Texas office to the NPI center in Dallas. Elcoteq manufactures set-top boxes and communications networks products at its Juarez plant. Elcoteq started operations in Juarez at the beginning of 2005 after signing a multi-year manufacturing agreement with Thomson at the end of 2004. The agreement also included the acquisition of the operations of Thomson's Juarez plant. The size of the plant is 13,700 square meters. At the end of March, the plant employed approximately 2,300 people. After the closure of the Juarez facility, Elcoteq will have two manufacturing plants in the Americas: one in Monterrey, Mexico, and another in Manaus, Brazil. In addition to these locations, Elcoteq has its Americas' head office and an NPI center in Dallas, USA. At the end of March, these units employedapproximately 5,000 people. ”Elcoteq's consistent processes and global service network enable transfer of production from one continent to another. Juarez is not just about transferring production - we are talking about utilizing our global service network efficiently to meet our customers' requirements and demand,” says COO JukkaJäämaa. ”Although we have recently put more emphasis on developing and expanding our operations in Asia-Pacific, Americas continues to have a vital role in our global footprint. Our Monterrey facility's long and extensive experience of working with different customers and manufacturing a variety ofproducts complements customer demand in the Americas extremely well, and therefore we want to consolidate our Mexican operations in Monterrey,” continues Mr. Jäämaa. www.elcoteq.com Related Items No related items

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[Pennyworth]

Paul Pennyworth wrote:Paul Pennyworth wrote:Apometron's blogBispo Edir Macedo ensina: como ficar rico através da fé alheia! ... This is the New World Order, the globalists will overthrow the United States Consitition ...apometron.blogspot.com/ - 67k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom aka Iglesia Universal aka Catedral de La Fe, aka Living Faith) ...The organization is present throughout the world: Los Angeles, New York, Manila, ... Fernandes, a São Paulo assemblywoman, is the sister of Edir Macedo, ...www.apologeticsindex.org/i04.html - 46k - Cached - Similar pages BRAZZIL - News from Brazil - Evangelicals and Igreja Universal in ...His enemies say bishop Edir Macedo's dream is to convert Brazil into a religious state, a kind of new Iran in which he would be its all-powerful ayatollah. ...www.brazzil.com/cvrnov95.htm - 38k - Cached - Similar pages Media, politics and fundamentalism in Latin America / 2007/1 ...In 2006 the Latin America region of the World Association for Christian ... Edir Macedo, the head of Brazil’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and ...http://www.wacc.org.uk/wacc/publication ... in_america - 41k - Cached - Similar pages Future, Evangelical, Politics, Theology, AAR, Washington, 1993 ...Today we hear more and more of phrases such as "the new world order", ... On the day of the 1991 mass, Edir Macedo, Brazil's most popular television ...http://www.bloomquist.ca/publications/A ... alism.html - 55k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages Adherents.comIt's estimated that the church has 8000 members only in New York. ... Started in 1977 by the self-appointed Bishop Edir Macedo, the Universal Church today ...www.adherents.com/Na/Na_654.html - 50k - Cached - Similar pages Worthy Boards > The évangéliques ones: The sect which wants to co... "The New World Order", the reverend put forward the Messianic vocation of l? ... Universal, of which the founder, Edir Macedo, a former employee of the ...www.worthyboards.com/lofiversion/index.php/t7436.html - 18k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages Zenit News Agency - The World Seen From RomeIn order to apply some technological discoveries, "a lot of money is invested ... Edir Macedo, its president, says without any reservations, that "money, ...www.zenit.org/english/archive/9903/ZE990330.html - 33k - Cached - Similar pages JSTOR: Kicking, Stripping, and Re-Dressing a Saint in Black ...In the New World, images of the saints have provided privileged, ... Edir Macedo, usually speaking by telephone from outside Brazil, from New York or Buenos ...links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-2710(199711)37%3A2%3C122%3AKSARAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H - Similar pages Deliverance from evil?Church comes to town with controversial ...UCKG is a proactive church that goes out into the world to help people ... Edir Macedo Bezerra, who has been described as a Brazilian business tycoon, ...http://www.nashvillepost.com/news/2007/ ... reputation - 32k - Cached - Similar pagesAKA known as Iglesia Universal....http://www.rickross.com/groups/universal.html




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[Pennyworth]

Coming soon to a an abandoned movie theatre next to you


"Satan comes disquised as an angel of light".....

http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... n%26sa%3DG

[Pennyworth]

Paul Pennyworth wrote:Coming soon to a an abandoned movie theatre next to you "Satan comes disquised as an angel of light"..... http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... n%26sa%3DG

http://www.ucgstp.org/lit/booklets/devil/angel.html

[Pennyworth]

http://www.juarez-mexico.com/

[Pennyworth]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=1171962

I'm still surfing for a particular link...I came across this one...

[Pennyworth]

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/ ... 0191/45304



New interview with House of Death informant exposes U.S. role in Juárez mass murder
By Bill Conroy,
Posted on Sun Apr 1st, 2007 at 08:19:00 PM EST
A large swath of Ciudad Juárez is inhabited by people living on the edge of existence in shacks slapped together with sheets of plywood and cardboard. Those a bit luckier inhabit run-down, one-story cinder-block homes with barren yards that are lined along broken roadways.
The residential neighborhoods of this city sprawl over the dusty high-desert foothills of the Sierra Juárez mountain range. In the poor sections of town, dogs and drunks bark at passing cars as twilight descends on the unlit streets.

But the House of Death is sheltered from these harsher urban realities by a fenced yard, solid construction, and two stories of living space surrounded by other dwellings of similar stature. In this neighborhood, the dogs are well fed and don’t wander the streets in hungry packs, but rather bark at passing strangers through the screened doors of comfortable homes.

The House of Death, then, passes for a middle-class home in this Mexican border city of some 1.2 million people located across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, Texas.

But this house has been touched by something dark, haunted by an evil that feeds on the very soul of this border community.



Despite its seemingly sedate-looking exterior, the House of Death serves as an execution chamber and its backyard as a tomb.
The victims are lured to this House of Death, restrained and then brutally tortured and murdered. Their corpses are covered with lime to speed decomposition and then buried in the backyard.

To receive an invitation to the House of Death is not a hard thing. You just have to make a mistake, to break one of the rules of the narco-trafficking business. In one case, a mother and her five-year-old daughter were murdered because the mother asked the wrong narco-trafficker for some extra money after her husband was arrested while smuggling drugs across the border. That narco-trafficker, in turn, was murdered because his impetuous actions angered his boss.

In another case, two men reported to the Mexican federal police (the AFI) that they had found a warehouse with a large stash of drugs. The federal police, in turn, told the narco-traffickers who owned the drugs that the two men had ratted on them. The men were subsequently brought to the House of Death, beaten with a hammer and a pistol (because a gunshot would make too much noise) and finally stomped to death by the assassins (local Mexican cops) employed by the narco-traffickers.

The assassins at the House of Death work for one of the most powerful Mexican narco-trafficking organizations, which is a business the size of a major corporation whose CEO is an individual named Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. – a dark-complected man with a thin black mustache; cold, vacant eyes; and ears that recede behind his thick jowls and high cheekbones.

Under Vicente are a host of managers, or lieutenants, who help run his organization, referred to as the VCF. In Juárez, at the time of the House of Death murders in 2003, the top lieutenant was a man named Heriberto Santillan-Taberes.

These lieutenants are always jockeying for higher standing and more power within the VCF. They achieve this standing by ensuring that the organization’s drugs are distributed, the money from drug sales collected, and its rules enforced. In the narco-trafficking world, those who violate the rules face the ultimate fate: execution.

Fernando Reyes, a Mexican attorney and drug smuggler, was one such individual who ran afoul of the VCF business model. He had 1,000 pounds of marijuana that he was trying to move from Juárez into the United States. He naively approached Santillan for help with his plan. Santillan saw both a threat from a potential business rival and an opportunity to advance his standing within the VCF.

As a result, Reyes was tricked into coming to the House of Death under the pretense of a business meeting. As he sat in a folding chair in the living room with two Santillan associates (one of whom was a U.S. government informant), two Juárez policemen burst into the living room and (with the help of the informant) restrained Reyes using duct tape. One of the cops stripped an electrical cord from a lamp and wrapped it around the lawyer’s neck, choking him until the cord snapped. The informant then pointed to a plastic bag. One of the cops grabbed the bag and placed it over Reyes’ head. Reyes struggled for air (the bag being sucked into his mouth with each breath). Reyes by now was near death, but still moving. So one of the policemen bashed Reyes with a shovel across the back of his head until his neck snapped.

The fact that the House of Death exists (and assuredly countless others like it along the border) should not be surprising given the ruthless nature of the narco-trafficking business. What is surprising is that we know about this particular House of Death in the first place.

After all, from the street, and to the world at large, the House of Death appears to be an ordinary house. We only know of its sinister purpose because we have chosen to enter this portal into the netherworld of the drug war.

And now, yet another document has come to light that provides us with new insight into that netherworld. That document, filed as an exhibit in a federal court case in El Paso, Texas, is a previously unpublished interview with the House of Death informant.

In the interview, the informant, who received some $200,000 from the U.S. government for his work, reveals, among other startling claims, that one of the individuals murdered as a result of his involvement in the case was an FBI informant. The informant also details the close relationship between narco-trafficking organizations and the Mexican government.

In addition, the informant claims the U.S. government was fully aware, at the highest levels in Washington, D.C., of his involvement in the House of Death murders, yet allowed the operation (and the murders) to continue. He also claims the U.S. government now wants him dead, and that he was “blackmailed” into going to a U.S. prison (where he still remains) to await deportation because a U.S. prosecutor threatened to send his family back to Mexico, into the hands of the narco-traffickers the informant betrayed, if he did not agree to those terms.

The interview with the informant was recorded in 2006 while Raul Loya, the Texas attorney representing the families of the House of Death victims in a civil lawsuit, and a TV producer were visiting the informant in jail in the Midwest. The recording was later transcribed by a court-reporting service and recently submitted as an exhibit in the civil lawsuit.

Following are excerpts from this previously unpublished interview with the House of Death informant. The bulk of the interview can be found at this link — starting on page 20 of the document. The final pages of the transcribed interview are at this link.

(Information contained in [brackets] in the interview excerpts below represents this reporter’s notes for you, the readers.)

For those of you not familiar with the back story of the House of Death, (or for those who want a reminder) we’ll retrace the steps of this gruesome drug-war tragedy first — to provide some context for the interview excerpts.

The Context

The informant, Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez Peyro, was on the payroll of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when he helped arrange (and even participated) in about a dozen murders between August 2003 and mid-January 2004 at the House of Death, located at 3633 Parsioneros in Ciudad Juárez. Ramirez Peyro had attained high status in a Juárez-based narco-trafficking cell headed by Heriberto Santillan-Tabares, who himself was a capo in the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Juárez drug organization.

ICE’s complicity in Ramirez Peyro’s murderous activities was reported to U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton by DEA’s El Paso chief, Sandy Gonzalez, after a DEA agent and his family nearly became victims of the House of Death. However, Sutton chose to retaliate against Gonzalez rather than investigate his charges and take action against the U.S. prosecutor and ICE agents who oversaw the informant — and who had allowed the murder spree to continue in order to make drug cases, with the informant’s help, to boost their law-enforcement career prospects.

Sutton is a golden boy of the U.S. Justice Department and previously worked with U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as part of George W. Bush’s staff while Bush was governor of Texas. Since that time, Sutton has risen on the coattails of his “mentors” to the powerful position of U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas and also currently serves as chairman of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys, which helps set policy for the Justice Department. Sutton also has been implicated in the recent U.S. Attorney purge scandal by emails released by the Department of Justice.

After the House of Death murders became public knowledge through media reports, Ramirez Peyro became a thorn in the side of Sutton and the Justice Department (DOJ) as well as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE. That's because Ramirez Peyro could illuminate the complicity of U.S. government agents and high-level officials at both DOJ and DHS in the House of Death mass murder.

So once his role as an informant was deemed more of a liability than an asset, DHS initiated deportation proceedings against him, with the goal of sending Ramirez Peyro back to Mexico, where he claims he will be murdered by the narco-traffickers he betrayed. That case is still pending in the U.S. legal system.

In fact, Ramirez Peyro was targeted for assassination by the narco-traffickers he double-crossed in the summer of 2004. At that time, the informant, who, along with his family, was living in San Antonio under the guard of ICE agents, mysteriously was allowed to return to El Paso (in late August 2004) to pick up $25,000 in drug money from some of his narco contacts. Ramirez claims he was participating in drug sting set up by ICE. However, ICE agents claim the informant was acting without their knowledge.

In any event, Ramirez Peyro, by this point, was extremely paranoid and likely was suspicious that the El Paso money drop could be a set-up. He was already aware that the VCF in Juárez was kidnapping and killing associates who had been close to him, since the House of Death murders and the case against Santillan were the subjects of media coverage.

So Ramirez Peyro sent a “friend” to pick up the money. That individual, 27-year-old U.S. citizen Abraham Guzman, the father of two-week-old boy, was shot dead at the hamburger joint by a VCF-connected thug — who pumped four bullets into Guzman’s chest and face after mistaking him for Ramirez.

From that point on, Ramirez Peyro, who is a Mexican citizen, disappeared from public view, and was put in prison, supposedly for his own protection. His wife and children, who were allowed into the United States on humanitarian grounds, are now living in the Southwest with their living expenses being covered by the U.S. government.

The Interview

(In the interview excerpts below, Smith is the TV producer, Loya is the attorney who represents the families of the House of Death victims and Ramirez is the informant.)

The Guzman Murder


SMITH: Were you – were you close with [Abraham] Guzman [who was murdered at a fast-food restaurant in El Paso]? I mean, is that – is that something that bothers you a lot or is that something that just happened?
RAMIREZ: No, no, no, no. It bothers me. It’s very sad to me. Guzman was my only – my only – how can I say it – the only one I can trust, yeah? And it – obviously, it bothers me. There’s more people who got killed, and I don’t know – nobody mentioned them, yeah.

There’s – that’s not the only one who they killed trying to kill me….

LOYA: Did you know when you sent him to, I guess, pick up – was it money [at the fast-food restaurant] – there was a danger he could get killed?

RAMIREZ: No. If I’d know, I don’t do it like that way. If I know, I don’t do it.

LOYA: Why send him? Why him?

RAMIREZ: Why him? I just say it. That was his job, and that was my – my confidence man. He work with us for – well, with me, yeah. He don’t – he don’t knew about that we were working for the government, but he work for almost a year, two years.

SMITH: Oh, is that right? Was he – that’s never come out.

RAMIREZ: Yeah.

SMITH: He worked – he worked for the government for a year or two years?

RAMIREZ: No, for me.

SMITH: Oh, for you. Oh, I apologize.

RAMIREZ: Yeah, yeah. He never knows. He was – and this is the – something. He was loyal to me. He was an FBI informant [emphasis added]. He signed for that, yeah. But he never informant, nothing, at least about us.

I don’t know if – if they give information about other people, because about us, he never said that. He used to like stash drugs, drive. He was the one who got in contact, because that way, I don’t get in contact with the drugs, yeah? He was people who – who can go and do this – that kind of job.

… LOYA: What about Guzman? He died in the U.S.

RAMIREZ: Well – but that was the – after that, yeah. That was – and they were trying to kill me, not him, yeah? They – that’s a situation after the investigation, and that time – that’s a consequence of the investigation [the Santillan/House of Death case]. I agree with that.

LOYA: How did the killers get away? I thought they were close. Do you know?

RAMIREZ: How did they get away?

LOYA: Yeah.

RAMIREZ: I don’t know. I – as I – as I read, they just shot him and leave, leaving in a vehicle. Yes.

The first thing I don’t like why everybody get so – in the government get so disappointed it wasn’t me that was dead. [emphasis added]

[Some law enforcement sources have told Narco News that they suspect ICE might have been trying to set up the informant for assassination by narco-traffickers at the El Paso burger joint where Guzman was killed, but no solid evidence of that allegation has surfaced to date.]

The House of Death

SMITH: Can I – I just want to ask you, on the Parsioneros house [the House of Death], can you describe that? I mean, did they just call you and say, we’re going to have a “carne asada?’ I mean, is that all – is that accurate, the “carne asada” words and all that? Because we saw it in newspaper articles, on the Internet – I mean, in the documents. Is that accurate?

RAMIREZ: There’s a lot of terms they used to make you understand. Over the phone, they don’t want to say, hey, we’re going to kill someone.

SMITH: No. No, exactly.

RAMIREZ: They can say anything, yeah, that – that you can understand they need to use that place, and you know for what is that place doing, yeah?

… SMITH: Yeah. Can – what was that Parsioneros house like? Didn’t that smell like crazy?

RAMIREZ: No.

SMITH: Can you describe it? It didn’t? With bodies being drug underneath the staircase, blood –

RAMIREZ: No, you prepare everything.

SMITH: It isn’t -- when you went in there, you wouldn’t suspect it was a – a torture house if you walked in there?

RAMIREZ: If you – in the first place, you don’t go over there if you weren’t part of the mafia, yeah? You have to do something with the mafia, yeah?

And this is the scary thing and this is what the people don’t – don’t understand. You go inside of that home, yeah, like all of us, all friends, all – all accomplices, all – all the same mobsters, yeah, one or two or four or – I don’t know – are not coming out, yeah.

You’re not going there with a – this is the scary thing. And no one – and this is very – I saw in the faces of all – even the [Mexican] cops [who did the killing] – everyone has got fear when go inside that house, because nobody knows who’s the one who’s going to walk out.

SMITH: You never knew?

RAMIREZ: You never know. All of us were buddies. And then inside it was, hey, what’s going on with this? Oh, this, this, this. Sometimes okay; everybody walks out, no problem. But sometimes, when this man was there, and you don’t know.

And I have to say this. I got a lot of guilty [fear] for be – for be killed there. Why? Because I was working for the U.S. government. So I was a lot of basis to be scared every time we go inside that house. I don’t know if they found – if they discovered what I was doing, yeah?

So if the people who doesn’t do nothing bad or supposedly nothing bad were scared, imagine me when I was no – I was betraying them, so –

SMITH: Do you have any – when you guys were burying those bodies – I mean, you weren’t burying them, per se?

RAMIEZ: No, no no.

SMITH: You kind of – you made sure that they buried them, right? Is that fair?

… RAMIREZ: Yeah, yeah, because they – they doesn’t want – I get a level of confidence – confidence, yeah? So what they – what they used me is like if someone stirs the – or something is – when someone stirs the water, I have to go over there and see everything gets clear, yeah?

SMITH: Yeah.

Ramriez: Is that – does that make sense?

SMITH: I understand.

RAMIREZ: So the – the boss [Santillan] doesn’t – doesn’t going to bother going to see if they really – really covered the bodies, did a good job or not, yeah? That was my job, to go and watch if they do okay, and just take care the people are not doing stupid things, right, like playing with the bodies or something to make them discovered, little things like that.

I never take a – a shovel – is that what you say – or make a dig or move the body. No, no, no, no. That was not my job. I got – I got some level.

Mafia Rules

RAMIREZ: … When you infiltrate a cartel, yeah –

SMITH: Right.

RAMIREZ: -- you cannot – you cannot establish your limits, yeah.

If you’re going to act like them – like I said to the agents, hey, c’mon. I cannot say to the bad guys or to the mobsters – I cannot say, hey, Saturdays and Sundays, the Feds doesn’t like to work, so don’t – don’t move any drugs on Saturday or Sunday, yeah. But that’s that’s stupid and ridiculous, yeah?

SMITH: Sure.

RAMIREZ: They’re going to know. They’re going to know I’m working for the government, yeah?

Now, it’s well known – and this group too, yeah – that in the – in the – in the mafia, if you don’t do exactly what you’ve been told to do, you get killed, yeah?

Like some of these guys, yeah? So you cannot go infiltrate the mafia and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m so special; I’m going to do what I want to do, and you’re going to play by my own rules, because I’m in the – part of the government, and – you cannot do that, because you’ll get killed, yeah?

If they order to you, do this, you do it, and you’d better do it; and if you don’t do it, you get killed.

… SMITH: How close did you get to Vicente Carillo Fuentes? How close were you?

RAMIREZ: No, not – not close. I never seen him. I didn’t know him. I never got close to him.

SMITH: Is he that insulated? I mean, I thought maybe you were pretty close.

RAMIREZ: No, no. This – its very – there’s – there’s a lot of levels, and – and he’s – he’s the boss. He’s the cartel, yeah? He’s not – he’s not dealing with people. He got his – the people he trusts. He’s – he saw just the big guys, and I know – I wasn’t one of them.

Corrupt Cops

SMITH: … Did they [ICE agents] ever give you any warnings about – that it [your activities in Mexico] might be used later against you?

RAMIREZ: I – no, no, no, no. We – all of us consider a lot of times suspend the investigation, yeah? Why? Because that was something big [the first House of Death murder on Aug. 5, 2003, in which Mexican attorney Fernando Reyes was killed], yeah? We were – yeah, in the first place, like in this – this first time, when I saw that killing, yeah, it – what can I do? Call the police?

The [Mexican] police was already there. The police kill him, yeah? So who I going to call? [Remember, according to ICE documents, Ramirez supervised and participated in that killing.]

Am I going to pull my gun and shoot the policeman? So then I’m going to be a police killer, and they’re going to kill me anyway, because they’ve got an AK-47 with them, yeah?

Or I’m going to disappear? And my family, they’re going to ….

I have to stay there. And I went very scared, yeah, because the way they used to work that day was so different. All that I could think was – (snapping fingers) – they – they bust me; they new I’m working for the U.S. government and they’re going to kill me, yeah.

… LOYA: Did any of the [ICE] agents tell you that they were concerned that these people are dying in Juárez? Did they say, hey, there – we were concerned; we don’t want to –

RAMIREZ: All of us were concerned, but I – I repeat to you. In the first place, they – they were not dying because of what we were doing; they were dying because their – their connections, yeah, with the mafia, the way of life they choose, yeah? That’s why they were dying.

And second, there’s nothing we can do. What we can do? Go to the police? Two of them [victims] was there [at the House of Death] because they went to the [Mexican] federal [law enforcement] agency, AFI, in Mexico and tell, hey, there’s this storage with drugs. The AFI call the mobsters….

That was the federals, huh? There’s nothing we can do.

… LOYA: Why don’t they [the U.S. government] just send you to a farm in Idaho somewhere?

RAMRIEZ: … No, no. They [the U.S. government] want to kill me in the hands of the authorities of the Mexican government.

SMITH: And that means to you?

RAMIREZ: I’m going to be killed. That’s not a – that’s not a big – a big question. That’s what’s going to happen.

SMITH: You look – you look awful calm for a guy that’s talking about this kind of stuff.

RAMIREZ: Well, I got two years thinking on this. And I’m not coward. I’m – I’m praying, yeah. I believe in God. And I’m praying that they – they [the U.S. courts] make the decision that – I’m – I’m hoping the Supreme Court say that you cannot – like the judge here told them, you cannot deport this guy. …

LOYA: Why this court here in Minnesota? Why are you here?

RAMIREZ: They move me here. Why? The excuse or the thing they told me is, they [ICE] are afraid of my life. Yeah? So they don’t want me near to Mexico because they are afraid somebody kill me in jail.

That’s why I’ve been in the hold, in segregation, all that – all that thing. They are afraid they [the cartel] kill me, but they want to put me in the hands of the killers. Do you understand that? ….

U.S. Government Complicity

SMITH: … You know that the [U.S.] government wants you dead. There’s no doubt in your mind?

RAMIREZ: … Do you – do you doubt that?

SMITH: That’s why I’m here. No, I don’t probably doubt that.

RAMIREZ: No.

SMITH: They want you deported, and the likelihood is what? And if you go to Mexico, the likelihood is what?

RAMIREZ: Do you got any – do you really think in Mexico you’re going to survive after infiltrate the cartel and the Mexican government and show the proofs that the Mexican government is like this with the cartel?

… SMITH: Again, and I’m talking more from their end. You can’t break the law. You cannot participate or do illegal acts to enforce the law. It says specifically like that in their [ICE’s] guidelines.

Did they never discuss that with you? Did they ever say, you can’t grab a gun, you can’t pick up a gun in Mexico when you go over there because you’re breaking Mexican law?

RAMIREZ: No, they [my ICE handlers] they say, in Mexico, whatever you do is your problem. If you get busted in Mexico – because this is how it works, yeah? When I have to start working in Mexico, I need to receive the green light from Washington, not from [my ICE handler agent Raul] Bencomo. Bencomo is nobody, yeah?

They have to send paperwork, and Washington have to send back the – the – the okay – yeah, to me for being – it’s not just an – an informant; it’s an operative informant, something like that, yeah? You have to be imperative, yeah?

So that means you can handle drugs and meetings and all the equipment we’ve got for it – for all the work you do, because you are not an – you are not an agent, yeah? Your are – you are just – literally, they said, you are an extension of them ….

… When you infiltrate the cartel, yeah, everybody knows you have to go like what? Like a criminal, yeah? And you have to act like a criminal because you know how you’re going to be between the criminals.

… LOYA: … Did you ever meet anybody from San Antonio, like [U.S. Attorney Johnny] Sutton?

RAMIREZ: I meet a – people in San Antonio, but I really don’t remember their names. …

As soon as they finished, they start like pushing me aside and – and trying to get rid of me, or say like that.

… Now, why did – don’t [ICE] arrest him [Santillan sooner]? I don’t know. I mean, this is not in me. I repeat you. I worry nobody. If my life doesn’t even important to them, do you think the life of the people they don’t know important to them. They don’t care.

Now we are looking, they don’t care about my life, right? You okay with that? Why they’re going to be worried about the – the people [killed at the House of Death] they don’t know and – I -- I repeat to you, we don’t do nothing with that people. We don’t even met them. They come, most of them, from other [cartel] cells, yeah.

… The cartel killed a lot of people. It wasn’t just 12 [at the House of Death]. Make a research how many have disappeared over time.

LOYA: Are you – are you aware that the agents and the handlers and the people, maybe even all up to Washington, they have violated federal law just in what they did in the directions [to you]?

RAMIREZ: Well, that’s – that’s a possibility, all right?

… SMITH: They [ICE] told you afterwards [after the first House of Death murder, which was recorded on tape] – they praised you for your work. But what did they say? Did they tell you distinctly, no more [murders] what? We don’t’ want any sounds of death in tapes or what? I mean, what did they tell you?

RAMIREZ: No, they told me, try to keep out of that situations, like if I got a choice. And I explained to them, hey, I – I don’t – I don’t have a choice, yeah? I don’t got an excuse.

LOYA: You signed a paper to agree to stay in custody [in jail in the U.S.]?

RAMIREZ: To agree what?

LOYA: To stay in protective custody or agree not to be deported or –

RAMIREZ: Yeah, they – they [the U.S. government] – they blackmailed me. They said, you sign to stay here in jail, or we’re going to kick out your family.

LOYA: What do you mean?

RAMIREZ: Yeah, if I don’t – if I don’t sign I accept to be in jail, in protective custody, they’re going to put my family in the hands of the killers.

SMITH: Who said that … who said that, specifically? Who said that?

RAMIREZ: [Assistant U.S. Attorney] Juanita Fielding [who works under U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton] the – my – the attorney they put me. And – yeah, it was Juanita Fielding, because the guys from Customs [ICE] don’t’ even give the face anymore. I never see them again.

[Pennyworth]

http://www.amnestyusa.org/Artists_for_A ... =22&n3=795

This is a link I was looking for....

[Pennyworth]

Paul Pennyworth wrote:http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/ ... 0191/45304 New interview with House of Death informant exposes U.S. role in Juárez mass murderBy Bill Conroy, Posted on Sun Apr 1st, 2007 at 08:19:00 PM ESTA large swath of Ciudad Juárez is inhabited by people living on the edge of existence in shacks slapped together with sheets of plywood and cardboard. Those a bit luckier inhabit run-down, one-story cinder-block homes with barren yards that are lined along broken roadways. The residential neighborhoods of this city sprawl over the dusty high-desert foothills of the Sierra Juárez mountain range. In the poor sections of town, dogs and drunks bark at passing cars as twilight descends on the unlit streets. But the House of Death is sheltered from these harsher urban realities by a fenced yard, solid construction, and two stories of living space surrounded by other dwellings of similar stature. In this neighborhood, the dogs are well fed and don’t wander the streets in hungry packs, but rather bark at passing strangers through the screened doors of comfortable homes.The House of Death, then, passes for a middle-class home in this Mexican border city of some 1.2 million people located across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, Texas.But this house has been touched by something dark, haunted by an evil that feeds on the very soul of this border community. Despite its seemingly sedate-looking exterior, the House of Death serves as an execution chamber and its backyard as a tomb. The victims are lured to this House of Death, restrained and then brutally tortured and murdered. Their corpses are covered with lime to speed decomposition and then buried in the backyard.To receive an invitation to the House of Death is not a hard thing. You just have to make a mistake, to break one of the rules of the narco-trafficking business. In one case, a mother and her five-year-old daughter were murdered because the mother asked the wrong narco-trafficker for some extra money after her husband was arrested while smuggling drugs across the border. That narco-trafficker, in turn, was murdered because his impetuous actions angered his boss. In another case, two men reported to the Mexican federal police (the AFI) that they had found a warehouse with a large stash of drugs. The federal police, in turn, told the narco-traffickers who owned the drugs that the two men had ratted on them. The men were subsequently brought to the House of Death, beaten with a hammer and a pistol (because a gunshot would make too much noise) and finally stomped to death by the assassins (local Mexican cops) employed by the narco-traffickers.The assassins at the House of Death work for one of the most powerful Mexican narco-trafficking organizations, which is a business the size of a major corporation whose CEO is an individual named Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. – a dark-complected man with a thin black mustache; cold, vacant eyes; and ears that recede behind his thick jowls and high cheekbones. Under Vicente are a host of managers, or lieutenants, who help run his organization, referred to as the VCF. In Juárez, at the time of the House of Death murders in 2003, the top lieutenant was a man named Heriberto Santillan-Taberes. These lieutenants are always jockeying for higher standing and more power within the VCF. They achieve this standing by ensuring that the organization’s drugs are distributed, the money from drug sales collected, and its rules enforced. In the narco-trafficking world, those who violate the rules face the ultimate fate: execution.Fernando Reyes, a Mexican attorney and drug smuggler, was one such individual who ran afoul of the VCF business model. He had 1,000 pounds of marijuana that he was trying to move from Juárez into the United States. He naively approached Santillan for help with his plan. Santillan saw both a threat from a potential business rival and an opportunity to advance his standing within the VCF. As a result, Reyes was tricked into coming to the House of Death under the pretense of a business meeting. As he sat in a folding chair in the living room with two Santillan associates (one of whom was a U.S. government informant), two Juárez policemen burst into the living room and (with the help of the informant) restrained Reyes using duct tape. One of the cops stripped an electrical cord from a lamp and wrapped it around the lawyer’s neck, choking him until the cord snapped. The informant then pointed to a plastic bag. One of the cops grabbed the bag and placed it over Reyes’ head. Reyes struggled for air (the bag being sucked into his mouth with each breath). Reyes by now was near death, but still moving. So one of the policemen bashed Reyes with a shovel across the back of his head until his neck snapped.The fact that the House of Death exists (and assuredly countless others like it along the border) should not be surprising given the ruthless nature of the narco-trafficking business. What is surprising is that we know about this particular House of Death in the first place. After all, from the street, and to the world at large, the House of Death appears to be an ordinary house. We only know of its sinister purpose because we have chosen to enter this portal into the netherworld of the drug war.And now, yet another document has come to light that provides us with new insight into that netherworld. That document, filed as an exhibit in a federal court case in El Paso, Texas, is a previously unpublished interview with the House of Death informant.In the interview, the informant, who received some $200,000 from the U.S. government for his work, reveals, among other startling claims, that one of the individuals murdered as a result of his involvement in the case was an FBI informant. The informant also details the close relationship between narco-trafficking organizations and the Mexican government. In addition, the informant claims the U.S. government was fully aware, at the highest levels in Washington, D.C., of his involvement in the House of Death murders, yet allowed the operation (and the murders) to continue. He also claims the U.S. government now wants him dead, and that he was “blackmailed” into going to a U.S. prison (where he still remains) to await deportation because a U.S. prosecutor threatened to send his family back to Mexico, into the hands of the narco-traffickers the informant betrayed, if he did not agree to those terms.The interview with the informant was recorded in 2006 while Raul Loya, the Texas attorney representing the families of the House of Death victims in a civil lawsuit, and a TV producer were visiting the informant in jail in the Midwest. The recording was later transcribed by a court-reporting service and recently submitted as an exhibit in the civil lawsuit.Following are excerpts from this previously unpublished interview with the House of Death informant. The bulk of the interview can be found at this link — starting on page 20 of the document. The final pages of the transcribed interview are at this link.(Information contained in [brackets] in the interview excerpts below represents this reporter’s notes for you, the readers.)For those of you not familiar with the back story of the House of Death, (or for those who want a reminder) we’ll retrace the steps of this gruesome drug-war tragedy first — to provide some context for the interview excerpts.The ContextThe informant, Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez Peyro, was on the payroll of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when he helped arrange (and even participated) in about a dozen murders between August 2003 and mid-January 2004 at the House of Death, located at 3633 Parsioneros in Ciudad Juárez. Ramirez Peyro had attained high status in a Juárez-based narco-trafficking cell headed by Heriberto Santillan-Tabares, who himself was a capo in the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Juárez drug organization.ICE’s complicity in Ramirez Peyro’s murderous activities was reported to U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton by DEA’s El Paso chief, Sandy Gonzalez, after a DEA agent and his family nearly became victims of the House of Death. However, Sutton chose to retaliate against Gonzalez rather than investigate his charges and take action against the U.S. prosecutor and ICE agents who oversaw the informant — and who had allowed the murder spree to continue in order to make drug cases, with the informant’s help, to boost their law-enforcement career prospects.Sutton is a golden boy of the U.S. Justice Department and previously worked with U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as part of George W. Bush’s staff while Bush was governor of Texas. Since that time, Sutton has risen on the coattails of his “mentors” to the powerful position of U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas and also currently serves as chairman of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys, which helps set policy for the Justice Department. Sutton also has been implicated in the recent U.S. Attorney purge scandal by emails released by the Department of Justice.After the House of Death murders became public knowledge through media reports, Ramirez Peyro became a thorn in the side of Sutton and the Justice Department (DOJ) as well as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE. That's because Ramirez Peyro could illuminate the complicity of U.S. government agents and high-level officials at both DOJ and DHS in the House of Death mass murder.So once his role as an informant was deemed more of a liability than an asset, DHS initiated deportation proceedings against him, with the goal of sending Ramirez Peyro back to Mexico, where he claims he will be murdered by the narco-traffickers he betrayed. That case is still pending in the U.S. legal system.In fact, Ramirez Peyro was targeted for assassination by the narco-traffickers he double-crossed in the summer of 2004. At that time, the informant, who, along with his family, was living in San Antonio under the guard of ICE agents, mysteriously was allowed to return to El Paso (in late August 2004) to pick up $25,000 in drug money from some of his narco contacts. Ramirez claims he was participating in drug sting set up by ICE. However, ICE agents claim the informant was acting without their knowledge.In any event, Ramirez Peyro, by this point, was extremely paranoid and likely was suspicious that the El Paso money drop could be a set-up. He was already aware that the VCF in Juárez was kidnapping and killing associates who had been close to him, since the House of Death murders and the case against Santillan were the subjects of media coverage.So Ramirez Peyro sent a “friend” to pick up the money. That individual, 27-year-old U.S. citizen Abraham Guzman, the father of two-week-old boy, was shot dead at the hamburger joint by a VCF-connected thug — who pumped four bullets into Guzman’s chest and face after mistaking him for Ramirez. From that point on, Ramirez Peyro, who is a Mexican citizen, disappeared from public view, and was put in prison, supposedly for his own protection. His wife and children, who were allowed into the United States on humanitarian grounds, are now living in the Southwest with their living expenses being covered by the U.S. government. The Interview(In the interview excerpts below, Smith is the TV producer, Loya is the attorney who represents the families of the House of Death victims and Ramirez is the informant.)The Guzman MurderSMITH: Were you – were you close with [Abraham] Guzman [who was murdered at a fast-food restaurant in El Paso]? I mean, is that – is that something that bothers you a lot or is that something that just happened?RAMIREZ: No, no, no, no. It bothers me. It’s very sad to me. Guzman was my only – my only – how can I say it – the only one I can trust, yeah? And it – obviously, it bothers me. There’s more people who got killed, and I don’t know – nobody mentioned them, yeah.There’s – that’s not the only one who they killed trying to kill me…. LOYA: Did you know when you sent him to, I guess, pick up – was it money [at the fast-food restaurant] – there was a danger he could get killed?RAMIREZ: No. If I’d know, I don’t do it like that way. If I know, I don’t do it.LOYA: Why send him? Why him?RAMIREZ: Why him? I just say it. That was his job, and that was my – my confidence man. He work with us for – well, with me, yeah. He don’t – he don’t knew about that we were working for the government, but he work for almost a year, two years.SMITH: Oh, is that right? Was he – that’s never come out.RAMIREZ: Yeah.SMITH: He worked – he worked for the government for a year or two years?RAMIREZ: No, for me.SMITH: Oh, for you. Oh, I apologize.RAMIREZ: Yeah, yeah. He never knows. He was – and this is the – something. He was loyal to me. He was an FBI informant [emphasis added]. He signed for that, yeah. But he never informant, nothing, at least about us.I don’t know if – if they give information about other people, because about us, he never said that. He used to like stash drugs, drive. He was the one who got in contact, because that way, I don’t get in contact with the drugs, yeah? He was people who – who can go and do this – that kind of job.… LOYA: What about Guzman? He died in the U.S.RAMIREZ: Well – but that was the – after that, yeah. That was – and they were trying to kill me, not him, yeah? They – that’s a situation after the investigation, and that time – that’s a consequence of the investigation [the Santillan/House of Death case]. I agree with that.LOYA: How did the killers get away? I thought they were close. Do you know?RAMIREZ: How did they get away?LOYA: Yeah.RAMIREZ: I don’t know. I – as I – as I read, they just shot him and leave, leaving in a vehicle. Yes.The first thing I don’t like why everybody get so – in the government get so disappointed it wasn’t me that was dead. [emphasis added][Some law enforcement sources have told Narco News that they suspect ICE might have been trying to set up the informant for assassination by narco-traffickers at the El Paso burger joint where Guzman was killed, but no solid evidence of that allegation has surfaced to date.]The House of DeathSMITH: Can I – I just want to ask you, on the Parsioneros house [the House of Death], can you describe that? I mean, did they just call you and say, we’re going to have a “carne asada?’ I mean, is that all – is that accurate, the “carne asada” words and all that? Because we saw it in newspaper articles, on the Internet – I mean, in the documents. Is that accurate?RAMIREZ: There’s a lot of terms they used to make you understand. Over the phone, they don’t want to say, hey, we’re going to kill someone.SMITH: No. No, exactly.RAMIREZ: They can say anything, yeah, that – that you can understand they need to use that place, and you know for what is that place doing, yeah?… SMITH: Yeah. Can – what was that Parsioneros house like? Didn’t that smell like crazy? RAMIREZ: No.SMITH: Can you describe it? It didn’t? With bodies being drug underneath the staircase, blood –RAMIREZ: No, you prepare everything.SMITH: It isn’t -- when you went in there, you wouldn’t suspect it was a – a torture house if you walked in there?RAMIREZ: If you – in the first place, you don’t go over there if you weren’t part of the mafia, yeah? You have to do something with the mafia, yeah?And this is the scary thing and this is what the people don’t – don’t understand. You go inside of that home, yeah, like all of us, all friends, all – all accomplices, all – all the same mobsters, yeah, one or two or four or – I don’t know – are not coming out, yeah.You’re not going there with a – this is the scary thing. And no one – and this is very – I saw in the faces of all – even the [Mexican] cops [who did the killing] – everyone has got fear when go inside that house, because nobody knows who’s the one who’s going to walk out.SMITH: You never knew?RAMIREZ: You never know. All of us were buddies. And then inside it was, hey, what’s going on with this? Oh, this, this, this. Sometimes okay; everybody walks out, no problem. But sometimes, when this man was there, and you don’t know.And I have to say this. I got a lot of guilty [fear] for be – for be killed there. Why? Because I was working for the U.S. government. So I was a lot of basis to be scared every time we go inside that house. I don’t know if they found – if they discovered what I was doing, yeah?So if the people who doesn’t do nothing bad or supposedly nothing bad were scared, imagine me when I was no – I was betraying them, so –SMITH: Do you have any – when you guys were burying those bodies – I mean, you weren’t burying them, per se?RAMIEZ: No, no no.SMITH: You kind of – you made sure that they buried them, right? Is that fair?… RAMIREZ: Yeah, yeah, because they – they doesn’t want – I get a level of confidence – confidence, yeah? So what they – what they used me is like if someone stirs the – or something is – when someone stirs the water, I have to go over there and see everything gets clear, yeah?SMITH: Yeah.Ramriez: Is that – does that make sense?SMITH: I understand.RAMIREZ: So the – the boss [Santillan] doesn’t – doesn’t going to bother going to see if they really – really covered the bodies, did a good job or not, yeah? That was my job, to go and watch if they do okay, and just take care the people are not doing stupid things, right, like playing with the bodies or something to make them discovered, little things like that.I never take a – a shovel – is that what you say – or make a dig or move the body. No, no, no, no. That was not my job. I got – I got some level.Mafia RulesRAMIREZ: … When you infiltrate a cartel, yeah –SMITH: Right.RAMIREZ: -- you cannot – you cannot establish your limits, yeah.If you’re going to act like them – like I said to the agents, hey, c’mon. I cannot say to the bad guys or to the mobsters – I cannot say, hey, Saturdays and Sundays, the Feds doesn’t like to work, so don’t – don’t move any drugs on Saturday or Sunday, yeah. But that’s that’s stupid and ridiculous, yeah?SMITH: Sure.RAMIREZ: They’re going to know. They’re going to know I’m working for the government, yeah?Now, it’s well known – and this group too, yeah – that in the – in the – in the mafia, if you don’t do exactly what you’ve been told to do, you get killed, yeah?Like some of these guys, yeah? So you cannot go infiltrate the mafia and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m so special; I’m going to do what I want to do, and you’re going to play by my own rules, because I’m in the – part of the government, and – you cannot do that, because you’ll get killed, yeah?If they order to you, do this, you do it, and you’d better do it; and if you don’t do it, you get killed.… SMITH: How close did you get to Vicente Carillo Fuentes? How close were you?RAMIREZ: No, not – not close. I never seen him. I didn’t know him. I never got close to him.SMITH: Is he that insulated? I mean, I thought maybe you were pretty close.RAMIREZ: No, no. This – its very – there’s – there’s a lot of levels, and – and he’s – he’s the boss. He’s the cartel, yeah? He’s not – he’s not dealing with people. He got his – the people he trusts. He’s – he saw just the big guys, and I know – I wasn’t one of them.Corrupt CopsSMITH: … Did they [ICE agents] ever give you any warnings about – that it [your activities in Mexico] might be used later against you?RAMIREZ: I – no, no, no, no. We – all of us consider a lot of times suspend the investigation, yeah? Why? Because that was something big [the first House of Death murder on Aug. 5, 2003, in which Mexican attorney Fernando Reyes was killed], yeah? We were – yeah, in the first place, like in this – this first time, when I saw that killing, yeah, it – what can I do? Call the police?The [Mexican] police was already there. The police kill him, yeah? So who I going to call? [Remember, according to ICE documents, Ramirez supervised and participated in that killing.]Am I going to pull my gun and shoot the policeman? So then I’m going to be a police killer, and they’re going to kill me anyway, because they’ve got an AK-47 with them, yeah?Or I’m going to disappear? And my family, they’re going to ….I have to stay there. And I went very scared, yeah, because the way they used to work that day was so different. All that I could think was – (snapping fingers) – they – they bust me; they new I’m working for the U.S. government and they’re going to kill me, yeah.… LOYA: Did any of the [ICE] agents tell you that they were concerned that these people are dying in Juárez? Did they say, hey, there – we were concerned; we don’t want to –RAMIREZ: All of us were concerned, but I – I repeat to you. In the first place, they – they were not dying because of what we were doing; they were dying because their – their connections, yeah, with the mafia, the way of life they choose, yeah? That’s why they were dying.And second, there’s nothing we can do. What we can do? Go to the police? Two of them [victims] was there [at the House of Death] because they went to the [Mexican] federal [law enforcement] agency, AFI, in Mexico and tell, hey, there’s this storage with drugs. The AFI call the mobsters….That was the federals, huh? There’s nothing we can do.… LOYA: Why don’t they [the U.S. government] just send you to a farm in Idaho somewhere?RAMRIEZ: … No, no. They [the U.S. government] want to kill me in the hands of the authorities of the Mexican government.SMITH: And that means to you?RAMIREZ: I’m going to be killed. That’s not a – that’s not a big – a big question. That’s what’s going to happen.SMITH: You look – you look awful calm for a guy that’s talking about this kind of stuff.RAMIREZ: Well, I got two years thinking on this. And I’m not coward. I’m – I’m praying, yeah. I believe in God. And I’m praying that they – they [the U.S. courts] make the decision that – I’m – I’m hoping the Supreme Court say that you cannot – like the judge here told them, you cannot deport this guy. …LOYA: Why this court here in Minnesota? Why are you here?RAMIREZ: They move me here. Why? The excuse or the thing they told me is, they [ICE] are afraid of my life. Yeah? So they don’t want me near to Mexico because they are afraid somebody kill me in jail.That’s why I’ve been in the hold, in segregation, all that – all that thing. They are afraid they [the cartel] kill me, but they want to put me in the hands of the killers. Do you understand that? ….U.S. Government ComplicitySMITH: … You know that the [U.S.] government wants you dead. There’s no doubt in your mind?RAMIREZ: … Do you – do you doubt that?SMITH: That’s why I’m here. No, I don’t probably doubt that.RAMIREZ: No.SMITH: They want you deported, and the likelihood is what? And if you go to Mexico, the likelihood is what?RAMIREZ: Do you got any – do you really think in Mexico you’re going to survive after infiltrate the cartel and the Mexican government and show the proofs that the Mexican government is like this with the cartel?… SMITH: Again, and I’m talking more from their end. You can’t break the law. You cannot participate or do illegal acts to enforce the law. It says specifically like that in their [ICE’s] guidelines.Did they never discuss that with you? Did they ever say, you can’t grab a gun, you can’t pick up a gun in Mexico when you go over there because you’re breaking Mexican law?RAMIREZ: No, they [my ICE handlers] they say, in Mexico, whatever you do is your problem. If you get busted in Mexico – because this is how it works, yeah? When I have to start working in Mexico, I need to receive the green light from Washington, not from [my ICE handler agent Raul] Bencomo. Bencomo is nobody, yeah?They have to send paperwork, and Washington have to send back the – the – the okay – yeah, to me for being – it’s not just an – an informant; it’s an operative informant, something like that, yeah? You have to be imperative, yeah?So that means you can handle drugs and meetings and all the equipment we’ve got for it – for all the work you do, because you are not an – you are not an agent, yeah? Your are – you are just – literally, they said, you are an extension of them ….… When you infiltrate the cartel, yeah, everybody knows you have to go like what? Like a criminal, yeah? And you have to act like a criminal because you know how you’re going to be between the criminals.… LOYA: … Did you ever meet anybody from San Antonio, like [U.S. Attorney Johnny] Sutton?RAMIREZ: I meet a – people in San Antonio, but I really don’t remember their names. …As soon as they finished, they start like pushing me aside and – and trying to get rid of me, or say like that.… Now, why did – don’t [ICE] arrest him [Santillan sooner]? I don’t know. I mean, this is not in me. I repeat you. I worry nobody. If my life doesn’t even important to them, do you think the life of the people they don’t know important to them. They don’t care.Now we are looking, they don’t care about my life, right? You okay with that? Why they’re going to be worried about the – the people [killed at the House of Death] they don’t know and – I -- I repeat to you, we don’t do nothing with that people. We don’t even met them. They come, most of them, from other [cartel] cells, yeah.… The cartel killed a lot of people. It wasn’t just 12 [at the House of Death]. Make a research how many have disappeared over time.LOYA: Are you – are you aware that the agents and the handlers and the people, maybe even all up to Washington, they have violated federal law just in what they did in the directions [to you]?RAMIREZ: Well, that’s – that’s a possibility, all right?… SMITH: They [ICE] told you afterwards [after the first House of Death murder, which was recorded on tape] – they praised you for your work. But what did they say? Did they tell you distinctly, no more [murders] what? We don’t’ want any sounds of death in tapes or what? I mean, what did they tell you?RAMIREZ: No, they told me, try to keep out of that situations, like if I got a choice. And I explained to them, hey, I – I don’t – I don’t have a choice, yeah? I don’t got an excuse. LOYA: You signed a paper to agree to stay in custody [in jail in the U.S.]?RAMIREZ: To agree what?LOYA: To stay in protective custody or agree not to be deported or –RAMIREZ: Yeah, they – they [the U.S. government] – they blackmailed me. They said, you sign to stay here in jail, or we’re going to kick out your family.LOYA: What do you mean?RAMIREZ: Yeah, if I don’t – if I don’t sign I accept to be in jail, in protective custody, they’re going to put my family in the hands of the killers.SMITH: Who said that … who said that, specifically? Who said that?RAMIREZ: [Assistant U.S. Attorney] Juanita Fielding [who works under U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton] the – my – the attorney they put me. And – yeah, it was Juanita Fielding, because the guys from Customs [ICE] don’t’ even give the face anymore. I never see them again.


Families sue U.S. government over informant's role in slayin

News > Nation Monday, May 21, 2007

Nation Posted on Sun, May. 20, 2007reprint or license print email Digg it del.icio.us AIM
Questions linger about the 'House of Death'
Families sue U.S. government over informant's role in slayings
By DAVE MONTGOMERY
Star-Telegram Washington Bureau
Related Content
Questions linger about the 'House of Death'
WASHINGTON -- The code phrase was carne asada -- a barbecue -- and when word went out that one was going to be held at the two-story residence in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, it meant that one of Mexico's powerful drug cartels planned to kill a perceived double-crosser or rival operative.

It has been dubbed the "House of Death," where at least a dozen people were tortured, executed and buried. And more than three years after the bodies were unearthed from the back yard, the story is still being replayed and reviewed in unresolved legal disputes and through allegations of misconduct by U.S. agents.

The accusations, part of a lawsuit against the U.S. government, are based on disclosures that an informant who made more than $200,000 working for federal law enforcement "supervised" one of the slayings and knew of or witnessed other killings. The informant's handlers in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, continued to use him after learning about the first killing in August 2003.

The informant, Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez-Peyro, a former high-ranking cartel figure, is in protective custody in the United States, where he is fighting government attempts to deport him. Returning to Mexico, he asserts, would mean certain death at the hands of drug lords.

Double life

Ramirez was a mole for ICE while serving as a lieutenant to Heriberto Santillan-Tabares, also known as "El Ingeniero," a chieftain in a Juarez-based cartel who ordered the killings. Immigration transcripts, depositions and ICE documents describe Ramirez's double life, providing chilling details of the carnage on Parsioneros Street, as well as an insider's account of the violent Mexican drug trade.

He has acknowledged witnessing two executions, one of which he taped. He also bought duct tape and lime for body disposal, supervised burials and arranged the use of the house for a carne asada. One day, hit men brought a body to the house, threw it under the staircase and returned about 45 minutes later with another body wrapped in black plastic. They dumped that one in the kitchen.

"Santillan spoke with me that he was going to 'grill some more meat'; in other words, they were going to kill some people," Ramirez said in recalling an execution.

Ramirez also tells of hit squads composed of corrupt police officers and high-ranking law enforcement officers involved in the drug trade.

Since the story came to light in early 2004, the House of Death has received little public attention. The most extensive reports have been online in The Narco News Bulletin.

The findings of an internal inquiry that included interviews with more than 40 people have never been released, prompting allegations of a cover-up.

Agencies involved in various aspects of the case include the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and ICE, now a branch of the Homeland Security Department.

Accusations have also been aimed at the office of U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of San Antonio, who has recently been criticized for prosecuting two Border Patrol agents in the shooting of a drug courier and a South Texas sheriff's deputy who fired on a carload of immigrants.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Juanita Fielden, assigned to Sutton's El Paso division, was a member of the task force investigating the cartel and is a defendant in the lawsuit, now pending in El Paso federal court. The wrongful-death suit was filed by families of six of the victims.

Sutton involvement

Sandalio Gonzalez of Miami, a retired DEA supervisor who wants Congress to investigate the case, has accused Sutton of retaliating against him after Gonzalez wrote a fiery letter to his ICE counterpart in February 2004. A copy of the letter was also hand-delivered to the U.S. attorney's office in El Paso.

Gonzalez, who was the DEA's chief in El Paso, accused ICE of mishandling the investigation, going to "extreme lengths" to protect a "homicidal maniac" informant, endangering the lives of DEA agents and allowing subsequent slayings by continuing to use Ramirez.

The letter caused an uproar that reached Washington. E-mails produced in a whistle-blower retaliation case filed by Gonzalez indicated that Sutton called Justice Department officials in Washington expressing concern about "a rather lengthy and inflammatory letter" from the DEA supervisor.

"Johnny was not sure who was talking, but we are certainly concerned that there may be press, and there may be inquiries here in DC as well," Associate Deputy Attorney General Catherine O'Neil wrote in March 4, 2004, e-mail to other Justice Department officials and DEA Administrator Karen Tandy, a Fort Worth native. On the subject line, she wrote: "Possible press involving the DEA Juarez/ICE informant issue."

"DEA HQ officials were not aware of our el paso SAC's inexcusable letter until last evening ..." Tandy said in an e-mail the next day. "I apologized to Johnny Sutton last night and he and I agreed on a 'no comment' to the press."

Gonzalez, in his whistle-blower petition, said the DEA chief of operations called to admonish him and said that "Mr. Sutton was very upset" because his letter could provide evidence that would hurt the government's case against Santillan.

The DEA lowered his performance review because of the "retaliatory" actions applied by Sutton, Gonzalez charged. The agent and the DEA later settled the claim in a confidential agreement "to my satisfaction," Gonzalez said in a telephone interview.

DEA officials have said that Gonzalez improperly went outside channels in sending the letter and should have first discussed his concerns with superiors.

Deputy DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart described Gonzalez in court testimony as a field boss who "did his job" but "wasn't the best of SACs," short for "special agents in charge."

Shana Jones, Sutton's spokeswoman, said the U.S. attorney is prevented from commenting because of the lawsuit, which is heavily based on Gonzalez's accounts. Officials for ICE and the DEA have declined to comment for the same reason.

Advance knowledge?

The Justice Department, in its response to the suit, acknowledges that Ramirez was a government informant who was "present at a murder in August of 2003." But it denies the lawsuit's assertions that ICE officials monitored the killing or that federal prosecutors and ICE agents were aware that the informant was participating in subsequent killings and kidnappings. Justice Department policy prohibits confidential informants from participating in violence.

However, Ramirez, under questioning in his immigration hearing, has testified that ICE agents had advance knowledge that murders would take place.

"Did you tell your ICE officers that you were aware that Mr. Santillan had ordered the deaths of people associated with the cartel?" he was asked.

"Yes," he responded.

"Did you tell them before, right before it happened?"

"Yeah, several occasions," Ramirez replied.

Career change

Ramirez was a Mexican highway police officer when he opted for a career change in the mid-1990s, serving as a distribution manager in the Mexican drug network before ultimately becoming Santillan's trusted second-in-command. Santillan was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2005 after pleading guilty to conducting a criminal enterprise. Other charges were dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

Ramirez became a U.S. operative after walking across an international bridge in 2000 and making contact with a U.S. customs officer. Ramirez explained that he "didn't like the way" the cartel operated and felt it would "be honorable" to work for U.S. law enforcement.

Ramirez went by the nickname "Lalo" and also used the alias "Jesus Contreras." His handlers, in their investigative reports, referred to him by his code name: SA-913-EP. During his four years of U.S. service, he was paid $224,650 and has testified that the government owes him $400,000, "more or less."

For a time, Ramirez was providing information to ICE and the DEA. But the DEA deactivated him after he was arrested at a Border Patrol checkpoint in Las Cruces, N.M., on June 28, 2003, with 100 pounds of marijuana concealed in his vehicle.

After the arrest, ICE group supervisor Todd Johnson contacted Assistant U.S. Attorney Fielden to tell her of the "unauthorized criminal activity on the part of the" confidential informant, Fielden said in an affidavit. Fielden and other officials met the next week and, after "a lengthy discussion," decided that SA-913-EP could continue to be effective as an ICE informant if he were "closely monitored."

Fielden said she then called the state prosecutor in New Mexico, who agreed to defer prosecution "as long as the CI cooperated."

Participating in murder?

Just over a month later, U.S. authorities learned of a far more serious matter after Ramirez told ICE agents about the Aug. 5, 2003, slaying of Juarez attorney Fernando Reyes Aguado. Ramirez briefed ICE agent Luis Garcia about the killing and Garcia later wrote that "SA-913-EP supervised the murder and had minimal participation in the act." Ramirez also recorded the killing, according to other documents.

Although Reyes was Santillan's childhood friend, the drug chieftain ordered the killing as part of a plot to seize a load of marijuana. Ramirez had been instructed to pose as the person responsible for transporting the marijuana after Santillan and another member of the cartel arrived at the house with the unsuspecting victim. After Santillan left, two police officers came out of a hiding place and put tape over Reyes' mouth.

Reyes "began to struggle with the judicial police and they asked me to help them get him to the floor," the informant said in a Feb. 12, 2004, affidavit. "They tried to choke him [with] an extension cord, but this broke and I gave them a plastic bag and they put it on his head and suffocated him."

When Santillan returned, "I informed him that the job had been completed," Ramirez said. "I asked the judicial police if they were sure that Fernando was dead." One then took a shovel "and hit him many times on the head until he was sure he was dead."

Ramirez also told of other slayings, including the Nov. 23, 2003, execution of two "drug mules" -- allegedly carried out by Miguel Loya, a police commander.

"Loya put tape around their head, but they could still breathe. And one of them began to moan loudly so Loya shot him in the head with a pistol with a silencer, but he didn't die immediately," Ramirez said. "Upon hearing this, the other one began to struggle and was shot in the head as well.

"After they were dead, Alex and I put them under the staircase of the Parsioneros house and later they were buried," Ramirez said. "They were killed because they were careless with their work taking the drugs across the border."

The slayings began to come to light in January 2004 after Santillan's enforcers tried to kidnap a Juarez-based DEA agent and his family because they mistakenly thought the agent's home was a stash house for a rival's drug supply. DEA agents were then removed from Juarez for their personal safety.

'Legal and proper'

Several weeks later, Gonzalez fired off his angry letter to Giovanni Gaudioso, who headed the ICE field office in El Paso.

Gonzalez said ICE personnel and the prosecutor displayed a "total disregard for human life" by ignoring DEA recommendations to "take down the investigation" after the killing of Reyes, thus allowing additional slayings to occur.

In her affidavit, Fielden said ICE management in El Paso and Washington approved the continued use of the informant after the 2003 killing. Fielden said she was unaware of other slayings until she interviewed the informant on Jan. 28-29, 2004. Gaudioso has said in an affidavit that he had no advance knowledge of any of the killings and defended ICE's handling of the case as "legal and proper."

He also said that the informant, in his briefing with ICE after the 2003 killing, denied participating in Reyes' slaying and had feared that Santillan wanted to kill him.

Star-Telegram researchers Stacy Garcia and Marcia Melton contributed to this report.

dmontgomery@mcclatchydc.com

[Pennyworth]

chicagotribune.com >> Nation/World
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WORLD

Clock aids Mexico's killers
Statute of limitations ticks on 400 border slayings of females

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
The Washington Post
Published May 23, 2007


CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- For 13 years, June 14 has brought tears, tortured memories and enduring pain to Griselda Salas.

It was on that date, in 1993, that her 16-year-old sister, Guadalupe Ivonne Salas, disappeared. Guadalupe Ivonne's body turned up a few days later in a park in this dusty, wind-swept industrial city near the U.S.-Mexico border.




Guadalupe Ivonne, who was raped and strangled, was one of the first victims in Mexico's grisliest modern-day crime mystery -- the murders of more than 400 females in the past 14 years in Ciudad Juarez, many of the bodies dumped in the desert, horribly mutilated. The killings, mostly of poor young factory workers, have inspired two Hollywood movies and enraged human-rights groups, which have filled volumes with accusations of corruption, botched investigations and official negligence.

Now the earliest of those unsolved cases are quietly slipping off legal dockets because Mexico, unlike the United States and many European countries, has a statute of limitations for murder: 14 years

With each passing day, it appears likely that the statute may end a quest to unravel a string of slayings that shocked the world.

"It is totally and absolutely grotesque to think that murderers could be enjoying their freedom because of this law," said Jaime Garcia Chavez, a Chihuahua state legislator who is pressing to abolish Mexico's statute of limitations. "It is inexcusable."

Esther Chavez Cano, founder of Juarez's first counseling center for rape and domestic violence, laments "a worrying silence" about cases that once commanded banner headlines. Few here are optimistic, though the looming deadlines for dozens of Juarez cases have set off a last-minute race to revive long-dormant investigations.

Evidence shoddily retained

An Argentine forensics team commissioned to look into the murders, drawing on experience from investigations of Argentina's "dirty war" and the Salvadoran civil war, is expected to release a damning report this year that will illustrate the almost impossible task faced by prosecutors. The Argentines have found body parts carelessly left for years on the floors of medical examiner's offices, heads with no matching bodies, bodies with no matching heads and a mishmash of unlabeled corpses tossed into mass graves at paupers' cemeteries.

"It's basically a huge mess," said forensic archeologist Mercedes Doretti, the team leader.

Garcia Chavez's effort to give investigators more time to untangle that mess by extending the statute of limitations, a gambit he considers a long shot, has come too late for Jesica Elizalde, a slain journalist whose murder case expired March 14. The case of factory worker Luz Yvonne de la O Garcia went off the books April 21, as did the murder of an unidentified woman May 12. Dozens more will follow in the coming months.

The next could be Guadalupe Ivonne Salas, though prosecutors say they may be closing in on a suspect, a promise that her family is reluctant to believe after years of dashed hopes.

Victims lured by job prospects

Salas shared a single bed in a cinder-block shack with her infant daughter and her mother. The family, like thousands of others, was drawn to Ciudad Juarez by the maquiladoras -- assembly plants, most of them owned by U.S. companies -- that sprung up blocks from the border because of an abundance of cheap labor, and that transformed the town into the fourth-most populous city in Mexico.

Young women were prized by factory supervisors because they were considered more reliable and less rowdy than men. Almost overnight, women were earning money while men were still struggling to find jobs, leading to resentment in the local macho culture that activists cite as a social undercurrent to the slayings.



"She's probably gone off with some stud," Griselda Salas remembers being told by police when her sister didn't return home. "You watch, she'll come back pregnant with a fat belly in a few months."

As the death toll rose, victims' families continued to complain about insensitive investigators. One state attorney general suggested that the women encouraged their attackers by dressing provocatively. Other officials implied that the victims were prostitutes, living "double lives," though their mothers insisted they were poor factory workers.





"No one cared about investigating their deaths. There was clear sexism and classism," Maynez said.



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