RSS
|
Mobile
|
Daily Emails
|
We Twitter
| Make us your home page
BROWNSVILLE -- Nearly two years ago Mexican soldiers acting on what they said was an anonymous tip seized more than 11 tons of cocaine being unloaded by Gulf Cartel members at a warehouse near the eastern coastal city of Tampico.
At the time, Mexican media reported that it was the country's largest cocaine seizure to date.
But according to documents filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., last month in a case against 19 high-ranking members of the Gulf Cartel and its one-time enforcement arm the Zetas, authorities were monitoring phone conversations for months among the cartel members organizing that cocaine shipment from Colombia.
The bust was a big score for Mexican President Felipe Calderon's cartel crackdown and evidence of the cooperation between anti-drug efforts in the U.S. and Mexico.
A Justice Department spokesman reached before the start of the holiday weekend said those familiar with the case were not immediately available to comment.
Stephen Meiners, a Latin America analyst with Stratfor, a global intelligence company, said that the U.S. may have shared the intercepted phone call with Mexican authorities but not had the details of the specific location and time.
"It may have been one piece of the puzzle," combined with an anonymous tip to Mexican authorities, he said.
From June 2007 until the cocaine arrived in October, Miguel Trevino Morales, the Zetas' second in command, prepared for the massive load with Gulf Cartel members Samuel Flores Borrego and Juan Reyes Mejia Gonzalez, according to a superseding indictment filed June 9.
Then on Oct. 5, as described in a report from the Houston Chronicle, soldiers found a street blocked by armed men while others unloaded cocaine from a tractor trailer.
The supeseding indictment alleged that on Oct. 5, 2007, 10 of the named defendants "possessed and distributed approximately 11,700 kilograms of cocaine, which they intended to ship to the United States."
The indictment lays out the current Gulf Cartel hierarchy, explaining that the cartel and the Zetas continue to work together under the name "The Company." The first named defendant is Antonio Ezequiel "Tony Tormenta" Cardenas Guillen, brother of Osiel Cardenas Guillen, who is awaiting trial in Houston.
