Assassination Witness, Global Strategy, Protecting Politics, Resilience Fund, APA-Obs, CAM-Obs, ESA-Obs, NAS-Obs, SA-Obs, SEE-Obs, UKR-Obs, WEA-Obs

Faces of Assassination – The book

Faces of assassination

...ome forms of assassination that are highly specific to particular social contexts, and are often shaped by long-standing criminal economies. Targeted religious killings in Nigeria, mayoral murders in Mexico and assassinations of journalists across Latin America have, for example, emerged as key regional trends in the course of our research. There is one emerging theme that merits particular attention. ...

Posted on 15 Jun 2020

CovidCrimeWatch

#CovidCrimeWatch – n°12

...VID-19 and ORGANIZED CRIME ROUNDUP N°1 – So it begins The first story to feature in the #CovidCrimeWatch newsletter covered the disruption caused by coronavirus to certain criminal groups in Mexico, whose income largely derives from selling counterfeit goods. With air travel to and from China heavily restricted, criminal groups faced difficulty importing counterfeit goods into Mexico. This had ...

Posted on 12 Jun 2020

Author(s): Lyes Tagziria

CovidCrimeWatch

Cheap oil changes the cost of organized crime

...ed Daesh’s budget substantially. But will the price drop bring about a more peaceful era? Not necessarily – it may just motivate organized-crime groups to seek other illicit income sources. In Mexico, which has the highest oil theft rate after Nigeria, the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas have been increasingly connected to fuel theft in recent years. For the Mexican cartels, which reportedly turned ...

Posted on 12 Jun 2020

Author(s): Gabriel Moberg

Assassination Witness, CovidCrimeWatch

Killings in the wake of COVID

...cide-free days. However, in April this year, lockdown measures were imposed in prisons after a spike of 22 murders in a day. Other countries in the Americas are seeing different trends. In Mexico, murder rates soared to the highest number since 1997, as the country faces a spike in violence, registering 2 585 homicides in March. In the US, where total pandemic deaths exceed 100 000, the Gun...

Posted on 11 Jun 2020

Author(s): Ana Paula Oliveira

Assassination Witness, Latinoamérica y el Caribe

Murdered for her journalism – María Elena Ferral Hernández

...ek on her website, El Quinto Poder (the Fifth Power), María Elena had recounted the murders of four potential mayoral candidates in Gutiérrez Zamora, a town in the state of Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico. Gutiérrez Zamora is prized territory for criminal groups. Federal Highway 180 passes through the region, a road that stretches through six Mexican states. Along it are transported legal ...

Posted on 05 Jun 2020

Author(s): Miguel Ángel León Carmona

CovidCrimeWatch

A double-edged sword

...port a human emergency descending into a human-rights tragedy. Plan for an exit strategy and disengagement   Experience from militarized responses to organized crime around the world from Mexico to the Philippines shows that the longer a military force is deployed in civilian functions, the more its legitimacy and reputation suffer. The use of military assets should not be a long-term soluti...

Posted on 03 Jun 2020

Author(s): David Danelo, Mark Ronan

CovidCrimeWatch

#CovidCrimeWatch – n°8

...us work in order to pay it off. WELCOME TO OUR WORLD AP News, 5 May 2020 The novel coronavirus is one of the gravest threats many of the world’s countries have faced in decades. But in Mexico, the danger posed by COVID-19 is just one more risk facing a number of communities who have long suffered from violence and gang activity. Self-isolation, quarantine and curfews have recently been in...

Posted on 13 May 2020

Author(s): Lyes Tagziria

CovidCrimeWatch

#CovidCrimeWatch – n°5

...rly been distributing packages in Jalisco marked ‘From your friends, CJNG, COVID-19 contingency support’, as have the Gulf Cartel in Tamaulipas and Los Zetas in Veracruz. Approximately half of Mexico’s workforce operate in the informal economy, living at or below the level of subsistence. Therefore, if they are not able to go out to work, they will no longer have any source of income. The actio...

Posted on 22 Apr 2020

Author(s): Lyes Tagziria