3/30/2008: Intel News Brief: Drug Cartels operate Training Camps Near
US Border; Assassins Trained:

CAMARGO, Mexico - The ranch near this border community is isolated,
desolate and laced by arroyos - an ideal place, experts say, for
training drug cartel assassins.

Mexican drug cartels have conducted military-style training camps in
at least six such locations in northern Tamaulipas and Nuevo León
states, some within a few miles of the Texas border, according to U.S.
and Mexican authorities and the printed testimony of five protected
witnesses who were trained in the camps.

The camps near the Texas border and at other locations in Mexico are
used to train cartel recruits - ranging from Mexican army deserters to
American teenagers - who then carry out killings and other cartel
assignments on both sides of the border, authorities say.

"Traffickers go to great lengths to prepare themselves for battle,"
said a senior U.S. anti-narcotics official, speaking on condition of
anonymity. "Part of that preparation is live firing ranges and combat
training courses. ... And that's not something that we have seen
before."

Many of the camps are temporary, used for a time and then abandoned or
used intermittently. Others are hidden on private land behind locked
gates and have more permanent facilities, the officials said.

The land is seldom held in the name of known cartel members but is
usually purchased through someone fronting for a cartel, authorities
said. Sometimes "mobile" training camps are conducted on private land
without the owner's consent.

The camps include locations in Mexico's interior, but U.S. law
enforcement officials said they are acutely concerned about those
along the 1,000-mile-long Texas-Mexico border - another example of the
escalating drug war among feuding cartels.

In Texas, Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores said he and other law
enforcement officials are "doing everything we can to secure our
borders with limited resources."

"We know through intelligence sources that narco-traffickers invest
money in Mexican nationals and U.S. citizens in training camps to
instruct them in the black art of assassination and terror," he said.
"It's even more shocking to hear that they even have mobile training
sites because they take loads of money to set up."

In the state of Tamaulipas, for example, the Zetas - paramilitary
enforcers of the Gulf cartel - train with other mercenaries, including
the Kaibiles from Guatemala, the officials said.

The testimony of the five protected witnesses is in documents from the
Mexico attorney general's office obtained by The Dallas Morning News.
Fernando Castillo, the spokesman for the attorney general's office,
confirmed the authenticity of the documents and said the report of six
training camp locations in two states abutting Texas was "about
right."

"We're not talking about Marine-style or al-Qaeda-type training
camps," Mr. Castillo said Friday. "These are more informal places used
for target shooting and for physical exercising."

According to the printed testimony, the training has taken place at
locations southwest of Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville;
near the town of Abasolo, between Matamoros and Ciudad Victoria; just
north of the Nuevo Laredo airport; and at a place called "Rancho Las
Amarillas" near a rural community, China, that is close to the Nuevo
León-Tamaulipas border.

Two other ranches used as training camps, both east of Matamoros, have
clandestine landing strips for cocaine shipments originating in
Colombia and destined for the United States via Texas, according to
the officials and testimony.

Mr. Castillo described Rancho Las Amarillas as a more sophisticated
operation than the others and said Mexican authorities seized the
ranch in 2002. The ranch manager, Eduardo Salvador López, was
sentenced Feb. 23 to 20 years in prison for drug crimes.

Mr. Castillo added: "When we know there is a training camp, we seized
them and shut them down. But because they're often mobile and often
temporary, we can't do much about them."

Two Mexican soldiers stationed in Reynosa, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said the camps are sometimes heavily fortified.

"In some cases, they're better armed than we are," one soldier said of
the cartel members. "They can bring down a plane."

A former senior Mexican intelligence official said that the use of
training camps has become "standard practice" for the cartels. "Yes,
there are training camps where hitmen from both sides of the border
train with weapons from the United States," he said, speaking on
condition of anonymity.
Source: Morning Intel News Brief via Internal Company News Wire