The Latest from National Terror Alert Response Center

Vigilantes Appear To Be Fighting Back In Mexico Drug War Posted: 19 Jan 2009 11:33 PM PST Shadowy vigilante groups are threatening Mexico’s drug gangs near the U.S. border in retaliation for a wave of murders and kidnappings that killed 1,600 people in this city alone last year. One group in the border city of Ciudad Juarez pledged last week to “clean our city of these criminals” and said their mission was to “end the life of a criminal every 24 hours.” The emergence of vigilantes would be a new twist to a vicious drug war that killed 5,700 people in Mexico last year and forced the United States to give hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Mexican government. Ciudad Juarez, a manufacturing center in the desert across from El Paso, Texas, was the scene of the worst violence in 2008 as drug cartels fought each other as well as staging kidnappings for ransom and extorting businessmen. In an e-mail to news organizations, the “Juarez Citizen Command” said it was funded by local businessmen sick of abductions and extortion in the city, home to factories that export goods to the United States. While none of the city’s 1,600 in the last year were undoubtedly the work of vigilantes, a body was found on January 7 with a message next to it that read: “This is for those who continue extorting.” And six men in their 20s and 30s were shot dead and dumped together in Ciudad Juarez in October with a cardboard sign reading: “Message for all the rats: This will continue.” Drug gangs often leave threatening messages with the bodies of their victims, but security officials said those two incidents might have been the work of vigilantes. Another group, “Businessmen United, The Death Squad” put a video on Internet site YouTube last June threatening to go after kidnappers and criminals in Ciudad Juarez, the biggest city in Mexico’s Chihuahua state. The video is no longer on YouTube. via Shadow of vigilantes appears in Mexico drug war - Yahoo! News. This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for homeland security news and information.

Man Dressed As UPS Driver Robs Check Cashing Store Posted: 19 Jan 2009 10:44 PM PST The story is not terror related, rather it’s a reminder of why it’s important to be vigilant and ALWAYS follow security procedures. This time it was a robbery however; the same scenario could just as easily have taken place in a shopping mall, school, government office or any number of other locations with much more serious consequences. ———————- A man dressed to look like a UPS driver robbed a Peoria check cashing store Monday and got away with about $50,000,police said. Police gave this account: The man, dressed in brown, walked into Ace Cash Express, near 85th and Peoria avenues a little after 4 p.m. He was carrying boxes and envelopes pretending he had deliveries for the business. The employee didn’t check the man’s identification, but instead opened the security door to let him in. That’s when the suspect pulled out a knife, held it to the employee’s stomach, demanded she open the safe and hand him the money. The suspect put the cash into a box and left. Witnesses said they saw the man run to an apartment complex to the west. The suspect got into a small red SUV and was last seen westbound on Peoria Avenue, said Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef. There was no surveillance footage available, Tellef said. This should serve as a reminder of the importance to check for ID, Tellef said. “Don’t just assume. Demand ID before you open any kind of security door or even your door at home,” Tellef said. via Source This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for homeland security news and information.

Report - Al Qaeda Unconventional Weapons Experiment Kills 40 Operatives Posted: 19 Jan 2009 10:20 PM PST An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday. The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria. He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official. “We don’t know if this is biological or chemical,” the official said. The story was first reported by the British tabloid the Sun, which said the al Qaeda operatives died after being infected with a strain of bubonic plague, the disease that killed a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. But the intelligence official dismissed that claim. via Source. The Sun - Terrorists Killed By Own Black Death Experiment The terrorists planned to wreak havoc on Western targets but fell victims to their own weapon, a leading expert on chemical warfare believes. The Sun revealed yesterday that Black Death, also called the Plague, killed at least 40 fanatics at a terror training camp in Algeria earlier this month. It was thought they caught the disease through poor living conditions in their forest hideouts. But Dr Igor Khrupinov, of Georgia University, said: Al-Qaeda is known to experiment with biological weapons. And this group has direct communication with other cells around the world. Contagious diseases, like ebola and anthrax, occur in northern Africa. It makes sense that people are trying to use them against Western governments. Dr Khrupinov, once arms adviser to Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, added: Instead of using bombs, people with infectious diseases could be walking through cities. Black Death has been researched as a biological weapon before. Source This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for homeland security news and information.

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