TIJUANA, Mexico — Mexico's undersecretary of security said Thursday that the same criminal cell, comprised of remnants of the Arellano-Felix Cartel, is responsible for the murders of Tijuana journalists Margarito Martinez Esquivel and Lourdes Maldonado.
Ricardo Mejia Berdeja, the Undersecretary of Security, made the comments during a Power Point presentation at the president's daily morning news conference.
"There is a link between the homicide of Lourdes Maldonado and that of Margarito Martinez with the same criminal group. It is a remnant of the Arellano Felix group, led by a man nicknamed Cabo 16, who was also arrested in both incidents," said Mejia.
On Jan. 17, Martinez, 49, who covered crime and security issues in Tijuana, was shot to death as he left his home on the city's crime-stricken southside. Six days after Martinez's slaying, another well-known Tijuana reporter, Lourdes Maldonado, was murdered outside her home. Two years earlier she had publicly told Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador she feared for her life.
Three men were arrested on Feb. 9 in connection with Maldonado's death. Updates on the murder case have not been available because prosecutors have insisted the hearings be held behind closed doors, citing a risk to a witness's life. Mejia's update on Thursday included the new information that those three defendants have now been bound over for trial and he gave a possible motive for the killing.
"The motive in the case of Lourdes Maldonado was that Lourdes Maldonado denounced drug dealers who were carrying out illegal operations in the neighborhood where she lived ... and because patrols arrived and persecuted these subjects, and in retaliation for Lourdes' responsible civic action of denouncing these criminal acts, she was victimized by this same group that murdered her colleague, Margarito Martinez," said Mejia.
When Maldonado told Mexico's president she feared for her life, she specifically cited Jaime Bonilla, a well-known businessman and politician in Baja California, and a close personal friend of Mexico's president.
Maldonado had been involved in a nine-year-long legal dispute with a local television company owned by Bonilla after her position was unjustly terminated and she was owed back wages. She announced that she'd won the case just days before her murder.
The Arellano-Felix Cartel, or CAF — also called the Arellano-Felix Organization, or AFO — was once the most powerful drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico. As law enforcement officials on both sides of the border targeted the organization's main leaders in the 2000's, the cartel was greatly weakened and its enemies gained power.
The organization has been making a comeback, though, creating a bloody three-way conflict between themselves, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, or CJNG, and the Sinaloa Cartel for control of the lucrative Tijuana trafficking corridor into the United States.
Three other individuals have been held over for trial in Baja California for allegedly murdering Martinez, and seven others are charged with lesser crimes related to his killing. Prosecutors say the group mistakenly believed Martinez was responsible for information published in Zeta, a investigative news weekly, and on social networks that exposed their criminal network.
