09:58
Qleap
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has said politicians in the main opposition party may consider deals with criminals, opening an inflammatory new front in the nation's presidential election campaign. Calderon's blunt remarks about the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which is favored to win the July 1, 2012 election, are unusual in a country where the president is expected to stay largely aloof from party politics. Centering on the policy that has dominated his presidency -- an aggressive army-led crackdown on drug cartels -- his comments risk polarizing opinion on how to restore stability to Mexico, where the drug war has killed 44,000 in five years. Leading members of Calderon's conservative National Action Party (PAN), other PRI opponents and political analysts have accused the once-dominant party of making secret deals with drug cartels in the past to keep the peace in Mexico. In a weekend New York Times interview published a day after he said a state governed by the PRI had been left in the hands of a drug gang, Calderon was asked whether the opposition party might pursue a corrupt relationship with organized crime. "There are many in the PRI who think the deals of the past would work now. I don't see what deal could be done, but that is the mentality many of them have," said Calderon, whom the law prevents from seeking a second six-year term. Calderon's office later issued a statement saying the newspaper had expressly noted when posing the question that the PRI had a reputation for making deals with organized crime. His office underlined that the president recognized many in the PRI did not favor this approach and supported his policy. Analysts say Calderon is bitterly opposed to the PRI, which dominated Mexico for seven decades until PAN won the presidency in 2000 under its candidate Vicente Fox. The tide of drug war killings has eroded support for the PAN, and the PRI's main hopeful, the telegenic former governor of the State of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, has around twice the support of his nearest rival. NAMING NAMES The PRI has attacked Calderon for the spiraling death toll, and analysts said the president's remarks were tailored for the election, putting in jeopardy any hope of passing many pending reforms that have been stalled in Congress. "This is really serious," Javier Oliva, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), said of Calderon's comments about the PRI. "The president has an obligation to prove this now. To name names." "The president is regressing into a negative stance of being president of the PAN, and not president of Mexico." The Times noted that Calderon "looked disgusted at the mere mention of the PRI" during the interview. The statement issued by his office said Calderon mentioned the ex-PRI governor of Nuevo Leon state, Socrates Rizzo, as someone who had pointed to the existence of such pacts. Rizzo's comments, which were reported early this year, were rejected by leading PRI figures at the time. The PRI's national chairman, Humberto Moreira, told El Universal's Sunday newspaper his party did not want to make deals with organized crime and that Calderon was trying to exploit the issue of public security for political ends.
Police towed away this Hells Angels motorcycle from a clubhouse Wednesday after a raid also found drugs, weapons and Hells Angels paraphernalia. Ottawa police
Two brazen, targeted shootings of known British Columbia gangsters in less than a month may be the kindling that sparks renewed gang warfare in the Lower Mainland, say police. The officer who heads the province's gangs task force issued an "unusual" alert Tuesday to anyone with links to two notorious crime families after a known gangster was shot and wounded last week in Surrey, B.C. Supt. Tom McCluskie told reporters both that incident and the high-profile slaying of Red Scorpions' gang boss Jonathan Bacon in August amount to a high expectation by his 80 investigators that more attacks are on the way. "We're anticipating retaliatory violence, yes," he said at a news conference held at an office of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit in Delta, B.C. "I'm not trying to instill fear in the citizens, but certainly there's enough tension in there that we're concerned there will be a retaliation, that there will be further violence." The 24-year-old man shot in his car on Friday was a known member of the Dhak crime group, which police say runs an illegal drug ring throughout the Lower Mainland. One member of that family, Gurmit Dhak, was shot dead in his BMW at a suburban Burnaby mall last October, in another scenario police said was planned. Anyone with ties to either the Dhak or Duhre crime families are currently believed to be in heightened danger, and hanging around with such people could result in peril, McCluskie said. He said he's especially concerned for the members' girl friends and those who are simply connected on the social scene. Members of both groups have been linked to criminal activity on numerous occasions by police in B.C. in the past. While the public is not the intended target, McCluskie said, there's no telling where or when the tension will flare up again as gang rivalries rear their ugly head. It means bystanders could even get caught in the crossfire, he said. Thirty-year-old Bacon was shot to death outside a posh hotel in Kelowna. The gunfire that put the latest gangster in hospital broke out on a city street. "It's the fact these guys don't care where it is, they have no regard whatsoever for the general public," McCluskie said. Officers are examining the possibility the two incidents are directly linked, although at this point it's too early to draw conclusions, he said. "As of right now we haven't made any confirmed connection." The news conference is the most vocal and direct police have been in declaring expectations around the possibility of more bloodshed since Bacon died. Tit-for-tat clashes became a weekly occurrence for several months back in 2009, as turf battles played out in the Lower Mainland. There were at least four dozen shootings that year in the Vancouver area alone. Tensions were reduced to simmering, however, as police changed their strategy, made arrests of prominent players and conducted more behind-the-scenes enforcement. Police say alarm bells went off for many dealing with the organized crime world when Bacon was unexpectedly taken out. A full-patch member of the Hells Angels and another alleged gang member were hit by the mid-day volley of gunfire on Aug. 14, while two others accompanying them in a luxury SUV were also wounded. McCluskie said he's "pleased" with how his team is progressing in that investigation, but couldn't say when any arrests may be made. McCluskie wouldn't give any details about the new "intelligence" his team has gathered suggesting people tied to the two families are in danger, in order to protect the investigation. He said officers have already conducted several "duty-to-warns," telling known gang members they have reason to believe they might be next. "I'm not confident it reaches all those individuals, I'm hopeful," he said, noting he's less concerned about giving the groups credence by putting out the warning than letting the public know the risks. "Quite often the gangs don't listen to us very well."
No amount of money can absolve News International from hacking in to the phone of Surrey murder victim Milly Dowler, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has said , following the disclosure that the company was about to settle its case with the teenager's family. Rupert Murdoch is set to donate £1 million to charity from his own pocket, while the Dowlers themselves will receive in the region of £2 million in a separate payout from News International, the publishers of the now-closed News of the World. The company has confirmed it is in "advanced negotiations" with relatives of the 13-year-old, who was abducted and killed by Levi Bellfield in 2002. On Tuesday Mr Clegg said no amount of money could absolve the company for what happened. He said: "It is not for me to decide what money News International offer the Dowlers. I think it is very, very important we now give the Dowler family the time and space they need to rebuild their lives and move on. "I think the reason why people were so outraged by the invasion of the privacy of the Dowler family is that they weren't celebrities, they weren't politicians, they hadn't asked to be put on the front page of the nation's newspapers. I have met them and they are a lovely, strong, every-day family who lost their daughter and were dealing with that terrible tragedy and even then these journalists - it's just grotesque - were invading their privacy. "In a sense I think, and I am sure the Dowlers feel the same, that no amount of money can absolve people for what they did." News International is reported to have set aside £20 million for payments to phone hacking victims, but a source said the size of the expected compensation for the Dowlers reflected the "wholly exceptional circumstances" of their case. Sources close to the Dowlers have said any agreement will feature a donation to charity. It is not yet known which cause, or causes, would benefit. A News International spokesman said: "News International confirms it is in advanced negotiations with the Dowler family regarding their compensation settlement. No final agreement has yet been reached, but we hope to conclude the discussions as quickly as possible."
