#drug-trafficking

#drug-trafficking

LOS ANGELES A former U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer was sentenced to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to working with Mexican traffickers to bring drugs into the U.S., officials said Thursday. Diego Bonillo, 30, pleaded guilty in July to multiple charges, including conspiracy to import controlled substances such as cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. As part of his plea deal, he admitted to using his position to allow drug-filled cars into the U.S. from Mexico without inspection.

A gunman on a motorbike has shot dead the 20-year-old youngest brother of a prominent anti-drug activist in the southern French city of Marseille in a possible warning over his campaigning, a prosecutor said on Friday. France's second-largest city is struggling to battle drug crime, with more than a dozen people killed since the start of the year in turf wars and other disputes linked to cocaine and cannabis dealing.

We will have the collaboration of several international agencies, including, of course, the DEA. Because drug trafficking and terrorism are not the problem of a single nation, Oviedo said Wednesday at an official event. Oviedo focused primarily on the coca-producing region known as the tropics of Cochabamba, or Chapare, a political stronghold of Morales and an area with minimal regulation over coca leaf production. Local coca growers have warned that they will not allow the international agency to set up operations there.

Officials in Colombia say the country will continue to share intelligence with international agencies combatting drug trafficking, just days after President Gustavo Petro said he was suspending such collaboration with the United States over attacks on vessels in international waters. Colombian Defence Minister Pedro Arnulfo Sanchez said in a social media post on Thursday that Petro had provided clear instructions to maintain a continuous flow of information with international agencies working on drug trafficking.

Those crimes included putting his live-in nanny in a headlock, grabbing her breast and forcing her hand onto her genitals in February; menacing a nurse at Mount Sinai South Hospital in January by swinging an IV pole at her and threatening to fing kill her; menacing and grabbing the arm of a congregant of a synagogue in May; and repeatedly evading bridge tolls while driving a Lamborghini and Ferrari.

An investigation into a man suspected of selling drugs out of his car in East Oakland culminated in his arrest Thursday, as well as the seizure of nearly $475,000, more than 25 pounds of heroin and half a dozen handguns, authorities said. The Alameda County Narcotics Task Force opened the investigation after fielding numerous complaints from residents, according to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. Detectives identified the suspect and obtained warrants for him, his residence and associated properties.

A British grandmother facing the death penalty in Bali for smuggling a large haul of cocaine was repatriated to the UK from Indonesia on Friday, officials said. Lindsay Sandiford, 69, was sent back along with fellow British national Shahab Shahabadi, who was serving a life sentence for drug offences. The plane taking them from Bali to London left at around 12.30am on Friday, I Nyoman Gede Surya Mataram, Indonesia's acting deputy for immigration and corrections coordination, said.

Law enforcement officials on Tuesday announced the arrests of five people, with felony warrants issued against two more, in a drug trafficking ring operating from Mami-Dade County to Port St. Lucie, with seizures of 2,262 grams of cocaine, fentanyl and other illegal drugs. "We're going to keep blowing up these networks right here in the state," said Attorney General James Uthmeier, comparing Tuesday's news with the Trump Administration's ongoing military strikes against suspected drug runners in international waters off South America.

That peaceful arrest during which smiles were even exchanged was the culmination of months of negotiations between U.S. authorities and one of Colombia's most powerful drug traffickers. He was accused of flooding drug routes with more than 900 tons of cocaine and laundering billions of dollars. The scene, recounted by Colombian historian Petrit Baquero, marked the demise of Julio Lozano Pirateque, alias Patricia.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday on his social media account X that the U.S. military had launched three extrajudicial attacks on four vessels sailing in the Pacific on Monday. Fourteen people were killed in the operation, and there was one survivor. Hegseth claimed, without providing evidence, that the vessels were transporting drugs and that their crew members, killed in the operation, belonged to designated terrorist organizations. He did not specify which organizations.

Despite allegedly flushing an unknown quantity of methamphetamine and heroin down his toilet during a police raid, a local resident has been charged with being a drug dealer, court records show. The 51-year-old San Leandro resident was charged with possessing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, crack cocaine, and marijuana for sale, and with being a prohibited person in possession of ammunition, court records show.

The United States' campaign of extrajudicial military attacks against alleged drug trafficking speedboats continues unabated. On Friday, the Pentagon announced a new strike against one of these vessels in international waters in the Caribbean, in which six people were killed. It is the first such strike in the Caribbean since Washington confirmed two attacks in the Pacific on Wednesday, which also brought the U.S. military campaign against the cartels in the Americas to those waters.

SOLEDAD Three California prisoners with alleged ties to organized crime are suspected of murdering an Aryan Brotherhood member at Salinas Valley State Prison, authorities announced Thursday. Todd Fox Morgan, 57, of Santa Clara County, was killed with improvised weapons by Todd Givens, 56, Ray Waldron, 51, and Robert England, 61, on a prison yard a little before 10 a.m. Thursday, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The Central Intelligence Agency is providing the bulk of the intelligence used to carry out the controversial lethal air strikes by the Trump administration against small, fast-going boats in the Caribbean Sea suspected of carrying drugs from Venezuela, according to three sources familiar with the operations. Experts say the agency's central role means much of the evidence used to select which alleged smugglers to kill on the open sea will almost certainly remain secret.

Donald Trump has escalated tensions between Washington and one of its closest Latin American allies, declaring the US will slash assistance to Colombia and enact tariffs on its exports because its president, Gustavo Petro, does nothing to stop drug production. Trump referred to Petro as an illegal drug leader in a post on the Truth Social platform and warned that Petro better close up drug operations or the United States will close them up for him, and it won't be done nicely.