New criminal proceeding for Vicente Carrillo for La Línea operation

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The former leader of the Juarez Cartel, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes --El Viceroy--, faces a new criminal process for organized crime in Tamaulipas.

The Attorney General's Office accuses him of organized crime with the purpose of committing a crime against health, for the operation of the La Línea cell in Chihuahua.

The Viceroy had already been charged with organized crime in the Second District Court in the area of ​​Federal Criminal Proceedings in the State of Mexico.

The new criminal case was opened in Tamaulipas, where since April he was linked to trial and last month a Collegiate Court ratified it.

The events attributed to him occurred between November 2007 and January 2009.

The FGR says that the group was organized and permanently committed to commit crimes against health, specifically the sale of narcotics in the state of Chihuahua, and Carrillo Fuentes assumed administration, direction and supervision functions until the date of his arrest.

According to the testimonies that the Prosecutor's Office included in the accusation, La Línea operated in Chihuahua with protection from the State Ministerial Police and Municipal Police.

According to the witnesses, the group was dedicated to stocking and collecting the drug in the stores, for  drug dealers and controlling prostitution.

The hitmen mutilated and tortured the victims before executing them and tortured them to make them speak when they were members of rival groups.

In the statements, the former members of the criminal organization point out that because of the presence of military personnel in various city checkpoints, they used short arms for executions since it is easier to hide and carry them.

They describe that when some cell of the organization is ordered to execute a certain person; they received a call from the boss who indicated the name of the person, how he was dressed, where he was and whether or not he used a vehicle.

The head of the cell designated those who would participate in the execution and who would verify that the area was clean, that is, that there were no police or military; and once the target was located, the group of hitmen arrived and killed him, and they retired to their safe house.

One of the witnesses mentioned that they communicated with the municipal police and told the operators to move the patrols from where they were going to carry out an execution.

“We kill purely guilty people who are harming people, the rapists, the chapulines that sell drugs that are not from La Línea, but always when they go alone.”.

One of the hitmen said he received a thousand pesos a week [50 dollars USD]  for committing the murders he was ordered.

One of the witnesses, who was a Chihuahua PME agent, said he joined the group at the invitation of a PME coordinator who was killed in 2008.

He mentioned that a first commander tried to kill him and the coordinator was killed because they were passing information from the cartel to the DEA.

He said that on one occasion his boss told him that they would no longer be doing research and that the ministries would only be for the surveillance of Juan Pablo Ledezma, aka the JL or the Two Letters.

JL had as escorts former kaibiles and former military personnel who traveled in eight suburban areas and in each one there were eight people, all dressed in black.

For the cartel, he said, PME agents worked checking suspicious vehicles on the streets.

Another witness said that on one occasion the owner of a lot of cars made a scam to a member of the cartel and they went to  his house and when they were in the house, he passed in a truck twice so they intercepted it.

Two people who worked for another cartel were traveling in the vehicle and they were handcuffed and taken to another place where they were executed.

The two men killed were also "lotteries" and carried the keys of the vehicles so they went to the lot, knocked down the gate and stole 20 vehicles.

According to the FGR, at that time the second in command of the cartel was Juan Pablo Ledezma, for whom they offer a reward of up to 15 million pesos.

With the testimonies presented by the FGR, the Judge considered that it was sufficient to presume that Carrillo Fuentes had the functions of directing or administering an organized group and issued a ruling on the process.

Viceroy's lawyers contested the decision but the Collegiate Court ratified the order of attachment.

The Court notes that for organized crime the penalty is 20 to 40 years in prison and 500 to 25 thousand days of fine.

Carrillo Fuentes was arrested in October 2014 in Torreón, Coahuila.

In addition to the criminal proceedings he faces in Mexico, he has an extradition process to the United States that has not been concluded.