KT 3-4-2013_Layout 1 - Kuwait Times

INTERNATIONAL
Suspicion in Texas DA death shifts to white supremacists
KAUFMAN: Two days after a Texas district attorney
(DA) and his wife were found shot to death in
their home, authorities have said little about their
investigation or any potential suspects. But suspicion
in the slayings shifted to a white supremacist
gang with a long history of violence and retribution
that was also the focus of a December law
enforcement bulletin warning that its members
might try to attack police or prosecutors.
Four top leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood of
Texas were indicted in October for crimes ranging
from murder to drug trafficking. Two months later,
authorities issued the bulletin warning that
the gang might try to retaliate against law
enforcement for the investigation that led to the
arrests of 34 of its members on federal charges.
Kaufman County District Attorney Mike
McLelland and his wife were found dead Saturday
in their East Texas home.
The killings were especially jarring because
they happened just a couple of months after one
of the county’s assistant district attorneys, Mark
Hasse, was killed in a parking lot near his courthouse
office. McLelland was part of a multiagency
task force that took part in the investigation
of the Aryan Brotherhood. The task force also
included the FBI, the Drug Enforcement
Administration as well as police departments in
Houston and Fort Worth.
Investigators have declined to say if the group
is the focus of their efforts, but the state
Department of Public Safety bulletin warned that
the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is “involved in
issuing orders to inflict ‘mass casualties or death’
to law enforcement officials involved in the recent
case.” Terry Pelz, a former Texas prison warden and
expert on the Aryan Brotherhood said killing law
enforcement representatives would be uncharacteristic
of the group. “They don’t go around killing
officials,” he said. “They don’t draw heat upon
themselves.”
But Pelz, who worked in the Texas prison system
for 21 years, added that the gang has a history
of threatening officials and of killing its own
CONNECTICUT: Police are positioned outside the home of Nancy Lanza in this
December 18, 2012 file photo in Newtown, Connecticut. Detectives searching the
Newtown school shooter’s house found that he and his mother kept a startlingly
large arsenal of rifles, pistols and other weapons including swords, newly released
details showed. — AFP
Connecticut lawmakers
unveil gun control plan
HARTFORD: With an announcement of
sweeping proposals to curb gun violence,
Connecticut lawmakers said they are hoping
to send a message to Congress and
other state legislators across the country: A
bipartisan agreement on gun control is
possible. Legislative leaders on Monday
revealed proposals spurred by the Dec 14
Newtown school shooting following weeks
of bipartisan, closed-door negotiations.
A vote is expected Wednesday in the
General Assembly, where Democrats control
both chambers, making passage all but
assured. “Democrats and Republicans were
able to come to an agreement on a strong,
comprehensive bill,” said Senate President
Donald E Williams Jr, a Democrat from
Brooklyn, who called the proposed legislation
the strongest, most comprehensive bill
in the country. “That is a message that
should resound in 49 other states and in
Washington, DC. And the message is: We
can get it done here and they should get it
done in their respective states and nationally
in Congress.”
The massacre reignited the gun debate
in the country and led to calls for increased
gun control legislation on the federal and
state levels. While some other states,
including neighboring New York, have
strengthened their gun laws, momentum
has stalled in Congress, whose members
were urged by President Barack Obama last
week not to forget the shooting and to
capitalize on the best chance in years to
stem gun violence.
The Connecticut deal includes a ban on
new high-capacity ammunition magazines
like the ones used in the massacre at Sandy
Hook Elementary School that left 20 children
and six educators dead. There are also
new registration requirements for existing
magazines that carry 10 or more bullets,
something of a disappointment for some
family members of Newtown victims who
wanted an outright ban on the possession
of all high-capacity magazines and traveled
to the state Capitol on Monday to ask lawmakers
for it.
The package also creates what lawmakers
said is the nation’s first statewide dangerous
weapon offender registry, creates a
new “ammunition eligibility certificate,”
imposes immediate universal background
checks for all firearms sales, and extends
the state’s assault weapons ban to 100 new
types of firearms and requires that a
weapon have only one of several features
in order to be banned.
The newly banned weapons could no
longer be bought or sold in Connecticut,
and those legally owned already would
have to be registered with the state, just
like the high-capacity magazines. Senate
Minority Leader John McKinney, a Fairfield
Republican whose district includes
Newtown, said Republicans and Democrats
have understood they needed to “rise
above politics” when they decided to come
up with a legislative response to the massacre.
“At the end of the day, I think it’s a
package that the majority of the people of
Connecticut I know will be proud of,” he
said.
The bill also addresses mental health
and school security measures, including
gun restrictions for people who’ve been
committed to mental health facilities and
restoration of a state grant for school safety
improvements. After clearing the state legislature,
the bill would be sent to Gov
Dannel P Malloy, who has helped lead
efforts to strengthen the state’s gun laws
but has not yet signed off on the proposed
legislation. Earlier Monday, Malloy voiced
support for the Newtown families and their
desire to ban the possession of largecapacity
magazines.
Ron Pinciaro, executive director of
Connecticut Against Gun Violence, said his
group will live with the lawmakers’ decision
not to ban them as other states have done.
He said the leaders made their decision
based on what was politically feasible. “We
have to be satisfied. There are still other
things that we want, we’ll be back for in later
sessions,” he said. “But for now, it’s a
good thing.” Robert Crook, executive director
of the Connecticut Coalition of
Sportsmen, contended the bill would not
have changed what happened at Sandy
Hook Elementary School, where gunman
Adam Lanza fired off 154 shots with a
Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle within five
minutes.
He went through six 30-round magazines,
though half were not completely
empty, and police said he had three other
30-round magazines in addition to one in
the rifle. “They can register magazines and
do all the rest of this stuff. It isn’t going to
do anything,” he said. Gun owners, who’ve
packed public hearings at the state Capitol
in recent months, voicing their opposition
to various gun control measures, are concerned
they’ve been showing up “for virtually
nothing” after learning about the bill,
Crook said. —AP
member or rivals. He suggested if the Aryan
Brotherhood was behind the slayings in Kaufman
County, some sort of disruption in the gang’s
operations might have prompted their retaliation.
That disruption might have come last year, when
federal prosecutors in Houston in November
announced indictments against 34 alleged members
of the gang, including four of its top leaders
in Texas. At the time, prosecutors called the
indictment “a devastating blow to the leadership”
of the gang.
Meanwhile, deputies escorted some Kaufman
County employees into the courthouse Monday
after the slayings stirred fears that other public
employees could be targeted. Law enforcement
officers were seen patrolling outside the courthouse,
one holding a semi-automatic weapon,
while others walked around inside. Deputies were
called to the McLelland home by relatives and
friends who had been unable to reach the pair,
according to a search warrant affidavit.
When they arrived, investigators found the
two had been shot multiple times. Cartridge casings
were scattered near their bodies, the affidavit
said. Authorities have not discussed a
motive. “I don’t want to walk around in fear every
day ... but on the other hand, two months ago, we
wouldn’t be having this conversation,” County
TEXAS: Law enforcement officials walk out of the home of Kaufman District Attorney Mike McLelland near
Forney, Texas. McLelland and his wife were both murdered at their home Saturday. — AP
NUEVO LAREDO: The bodies of nine men, most
of them dismembered, were found inside a sport
utility vehicle with Texas license plates in northeastern
Mexico, prosecutors said Monday.
Authorities made the discovery after receiving a
report late Sunday of an abandoned vehicle near
Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the state of
Tamaulipas, which borders Texas, the state prosecutor’s
office said in a brief statement.
Northern Mexican states are the scene of turf
wars between powerful drug cartels vying for
control of lucrative trafficking routes to the
United States, with decapitations among the brutal
fear tactics. More than 70,000 people have
died in drug-related violence since 2006, with the
cartels fighting each other, as well as troops
deployed by the government to combat the
gangs. Elsewhere in Mexico, officials said five
people, including a 45-year-old US man, were
killed in two bar shootings in the western city of
Guadalajara late Sunday. Prosecutors suspect
organized crime was behind those two attacks.
MEXICO BAR SHOOTINGS
A 45-year-old US man was among five people
killed in two bar shootings in Mexico’s second
biggest city, with a grenade used in one of the
attacks, authorities said Monday. Officials said a
total of 45 rounds were fired off with 9mm handguns
in the attacks in the western city of
Guadalajara late Sunday, wounding another 17
people. Witnesses said a single gunman opened
fire outside the bar in each attack.
The shootings took place 15 minutes apart
and appeared to be aimed at the owners of the
bars, who are related, said senior prosecutor
Jorge Villasenor. He added that investigators suspect
organized crime was involved “due to the
type of weapon that was used.” “The attack was
Judge Bruce Wood, the county’s top administrator,
said Monday at a news conference.
The killings also came less than two weeks
after Colorado’s prison chief was shot to death at
his front door, apparently by an ex-convict. Law
enforcement agencies throughout Texas were on
high alert, and steps were being taken to better
protect other DAs and their staffs. In Harris
directed at these places, not at a specific person.
This is the line of investigation that we are looking
into,” he said. The two bar owners are being
questioned in order to determine a possible
motive. Two people, including the American,
were killed when a gunman opened fire on the
“Gol” bar where people had watched the Chivas-
America football derby, prosecutors said. The
American was identified by a female companion
as Jeff Lydell Comer. The other victim was a 20year-old
Mexican man. Both were customers at
the bar. Fifteen minutes earlier, a gunman
attacked the “Ruta 66” bar in a different neigh-
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 2013
County, which includes Houston, District Attorney
Mike Anderson said he accepted the sheriff’s offer
of 24-hour security for him and his family.
Anderson said he also would take precautions at
his office, the largest of its kind in Texas, with
more than 270 prosecutors.
“I think district attorneys across Texas are still
in a state of shock,” Anderson said Sunday.
McLelland, 63, was the 13th prosecutor killed in
the US since the National Association of District
Attorneys began keeping count in the 1960s.
Kaufman County Sheriff David Byrnes would not
give details Sunday of how the killings unfolded
and said there was nothing to indicate for certain
whether the DA’s slaying was connected to
Hasse’s. El Paso County, Colo., sheriff’s spokesman
Sgt Joe Roybal said investigators had so far found
no evidence connecting the Texas killings to the
Colorado case, but added: “We’re examining all
possibilities.”
Colorado’s corrections director, Tom Clements,
was killed March 19 when he answered the doorbell
at his home outside Colorado Springs. Evan
Spencer Ebel, a white supremacist and former
Colorado inmate suspected of shooting
Clements, died in a shootout with Texas deputies
two days later about 100 miles from Kaufman. In
an Associated Press interview shortly after the
Colorado slaying, McLelland himself raised the
possibility that Hasse was gunned down by a
white supremacist gang.
McLelland, elected in 2010, said his office had
prosecuted several cases against such gangs, particularly
one known as the Aryan Brotherhood.
The groups have a strong presence around
Kaufman County, a mostly rural area dotted with
subdivisions, with a population of about 104,000.
No arrests have been made in Hasse’s Jan 31 slaying.
After that attack, McLelland said, he carried a
gun everywhere around town, even when walking
his dog. He figured assassins were more likely
to try to attack him outside. He said he had
warned all his employees to be constantly on the
alert. — AP
Nine bodies found in
US vehicle in Mexico
US man among 5 dead in bar shootings
CARACAS: Venezuelan opposition candidate
Henrique Capriles on Monday accused acting
president Nicolas Maduro of unfairly using state
media and money in his campaign to succeed
the late Hugo Chavez. The accusations come two
weeks before voters choose a new president following
the death of Chavez, the flamboyant
leader who governed oil-rich Venezuela for 14
years and launched a self-styled leftist “revolution.”
“The state media have become a propaganda
wing of a political party,” Capriles alleged, referring
to the socialist party of Maduro, Chavez’s
handpicked successor. In free and fair balloting,
candidates are supposed to have the same
access and the same rights, Capriles told a press
conference.
But Maduro, a former bus driver and union
leader, is relying on “all of the state’s resources ...
and all of the state’s power structure” to run his
campaign, Capriles charged. The campaign does
not officially began until yesterday, but Capriles
said Maduro had spent 46 hours on state TV
since Chavez’s death on March 5. Capriles went
on to urge the National Electoral Council to be
impartial and enforce campaign rules ahead of
the April 14 vote.
Communications Minister Ernesto Villegas
fired back on Twitter, saying state television had
broadcast Capriles’s press conference live
“despite his orders to prevent access for journalists”
from state media. Villegas also again invited
Capriles to be interviewed on state television,
after the opposition candidate denied an earlier
request, saying state media is biased against him.
GUADALAJARA: Forensic personnel work at the scene of a crime where four people were shot
dead, in a bar of Guadalajara, Mexico. — AFP
Later Monday night, Capriles joined a march
against insecurity in the country, railing against
the government for failing to address the pressing
issue.
borhood, firing shots and throwing a grenade.
A 28-year-old customer and a 30-year-old
employee were found shot dead outside the bar
while a 23-year-old waitress later died of her
gunshot wounds.
The explosion injured an unspecified number
of people. The prosecutor’s office said 17 people
were wounded but did not specify how many in
each attack. Four other men were killed in other
attacks on Sunday across Guadalajara, which has
endured some of the drug-related violence that
has left 70,000 people dead in Mexico since
December 2006. — Agencies
Capriles cries foul ahead
of Venezuelan election
CARACAS: Venezuelan opposition candidate
for the upcoming April 14 presidential election,
Henrique Capriles Radonski gestures
during a night march in Caracas. — AFP
“There is not a single proposal for the government
to defeat violence and give peace to
Venezuelans,” Capriles said before a crowd of
hundreds of thousands. In the first three months
of the year, Venezuela recorded 3,400 murders,
interior and justice minister Nestor Reverol said
Monday on state television. In 2012, the country
saw 16,000 homicides, a 14 percent increase over
the year before, he added, vowing to strengthen
security measures. Unofficial tallies put the figure
even higher, with the Venezuelan Observatory of
Violence citing 21,000 murders in 2012.
Maduro, 50, formerly served as Chavez’s foreign
minister and vice president. Miranda state
governor Capriles, 40, lost to Chavez in an
October election. Chavez, who came to embody
a resurgent Latin American left while channeling
Venezuela’s vast oil wealth into social programs
for the poor, died last month after a long battle
with cancer. During his 14 years in power Chavez
developed a vast media apparatus consisting of
at least five television broadcast channels, two
newspapers and dozens of local radio stations
carrying the government’s message.
Maduro leads Capriles by a 20-point margin,
according to a poll out Monday by Hinterlaces,
which indicated Maduro would win 55 percent of
the vote compared to Capriles’s 35 percent. A
previous survey on March 19 gave Maduro a similar
margin of 18 points. In an exclusive interview
with AFP over the weekend, Maduro insisted the
“revolution” was united behind him. “I trust that
people will go to the polls to vote for Maduro
because we are like a family that lost its father,”
he said. —AFP