Thomson Reuters Foundation/by Anastasia Moloney - Gang violence has become so deadly in parts of Central America that many people are living in what is a war zone, Amnesty International said on Friday, adding that some migrants who have fled danger are killed within weeks of being deported home. Every year violence at the hands of gang members drives tens of thousands of people, including child...

By Wendy Anders Cocaine trafficking, Costa Rica Costa Rica’s drug control police completed the bust of a drug ring based out of southern Costa Rica with nine arrests yesterday in different parts of the country, reported the Public Security Ministry. Three other members of the group were previously arrested, two in 2015 and one last month. Research conducted by the drug police reveals ...

By Wendy Anders This manicurist was an innocent victim in Sunday's shooting. Eloisa Pinnock had just turned 33 and has left behind 4 children: Yosielka (17), Joshuany (16), Yoleeh (13) and Yoidiveth (7). Photo from La Nación. A lazy afternoon at the Sunset Beach Bar in Cieneguita, Limón turned into a deadly scene just after 4 p.m. Sunday. According to police reports, two hooded men appro...

The launch of Mexico's anti-trafficking hotline, from Facebook. Mexico City, Oct. 3 — Mexican authorities rescued 51 women from traffickers and arrested seven people, the capital district attorney's office said Monday. The suspects hired the women as dancers, but then forced them to perform nude and engage in prostitution at two bars in Mexico City's Cuauhtemoc borough, the office said in a...

MEXICO PRESS Photo of Barbara McClatchie Andrews from her Facebook page Mexico City, Oct. 1 — Canadian photographer Barbara McClatchie Andrews was found dead on a highway in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatan, local authorities reported Friday. She was 74. According to a bulletin issued by the Attorney General's Office of Yucatan, the woman's lifeless body was found Friday morning a...

By Wendy Anders Photo for illustrative purposes. A 65-year-old German woman had her home in Quebrada Azul, Tilarán broken into by four masked, armed men on Tuesday evening, said Michael Soto, press spokesperson for the Judicial Investigative Agency (OIJ). The woman, Cristina Caglass, a legal resident of Costa Rica, was alone in her house at the time. The house is situated on a farm on a ...

By Wendy Anders A container ship that arrived from Colombia last weekend and docked at the Limón, Costa Rica port of Moín was found to have 250 kilos of cocaine stashed in a chest strapped to the outside of the vessel, reported the Public Security Ministry early this week. Divers with the anti-drug police unit had to search around the exterior of the ship to determine the location of the hid...

By Wendy Anders Robbers in downtown San José shot by police at rush hour yesterday. Photo by Melissa Fernández for La Nación. Yesterday at rush hour in downtown San José, police were alerted to a robbery of a small jewellery store on 6th Avenue between 6th and 8th Street, related Walter Espinoza, head of the Judiciary Investigative Agency (OIJ), in a press conference today. Upon arriving...

By Wendy Anders Car used by gang to rob tourists. Public Security Ministry Costa Rica’s police force is actively working to stop crimes; and thefts and crimes targeting tourists are a top priority, said the Public Security Ministry in a press statement. Members of a criminal group comprised of several nationalities and with a history of breaking into foreign tourists’ cars in Costa Rica ...

By Wendy Anders A gun seized by Costa Rican police this year. Police seize an average of five firearms each day in Costa Rica, most of these in San José, the country’s capital, stated the Public Security Ministry in a press statement yesterday. From January to September this year police removed 1,340 illegal weapons from the country’s streets, reported the Ministry’s Statistics and Analy...

By Wendy Anders Alejo Leiva Lachner (Facebook) At around midnight on Saturday police captured another suspect linked to Playas del Coco mob killing of an Escazú college student who was vacationing in the Guanacaste beach town during Holy Week in late March of this year. The suspect is a 33-year-old man named Ortiz, also known as "The Beast.” There was a warrant out for his arrest for col...

SPAIN PROSTITUTION  Alicante, Spain, Sept. 18 — The Spanish police have dismantled a group dedicated to human trafficking, prostitution and drugs, and managed to arrest six suspects. Police officials announced that this group is part of a criminal organization specialized in sexual exploitation of women of different nationalities to make revenues that have been transferred to Brazil. The ma...

USA VIOLENCE Facebook photo of Charlotte, NC protests. Charlotte, USA, Sept. 22 – A man who had been shot during Wednesday's protests against the death of black man at the hands of police in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, has died on Thursday in hospital, according to local police. The local TV station WBTV, citing sources close to the family, identified the man as Justin Carr, a ...

  Hundreds of jaguar's teeth have been seized in Bolivia The trafficking of jaguar teeth from Bolivia's natural parks to China has sparked worries that Asian smugglers are boosting this illegal trade. Between 2014 and 2016, 800 jaguar teeth have been seized by Bolivian authorities, suggesting that around 200 animals have been killed, reported the Bolivian Environment Forum (Foro Bo...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rican Police have given citations to at least 424 bars since January 2015 for a total of 674 legal infractions, stated the Public Security Ministry in a press statement. The citations are for practices including serving customers past operating hours, selling drugs, adulterating alcoholic beverages, unauthorized use of the space, expired or nonexisting business and/or l...

By Wendy Anders The Criminal Court of Liberia ordered two more months of detention for two suspects by the last names of Alfaro and Castro who were arrested in June on money laundering charges. The men, one of whom is a bus driver, and the other, his assistant, were found crossing the border with large sums of cash hidden on their bodies, reported the judicial press office Friday. In June...

By Wendy Anders Breaking News Police have just captured the first of the four people wanted for robbing a pineapple plantation in Chomes, Puntarenas yesterday. He was hiding in a vacant lot. The four made off with CRC20 million (about US$36,000) in a hold-up yesterday afternoon, reported AM Prensa, a Costa Rican Spanish digital news site. The assault occurred when the plantation cont...

By Wendy Anders Jason Noah Feinman barely survived being shot 14 times while pulling out of a bakery parking lot in downtown Escazú on the morning of March 18, 2015. This week he gave testimony via videoconference as the trial of two men suspected of the homicide attempt began in Pavas, a western San José neighborhood, reported La Nación, Costa Rica’s leading Spanish daily. Speaking from ...

By Wendy Anders Jeffrey Mora Calderon from Barva de Heredia was convicted last month of producing pornography using a 14-year-old girl, and distributing the pornographic materials, reported AM Prensa, a Costa Rican digital news media. The 14-year sentence was handed down by Costa Rica’s First Judicial Circuit Criminal Court on August 18, the assistant prosecutor for gender affairs told AM Pr...

By Wendy Anders Man watching porn. Photo for illustrative purposes, Flickr. Yesterday morning the Minors Section of the Judicial Investigative Agency (OIJ) conducted two simultaneous raids in Escazú and Cartago, both in Costa Rica’s Central Valley, to gather evidence for an investigation on a 17-year-old male teen who is suspected of production, possession and distribution of child pornogra...

By Wendy Anders In November 2006, Costa Rica and the state of New Mexico in the United States formed a civil-military partnership under a United States Department of Defense program managed by the U.S. National Guard to exchange and develop best practices in disaster response, emergency management, education, drug demand reduction, border security, and counternarcotics. The National Guard St...

By Wendy Anders https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruMVrMElzmQ Suspects wanted in the shooting of a Rumanian man outside a Santa Ana restaurant at 1:30 p.m. today remain at large. Updated at 6:45 p.m. Names of those injured and other details on the shooting have been updated and corrected with accurate information from police sources. This afternoon at around 1:30 p.m., two men fled the s...

By Wendy Anders File photo Even the faithful aren't exempt from common crimes in Costa Rica. The latest church this year to be robbed in Costa Rica was the Assumption of the Virgin Mary Catholic Temple in the canton of Mora, which neighbors Santa Ana west of San José, reported Costa Rica’s tabloid El Diario Extra today. Based on police reports from municipal Mora police, the theft too...

By Wendy Anders EFE reported today on a CNN report that John Hinckley, the man who tried to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 - wounding the president and three other people in the process - was released from a Washington, D.C., psychiatric hospital on Saturday. Hinckley was released from St. Elizabeth's Hospital, CNN said, Attorney Barry Levine, who had earlier c...

By Wendy Anders https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvvkIGUA9Oo&feature=youtu.be A 59-year-old man was arrested today on charges of aggravated pimping at a clandestine bar/hotel in Guachipelin, Escazú, an upscale suburb west of San José, Costa Rica’s capital. After Judicial Investigative Agency police (OIJ) received a tip-off early this year they began investigating the building, which led to...

By Wendy Anders After a two-year investigation, Costa Rica's Judicial Investigative Agency (OIJ) had enough evidence yesterday to make arrests in San Antonio de Coronado, San José of at least 11 individuals connected with a supposed car theft ring. The group, which OIJ Director Walter Espinoza described in a live press statement today, was found by investigators to be dedicated to stealing p...

By Wendy Anders Over the past 24 hours, two abandoned fetuses were discovered discarded in public streets in Costa Rica. Fetal abandonment is a more regular occurrence in Costa Rica than you might think. This year has seen its share of discarded fetuses in Costa Rica, which, Walter Espinoza, Judicial Investigative Agency (OIJ) director, said in a televised press statement today, is one of th...

By Wendy Anders Tuesday just after midnight, residents near the Los Horcones Bar in Chachagua, San Ramón on the way to La Fortuna, Arenal heard a loud boom, reported La Nación, Costa Rica’s main Spanish daily. Etilma Ballestero, a neighbor of the bar, said after hearing the boom she “rushed into the street, and there we saw the flames on the roofs of the cabins, and we immediately called 9-1...

By Wendy Anders Monday, the public prosecutor for La Fortuna de San Carlos, Natalia Álvarez, described the miserable living conditions of 13 foreign women who were held in dingy, dirty rooms at the back of bars for forced prostitution, reported La Nación, Costa Rica’s main daily newspaper today. In order to leave the sites, the women were forced to pay CRC10,000 and had a set return time, sa...

By Wendy Anders Yesterday morning, a 62-year-old Costa Rican man by the last name of Chavarría was stabbed in the chest in the main park in downtown Escazú, a western San José suburb. He died from the wounds shortly after being rushed to the San Juan de Dios Hospital in downtown San José. The attacker, a 38-year-old man by the last name of Salas, was detained three blocks from the park immed...

Costa Rica is known for being a country that promotes peace, one that decided 68 years ago on the abolition of the military and that has managed to do rather well without an army and that has instead focused those funds towards public education and social security; Costa Rica’s former president Oscar Arias also received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his involvement in ending the Central Americ...

Buenos Aires, Sep 2 (EFE).- Crime and violence plus the economy have become over the past year the biggest concerns for Latin Americans, who also see domestic violence as what most damages their societies, according to a Latinobarometro survey released Friday in Buenos Aires. On the average, crime is the most important problem for 22 percent of Latin Americans, topped only by the sum of those wor...

By Wendy Anders Interpol estimates that human trafficking earns between $5-6 billion a year, said EFE today. The United Nations Fund for Children said in a statement today that an estimated 500,000 children used traffickers to reach Europe over the past year and a half, reported EFE today. Meanwhile, the United States Department of States placed Costa Rica on its Tier 2 Watch List for the...

By Wendy Anders Last night at 7:00 pm, during a routine police stop on Route 27 near the exit for Multiplaza Escazú, police detained a white cargo pick-up truck driven by a 29-year-old Colombian national by the last name Betancourt, stated the Security Ministry in a press release this afternoon. Police flagged the pick-up truck when they noticed the driver seemed nervous as he approached the...

By Wendy Anders High-level Costa Rican judicial, police, immigration, and other government officials met today with Canadian experts to discuss and plan actions towards a stronger and more coordinated effort on curbing human trafficking in the country, stated the judiciary branch in a press release. The experts reviewed a report on the human trafficking mapping project which began in Septemb...

Pixabay Commons PHOENIX – Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced a judge sentenced Steve Nolte to 9 years in prison for stealing more than $571,000 from his former employer. The sentence imposed by the Court was ordered to run consecutive to Nolte’s three-year federal prison sentence for passport fraud, aggravated identity theft, and use of a falsely-obtained Social Security Number.  ...

Source; UNHCR Forced displacement caused by violence and organized crime is a problem that continues to be "invisible" for many in Central America's Northern Triangle, but it requires more attention and more effective protective mechanisms, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees representative Jose Samaniego said. Forced displacement is "a rather invisible phenomenon, the victims in ...

Source: Pixabay Commons The promise of sexual gratification with young and attractive call girls in Costa Rica have caused would-be sexual tourists from the United States to fall for a scam. According to a recent report filed by Gustavo Retana of daily tabloid Diario Extra, the flim-flam starts with online postings on social media outlets and classified websites such as Craigslist. In some ...

By Wendy Anders http://www.teletica.com/Noticias/134976-Video-muestra-detencion-de-sospechoso-de-decapitar-y-mutilar-a-nino-de-8-anos-en-Guacimo.note.aspx After an all-night search Saturday night, yesterday morning police arrested a man in Edén de Guácimo, Limón as the prime suspect in mutilating and decapitating an 8-year-old boy Saturday night after the boy went to visit a neighbour early ...

Wikimedia Commons Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Saturday that blacks will vote for him in the November elections because of tragedies like the way NBA basketball star Dwyane Wade's cousin was shot and killed while walking her baby in Chicago. "Dwyane Wade's cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will...