Felix Batista | |
---|---|
Born | Felix I. Batista |
Disappeared | 10 December 2008 (aged 55) Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico |
Status | Missing for 15 years, 9 months and 3 days |
Nationality | American |
Children | 5 |
Felix I. Batista (disappeared 10 December 2008) is a Cuban-American [1] anti-kidnapping expert and former U.S. Army major who has negotiated resolution to nearly 100 kidnapping and ransom cases, [2] dozens of them in Mexico. [3] Batista was a consultant for Houston, Texas-based security firm ASI Global. [2] In December 2008, he was kidnapped in Mexico.
On 10 December 2008, Batista was kidnapped outside a restaurant in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico by unknown assailants [2] while there to speak and give anti-kidnapping advice. [4]
Batista was working as a negotiator to secure the release of a friend of his, while he was in a restaurant with several other people he received a phone call advising that the victim had been released and a car was being sent for him. As Batista left the restaurant he was forced into a Jeep by a group of four people who had been waiting for him. An hour later the kidnapping victim was released. [5]
Since then, no one has had any communication with him and no one has ever claimed responsibility for his kidnapping as of September 2024 [update] . [6]
A statement from Batista's family said there was no sign of violence at the scene. [7]
Abu Sayyaf, officially known by the Islamic State as the Islamic State – East Asia Province, is a Jihadist militant and pirate group that followed the Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. It is based in and around Jolo and Basilan islands in the southwestern part of the Philippines, where for more than five decades, Moro groups had been engaged in an insurgency seeking to make Moro Province independent. The group is considered violent and is responsible for the Philippines' worst terrorist attack, the bombing of MV Superferry 14 in 2004, which killed 116 people. The name of the group was derived from Arabic abu, and sayyaf. As of April 2023, the group was estimated to have about 20 members, down from 1,250 in 2000. They use mostly improvised explosive devices, mortars and automatic rifles.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army is a Marxist–Leninist guerrilla group involved in the continuing Colombian conflict starting in 1964. The FARC-EP was officially founded in 1966 from peasant self-defense groups formed from 1948 during the "Violencia" as a peasant force promoting a political line of agrarianism and anti-imperialism. They are known to employ a variety of military tactics, in addition to more unconventional methods, including terrorism.
Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz is a Cuban retired politician and general who served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, the most senior position in the one-party communist state, from 2011 to 2021, and President of Cuba between 2008 and 2018, succeeding his brother Fidel Castro.
The Tijuana Cartel, formerly also known as the Arellano-Félix Cartel, is a Mexican drug cartel based in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. Founded by the Arellano-Félix family, the cartel once was described as "one of the biggest and most violent criminal groups in Mexico". However, since the 2006 Sinaloa Cartel incursion in Baja California and the fall of the Arellano-Félix brothers, the Tijuana Cartel has been reduced to a few cells. In 2016, the organization became known as Cartel Tijuana Nueva Generación and began to align itself under the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, along with Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO) to create an anti-Sinaloa alliance, in which the Jalisco New Generation Cartel heads. This alliance has since dwindled as the Tijuana, Jalisco New Generation, and Sinaloa cartels all now battle each other for trafficking influence in the city of Tijuana and the region of Baja California.
Abductions of Japanese citizens from Japan by agents of the North Korean government took place during a period of six years from 1977 to 1983. Although only 17 Japanese citizens are officially recognized by the Japanese government as having been abducted, there may have been hundreds of others. The North Korean government has officially admitted to abducting 13 Japanese citizens.
An enforced disappearance is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person with the support or acquiescence of a state followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate or whereabouts with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law. Often, forced disappearance implies murder whereby a victim is abducted, may be illegally detained, and is often tortured during interrogation, ultimately killed, and the body disposed of secretly. The party committing the murder has plausible deniability as there is no evidence of the victim's death.
The National Liberation Army is a Marxist–Leninist guerrilla insurgency group involved in the continuing Colombian conflict, which has existed in Colombia since 1964. The ELN advocates a composite communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism and liberation theology. In 2013, it was estimated that the ELN forces consisted of between 1,380 and 3,000 guerrillas. According to former ELN national directorate member Felipe Torres, one fifth of ELN supporters have taken up arms. The ELN has been classified as a terrorist organization by the governments of Colombia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the European Union.
The Gulf Cartel is a criminal syndicate and drug trafficking organization in Mexico, and perhaps one of the oldest organized crime groups in the country. It is currently based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, directly across the U.S. border from Brownsville, Texas.
The Mexican drug war is an ongoing asymmetric armed conflict between the Mexican government and various drug trafficking syndicates. When the Mexican military intervened in 2006, the government's main objective was to reduce drug-related violence. The Mexican government has asserted that their primary focus is dismantling the cartels and preventing drug trafficking. The conflict has been described as the Mexican theater of the global war on drugs, as led by the United States federal government.
Anti-Mexican sentiment, is prejudice, fear, discrimination, or hatred towards Mexico and people of Mexican descent, Mexican culture and/or Mexican Spanish. It is most commonly found in the United States.
Robert Alan "Bob" Levinson was an American former Drug Enforcement Administration (1970–1976) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (1976–1998) agent who disappeared on March 9, 2007, in Kish Island, Iran, while on a mission for the Central Intelligence Agency (1998–2007). Levinson's family received a $2.5 million annuity from the CIA in order to stop a lawsuit revealing details of his work in Iran and to forestall any revelation of details regarding the arrangement between Levinson and the agency.
David Parker Ray, also known as the Toy-Box Killer, was an American kidnapper, torturer, serial rapist and suspected serial killer. Ray kidnapped, raped and tortured an unknown number of women over many decades at his home in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, occasionally assisted by accomplices including his daughter Glenda Jean "Jesse" Ray and partner Cindy Hendy. Ray was suspected by authorities and accused by accomplices of murdering up to 60 of his victims, however no bodies or definitive evidence have ever been uncovered linking him to any murders. Ray was arrested in 1999 after one of his victims escaped, and was convicted of kidnapping and torture in 2001. He received a lengthy sentence, but was never tried for murder due to lack of evidence. He died of a heart attack about one year into his sentence.
The timeline of some of the most relevant events in the Mexican drug war is set out below. Although violence between drug cartels had been occurring for three decades, the Mexican government held a generally passive stance regarding cartel violence through the 1980s and early 2000s.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi is an Iraqi broadcast journalist who served as a correspondent for Iraqi-owned, Egyptian-based Al-Baghdadia TV. As of February 2011, al-Zaidi works with a Lebanese TV channel.
Between 2002 and 2004, Ariel Castro abducted Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus from the roads of Cleveland, Ohio and later held them captive in his home at 2207 Seymour Avenue in the city's Tremont neighborhood. All three girls were imprisoned at Castro's home until 2013, when Berry successfully escaped with her six-year-old daughter, to whom she had given birth while captive, and contacted the police. Police rescued Knight and DeJesus, and arrested Castro hours later.
Armando Torres III is a U.S. marine in the Individual Ready Reserve who was reportedly kidnapped by gunmen near the U.S.-Mexico border in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
On 9 July 2011, affiliates of the Gulf Cartel kidnapped 18 members of the Cázares family from three different households in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The women and children were released three days later, but the abductors kept five men. Forty-eight hours later, the Gulf Cartel contacted the family members who had been released to negotiate a ransom. After several days of negotiation and several ransom payments totaling US$100,000, the Cázares were called to deliver their final payment on 27 July. They sent the money to the kidnappers and waited at a specified location for a white van the kidnappers promised would deliver their remaining family members. However, the van never arrived and the phone the kidnappers used to contact the Cázares went out of service. The family then decided to contact the authorities for a criminal investigation.
On September 26, 2014, forty-three male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College disappeared after being forcibly abducted in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico, in what has been called one of Mexico’s most infamous human rights cases. They were allegedly taken into custody by local police officers from Iguala and Cocula in collusion with organised crime, with later evidence implicating the Mexican Army. Officials have concluded there is no indication the students are alive, but as of 2024, only three students remains have been identified and their deaths confirmed.
Jorge Luis Mendoza Cárdenas, commonly referred to by his alias La Garra, is a Mexican suspected drug lord and high-ranking leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), a criminal group based in Jalisco. Security forces suspect that La Garra heads the drug trafficking operations for the CJNG in the United States under Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the top leader of the criminal group. La Garra reportedly coordinates marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine shipments to Los Angeles, San Jose, Atlanta, and New York City from Mexico.