Cellphone chats have become death sentences in the continuing, bloody factional war inside Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.
Cartel gunmen stop youths on the street or in their cars and demand their phones. If they find a contact who’s a member of a rival faction, a chat with a wrong word or a photo with the wrong person, the phone owner is dead.
Then, they’ll go after everyone on that person’s contact list, forming a potential chain of kidnapping, torture and death. That has left residents of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, afraid to even leave home at night, much less visit towns a few miles away where many have weekend retreats.
“You can’t go five minutes out of the city, … not even in daylight,” said Ismael Bojórquez, a veteran journalist in Culiacan. “Why? Because the narcos have set up roadblocks and they stop you and search through your cellphone.”
This is terrible and disgusting. These cartels have gotten progressively worse over the years, at what point does this shit stop. Another nightmare created by the “War on Drugs.”
it will stop whenever we stop demonizing people for wanting a temporary escape from this shitty fucking world.
Unfortunately I don’t think it will. These fucks have already moved into different “markets” than drugs, they’ll continue regardless.
thanks, war on drugs
The obvious issue is the US making the drugs illegal. Legalize it and pay for legal imports from a regulated industry, and the cartels loose power