UK boosts Bolivia drug campaign

27 July 2011 Last updated at 22:34 GMT By Mattia Cabitza BBC News, La Paz Bolivia acknowledges half the land under coca production supplies drug traffickers The British government has announced a new co-operation deal with Bolivia in the fight against drug trafficking.

During a two-day visit to Bolivia, Britain's Minister for Latin America, Jeremy Browne, said the Serious Organised Crime Agency in London will join forces with the counter-narcotics police in La Paz.

Significant quantities of Bolivian cocaine end up on the streets of Britain.

An example of the co-operation that already exists between Britain and Bolivia in the fight against drug trafficking was shown off during the ministerial visit.

Mr Browne saw for himself how ?500,000 ($800,000) from Britain has funded the building a forensic drug laboratory, which has proved successful in analysing and verifying evidence in drug smuggling cases.

And Mr Browne outlined the aim of British police working more closely with their Bolivian counterparts in future: "The main purpose of this co-operation will be to provide training on investigative techniques to combat drug smuggling."

Jeremy Browne (r) aims to enhance the investigative techniques of Bolivian police

The collaboration would also help improve border control, he said.

And he recognised Britain's responsibility as one of the top consumers in Europe of Bolivian cocaine: "We are trying to reduce the demand for drugs in Britain, but we also realise that we do have a responsibility to try to reduce the supply."

Mr Browne called on the Bolivian government to reduce its production of coca, the raw material for making cocaine, which is grown legally in Bolivia for cultural and medicinal purposes.

According to the United Nations, more than 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) are given over to coca farming in Bolivia.

The authorities acknowledge that half of that area supplies drug traffickers. Independent estimates of illicit cultivation are higher.

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Mexican teenage hitman is jailed

27 July 2011 Last updated at 08:02 GMT Jimenez was arrested last December while trying to catch a plane to the US A Mexican judge has sentenced a US-born teenager to three years in prison for four murders, which he said he carried out on the orders of a drug gang.

Edgar Jimenez Lugo, 14 at the time of the killings, said he was under the influence of drugs and threatened by gang leaders, according to officials.

The sentence was the maximum allowed for a juvenile in the state of Morelos, where he was tried.

Jimenez was born in California, but has spent most of his life in Mexico.

The juvenile court in Morelos found the teenager guilty of killing four people, whose mutilated bodies were founding hanging from a bridge in Cuernavaca in 2010.

A court spokesman said Jimenez's three-year sentence was effective from 2 January 2010. He will be kept in a juvenile facility.

Jimenez, nicknamed El Ponchis, was arrested by the Mexican army last December. He was trying to catch a plane from Cuernavaca with two of his sisters to get back to San Diego, where his Mexican mother lives.

Intimidation

Officials say the boy confessed to working for the South Pacific drug cartel in Morelos state.

He told them he had been abducted and given drugs, and then ordered to carry out the killings.

At the time of his arrest, the Reforma newspaper quoted Edgar Jimenez as saying: "I felt bad doing it. I was forced to do it. They said they would kill me if I didn't do it.

"I only beheaded them, but never hung [bodies] from bridges, never."

Hanging bodies from bridges at busy intersections is a practice among Mexican cartels as a way to intimidate rivals.

Some 40,000 people have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon began deploying troops to fight the cartels in late 2006.

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