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Two suspects have been arrested in Mexico in connection with the summer slaying of Toronto schoolteacher Consuelo (Connie) Valencia-Russo.

Suspects Ana Laura Rodriguez Rayon and Juan Antonio Reyes Torres were arrested last month, authorities in Mexico announced. The arrests, on suspicion of first-degree murder, were ordered by Mexico's Attorney-General on Nov. 6 “upon receiving a diplomatic note from the Canadian embassy in Mexico,” the Mexican government said in a statement.

The pair are both being held in separate prisons in Mexico City, thought it isn't clear when they'll be extradited. Toronto police had released their names and photos days after the slaying of Ms. Valencia-Russo, whose body was found in the trunk of a car at a North York high rise on Jane Street in July.

Ms. Valencia-Russo was the mother of a boy, Nicholas, whose father is Toronto City Councillor Cesar Palacio. Mr. Palacio said he received a call from Toronto police telling him of the arrest.

“Nicholas and I, we are very relieved to learn of this arrest by Mexican authorities,” he told The Globe and Mail. “For those who had the honour of knowing Connie, it's an occasion of great relief, but also a moment of sadness.”

Shortly after the murder, Toronto police said they were hunting “Juan Antonio Reyes,” 23, and “Ana Laura Rodrigues,” 19, who had fled to Mexico before Ms. Valencia-Russo's body was discovered. Mexican authorities said she had been asphyxiated.

After her death, her bank card was used to withdraw several hundred dollars in Toronto. Someone tried unsuccessfully three times to use Ms. Valencia-Russo's debit card again, in Mexico, after the woman was killed, Toronto police said.

The suspects were renting a room in an apartment belonging to Ms. Valencia-Russo's estranged husband. Ms. Valencia-Russo once lived in the unit. At the time of her death, police in Toronto declined to speculate on a motive, other than confirming the attempted use of the victim's bank card.

In its statement, the Mexican government praised the “close co-operation between Canada and Mexico in fighting crime.”

Mr. Palacio expressed his gratitude to Mexican authorities and Toronto police “for their amazing work and dedication.”

“That validates what we have in this beautiful city. After all, it's a very safe city to live in,” the sombre councillor said last night.

Customs officers stop 7 at Ariz. port over papers

Dec. 4, 2009 01:29 PM
Associated Press

Police arrested 23 people in Thursday's raid on what they said was a house for slave laborers.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Indigenous people forced to work without pay, authorities say
• Workers made handbags, clothespins in locked factory, officials claim
• Attorney general says some victims, ages 14 to 70, were tortured
• 12.5 million people are forced into labor worldwide, advocacy group says

Mexico City, Mexico (CNN) -- Mexican authorities have freed 107 indigenous people who officials say were being held as slave laborers in a Mexico City factory disguised as a drug rehabilitation center.

Twenty-three suspects were arrested in Thursday's raid, said Miguel Angel Mancera, Mexico City's attorney general. Two more were arrested Friday morning, officials said.

The victims ranged from 14 to 70 years old, and some were tortured, Mancera told CNN affiliate TV Azteca. Some victims also suffered sexual abuse, he said.

"They were beaten," he said. "Several have wounds, serious wounds. We even have some of the victims with fractures."

All of the victims were suffering from severe dehydration and malnutrition, he said. Some were taken to a hospital.

The captives, some of whom speak only indigenous languages and no Spanish, were locked in the building, which had bars on the windows and a fence outside, he said.

They made handbags and clothespins and were not paid. Their only daily meal consisted of chicken legs and rotten vegetables, Mancera said.

"The vast majority of the food we found was spoiled," he said.

Video of the inside of the building showed filthy and crowded living conditions.

The men and women worked 8 a.m. to midnight and were given only a half-hour food break. They were not allowed to go to the bathroom, and many soiled themselves, officials said.

The attorney general labeled it "cruel and inhuman treatment." The victims, he said, were abused mentally and physically, "with all sorts of pressure."

Most of the victims were nabbed off the street by some of the suspects under the guise of giving them treatment for alcoholism or drug addiction, the attorney general said.

"They take them by force, and they take them with the argument that they need to be rehabilitated, that they are addicts," Mancera said.

A few of the victims were brought there by family members who thought their loved ones would receive addiction treatment.

The facility has a sign in front identifying it as Hospital Santo Tomas, Los Eligidos de Dios, which means "St. Thomas Hospital, Those Chosen by God."

Up to 300 people may have been incarcerated at the facility in recent months, Mancera said. Officials believe that thousands more could have suffered the same fate in the eight years the hospital has been open.

Some of the victims were released at the end of six months, when they were too ill or infirm to continue working, and new recruits were brought in.

Authorities now are looking at other treatment facilities.

"I am sure this will lead to other investigations and perhaps action by other authorities," Mancera said.

The investigation into Hospital Santo Tomas started in September, when a man was abducted while unloading a truck at a commercial establishment. Officials got a break in the case when one of the men held at the hospital escaped and told authorities what was happening at the facility.

Among those arrested Thursday were the facility administrator, Jose Antonio Villa Ramos, and the man accused of leading the abductions, Javier Rosales Garcia, known as "El Tato," Mancera said.

Political analyst and TV commentator Ana Maria Salazar described the case as "quite shocking," even by Mexican standards.

Video: 'Slaves' to shrimp industry

RELATED TOPICS

• Mexico
• Human Trafficking
• Labor Law

A recent study, she said, found that human trafficking gangs kidnap about 10,000 people a year in Mexico. Many of those victims, Salazar said, are from remote parts of the country or are migrants trying to cross Mexico to get to the United States.

The study's tally may be high, she said, but even 5,000 victims a year would be "a very high number of kidnappings."

"There's much more going on that we don't see," Salazar said. "This gives you a sense that there's a lot of stuff going on in Mexico."

Forced labor is a global issue, with an estimated 12.3 million people forced into such situations, said Joanna Ewart-James of the organization Anti-Slavery International. Forced labor can be found in both the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.

Many of the people forced into slave labor are poor and dispossessed, Ewart-James said. Indigenous people, such as the victims in Mexico, are a common target.

"We know indigenous people are particularly discriminated against," she said. "It's much easier to exploit them."

Latin America accounts for the second largest number of forced laborers in the world, after Asia, the United Nations International Labour Organization said in its 2009 report on the issue.

"Those most at risk are migrant workers in sweatshops, agriculture and domestic service," the agency said. "The main form of forced labor is through debt bondage, involving informal and unlicensed intermediaries who pay advances to entice workers and then reap profits through inflated charges.

"Forced labor in Latin America is closely linked to patterns of inequality and discrimination, especially against indigenous peoples."

About 80 percent of forced laborers work for private companies. The remaining 20 percent work for state enterprises such as are found in China, North Korea and Myanmar, she said.

"Many of them make the goods and products that we buy," Ewart-James said.

Watch how slave labor affects food prices

Most garments and other domestic goods made by forced laborers, she said, are manufactured in six nations: China, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Jordan and Argentina.

Ewart-James said Anti-Slavery International, which is based in London, England, defines forced labor as "work or service that is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty for which the worker does not offer himself or herself voluntarily."

Those conditions even exist in the United States, says the International Labour Organization.

"Slaves are all around us, hidden in plain sight: the dishwasher in the kitchen of the neighborhood restaurant, the kids on the corner selling cheap trinkets, the man sweeping the floor of the local department store," the U.N. agency says in a recent book, "The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today."

The case in Mexico does not fit the typical mold, Ewart-James said.

"It's unusual that people in forced labor are found like that in Mexico: with bars and chains," she said. "We associate that with historical slavery."

Some governments, such as in Brazil, are taking a tough stance against slave labor. A special government task force established there in 1995 says it freed 4,634 workers last year in 133 raids on large farms and businesses that rely on workers driven to take those jobs by hunger and the empty promises of labor recruiters.

Brazil's Special Mobile Inspection Group consists of labor inspectors, federal police and attorneys from the federal labor prosecution branch. The group often raids workplaces looking for abuses and laborers held against their will.

Thursday's raid in Mexico was led by the Mexico City attorney general's anti-kidnapping division.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. --

Johnny Depp is in talks to play one of Mexico’s heroes – Pancho Villa.

The versatile star is said to be in “advanced negotiations” to play the Mexican revolutionary in a film titled “Seven Friends of Pancho Villa and the Woman With Six Fingers,” according to Variety, which first reported the news.

Additionally, Salma Hayek is also said to be in talks to join the production, which will start filming in 2011, reportedly due to Depp’s other commitments.

According to the paper, the movie will focus on the excesses of the bloodthirsty bandit and revolutionary, based on the novel “The Friends of Pancho Villa,” by James Carlos Blake.

Telly Savalas played Villa in the 1972 film bearing the revolutionary’s name; Yul Brynner also played the man in 1968’s “Villa Rides” and Antonio Banderas played him in 2003’s “And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself.”

Villa was responsible for an attack on the United States in1916 in Columbus, New Mexico, the first on American soil since 1812, after the U.S. chose to support his former ally Venustiano Carranza. U.S. sent troops into Mexico after Villa following the attack, but he was never caught.

Villa, who was born in 1878, was gunned down in July 1923.

Copyright 2009 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved.
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MEXICO CITY, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Mexico's peso surged to a 13-month high on Thursday as U.S. job losses registered the smallest decline since the start of the U.S. recession at the end of 2007, backing hopes for a rebound in Mexican exports.

But the peso pared gains when the dollar gained broadly as the report suggested U.S. interest rates may be able to rise sooner than expected.

The peso MXN= MEX01 firmed 0.76 percent to 12.545 per U.S. dollar, pulling back after hitting 12.5050, its strongest since early November 2008.

Data showed U.S. employers cut only 11,000 jobs last month, the best showing in nearly two years, and the jobless rate edged down to 10 percent, a strong suggestion the jobs market was edging towards health.

"With the big relationship between Mexico and the United States, this is definitely a positive for Mexico," said Gerardo Margolis, vice president of emerging markets at TD Securities in Toronto.

Mexico, which sends around 80 percent of its exports to the United States, is counting on a U.S. rebound to fuel its own recovery from the deepest local recession since the 1930s.

The peso has gained more than 4 percent since the beginning of last week following a widely expected debt downgrade by Fitch Ratings and growing bets that a U.S. recovery will fuel a sharper than expected rebound in Mexico. (Reporting by Michael O'Boyle, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Mexico City, Dec 4 (EFE) Thirteen Mexicans have been arrested for building a clandestine tunnel, which was equipped with a elevator, under the border with the US, authorities said.

“The tunnel is equipped with the most advanced technology and was presumably going to be used to smuggle drugs, arms and people into the United States,” Mexico’s Public Safety Secretariat said Thursday.

The tunnel, which came out of a warehouse in the border city of Tijuana and did not yet have a US entry point, was approximately 305 metres long and equipped with electricity, lighting, a ventilation system and an elevator.

Police arrested 11 adults and two minors in the operation to shut down the tunnel.

The construction workers, apparently bricklayers, are “allegedly linked to the criminal organisation run by the Arellano Felix (family)”, the secretariat said, adding that the suspects had apparently been working on the tunnel for about two years.

“Mexican authorities, acting on information provided by federal investigators from the multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force, conducted enforcement actions Wednesday targeting” the cross-border tunnel, the US Drug Enforcement Administration said Wednesday in announcing the discovery.

The passageway had a depth of between 27 and 30 metres.

“The discovery of this unfinished tunnel bears witness to the extraordinary cooperation between all agencies involved in the task force and the Government of Mexico,” DEA Special Agent in Charge Ralph W. Partridge said.

“It is extremely important to the San Diego area and the entire United States that this cooperative effort stopped the completion of this drug smuggling corridor before even an ounce of drugs could be transported through it,” Partridge said.

Last month, Mexican army troops and federal police found a 122-metre clandestine tunnel that was under construction and intended to link Tijuana, which is near San Diego, California, to the US.

Federal police officers searched the Auto Servicio Express shop in the 20 de Noviembre district, where they found piles of dirt apparently hauled in from another part of the border city.

Soldiers found the unfinished tunnel in a building that was under construction near the Tijuana International Airport.

The tunnel had a lighting and ventilation system, according to the Defense Secretariat, which said six people were arrested at the construction site.

In December 2008, a woman was rescued by US Border Patrol agents from a clandestine tunnel that collapsed as she tried to cross from Mexico into the US illegally.