Elizabeth Llorente
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Colombia’s cocaine business is regaining momentum.
And signs of the spike in Colombian drug production and trafficking are showing up in an unlikely way — a growing number of aircraft accidents in Mexico, where the cocaine is being shipped in the hopes of eventually getting it into the lucrative U.S. market.
In the last four months, two planes that left from Colombia with cocaine on board crashed in Mexico. Another plane carrying cocaine landed without permission when it ran out of fuel; the two crew members abandoned it,” according to The Mexico News Daily.
Mexican security official Adrián Sánchez said, “They preferred to take the risk of being arrested rather than dying in a crash in the jungle, as has occurred in other cases.”
A United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report last fall showed that 171,000 hectares of land in Colombia were used to grow the coca plant in 2017. That marked an increase of 25,000 hectares, or 17 percent, over 2016.
PLANE CRASH IN COLOMBIA KILLS 14, OFFICIALS SAY
The potential production of cocaine has a value of $2.7 billion in Colombia’s domestic market, the U.N. noted, adding: “There are concerns that this capital, derived from the drug economy, could undermine peace-building efforts, weaken the culture of lawfulness, strengthen armed groups and delegitimize democratic institutions through corruption and illicit financial flows.”
Why the plane crashes?
This photo provided by the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office shows some of the 31 pounds of cocaine that was accidentally discovered stashed in the nose of an American Airlines aircraft in Tulsa, Okla., Monday, Jan. 30, 2017. Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Justin Green says the plane arrived in Miami from Bogota, Colombia, on Sunday. (Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office via AP) (Tulsa County Sherrif’s Department)
First, it is a departure from the traditional and still more common way to send drug shipments to Mexico – by sea. So the growing use of light airplanes is new, in comparison, and not as familiar to drug traffickers.
Javier Oliva, a researcher and professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, theorizes that taking the risk of moving the cocaine by air reflects cartels’ desperation to exploit Colombia’s elevated production rates.
“The conclusions that we can take away from this astonishing data are firstly, consumption of the drug has increased,” Oliva said. “Secondly … the profits of Colombian criminal groups and the organizations where the goods pass through have also gone up; and thirdly … [efforts] to eradicate and contain production of coca leaves are obviously a failure.”
Cocaine shipped via sea to Mexico tripled between 2014 and 2017, a disappointment after the more than $10 billion in U.S. aid to help Colombia fight the drug trade.
Colombia was, for a time, lauded for asserting some control over drug cartels.
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But the peace process between the Colombian government and rebels had the unintended result of more land being dedicated to production of the coca leaf — the previous president stopped aerial fumigation meant to destroy coca crops. Farmers then switched to coca in the hope of qualifying for a government offer to compensate those growing the crop.
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A billboard stands empty above a highway with no traffic as the sun sets in Caracas, Venezuela, Monday, March 18, 2019. When the sun goes down in Venezuela’s capital, the once-thriving metropolis empties under darkness. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Caracas at night was like many major cities around the world – crazy traffic, people going in and out of shops, eateries, and dance clubs — but now, as night falls in the Venezuelan capital, it seems more and more like a ghost town.
Many street lights don’t work. Residents avoid stepping outside their homes due to crime — or for lack of anything to spend — as a creeping economic collapse has accelerated amid a political battle between socialist President Nicolas Maduro and his foes at home and abroad. A string of devastating nationwide blackouts last month dramatized the decay.
Even under the light of day, billboards often have nothing to promote, their skeletal framework bare long after the wind has ripped away old advertising.
VP MIKE PENCE TO MEET IN DC WITH FAMILIES OF 6 CITGO EXECS DETAINED IN VENEZUELA
As dusk falls, many storefronts are just graffiti-scrawled security doors chained shut. Often just a single business along a city block is able to stay open, awaiting sparse customers. Others close earlier, like a beauty salon, the few remaining clients forced to decide between the simple luxury of haircut or buying food.
Caracas’ La Mercedes neighborhood, famous for its upscale shopping and nightlife, hasn’t been spared. Many of its pubs and fancy restaurants are devoid of waiters and customers. A shopping mall keeps its lights on, but the doors lock hours earlier than they did before, when they teemed with life.
The moon rises above an empty avenue in Caracas, Venezuela, late Thursday, March 21, 2019. Residents avoid stepping outside their homes due to crime, or for lack of anything to spend. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
High-rise buildings stand unfinished, the workers having long ago abandoned their jobs. Windows are covered over with cardboard rather than finished with glass.
Residents desperate for cash transform patches of sidewalk into their impromptu shops, laying out old shoes or second-hand shirts as merchandise.
The poor and hungry scour through household trash, scattering it across street corners before it’s collected, grabbing anything they can use or eat.
The despair and blight mark a precipitous fall for a country that has larger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia and that had one of Latin America’s highest living standards.
Maduro blames his domestic political opponents and the increasing grip of U.S. economic sanctions, which he says are part of a coup aimed at toppling his socialist government.
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The opposition, led by lawmaker Juan Guaidó, blames years of corrupt leadership, lack of investment and economic bungling that has left the country dependent on a collapsing oil sector and on remittances sent home by the millions who have fled the growing hardship.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, 15 U.S. senators introduced bipartisan legislation to provide $400 million in new aid, internationalize sanctions and ease penalties on Venezuelan officials who recognize Guaidó as the country’s president.
Maduro still retains the support of much of the Venezuelan’s military, including its hierarchy, and still gets aid from countries such as Russia, Cuba and China.
David Smilde, a Venezuela expert at Tulane University, wrote in The Conversation: “Russia has become Maduro’s most important ally. The Russian military equipment and personnel sent in March will likely help maintain and operate Venezuela’s sophisticated Russian-made S-300 air defense system, which protects the capital and key military bases from air attack.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The officers were traveling in two police trucks when their attackers surrounded them, ordering them to get out and forcing them to kneel. (istock)
Cartel gunmen kidnapped 11 police officers traveling through the Mexican central state of Puebla during the weekend, taking their guns and detaining them for hours, according to reports.
The officers were traveling in two police trucks when their attackers surrounded them, ordering them to get out and forcing them to kneel, reported Mexican news outlets. The gunmen, who had been in three SUVs, took the officers’ weapons and cell phones and beat them, according to the reports.
The officers had finished responding to a call about an attempted theft of gasoline from an oil refinery.
MEXICAN GOVERNMENT APOLOGIZES FOR DEATHS AFTER POLICE HANDED YOUTHS OVER TO RUTHLESS DRUG GANG
The gunmen released the police near a highway in Mexico City, but kept their police trucks, as well as the other items they had taken.
The attackers released the officers after authorities launched a search for them.
22 BUS PASSENGERS KIDNAPPED IN MEXICO MAY BE MIGRANTS
The area where the police were kidnapped is a high-risk one for kidnapping and other crimes, reported the Mexico News Daily.
Roughly 1,200 people were kidnapped in Mexico in 2017, which has been a problem in the country since criminal organizations began carrying them out in 2006 to get ransoms to finance their illicit activities, said the website Vox.
Víctor Manuel Sánchez Valdés, a research professor at the Autonomous University of Coahuila, Mexico, was quoted as telling the outlet: “They had to find other sources of income, which gave the hitmen in these groups carte blanche to participate in activities like kidnapping and extortion.”
Last month, an armed gang in Mexico kidnapped 22 passengers who were hauled off a passenger bus.
The kidnapping recalled another in 2011, when dozens of passengers were hauled off buses by drug gangs in Tamaulipas, killed and their bodies dumped in mass graves.
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Natalia Fileva, 55, died along with her father and the pilot of the single-engine, six-seat Epic-LT. (AFP/Getty)
One of the richest women in Russia, nicknamed the “Iron Lady” of aviation, has died in a plane crash in Germany.
Natalia Fileva, 55, died along with her father and the pilot of the single-engine, six-seat Epic-LT.
Fileva co-owned S-7, also known as Siberian Airlines, with her husband, Vladislav Filev, who has been called the “Russian Elon Musk.”
Fileva, who has an estimated net worth of $600 million, according to Forbes, was taking her father to Germany from France to get medical treatment according to the Siberian Times. However, it crashed into a field near a small airport in southwestern Germany, bursting into flames upon impact.
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The S7 Group called her death “an irreparable loss,” and said what led to the crash is unclear and under investigation.
Investigators stand around the debris of a small plane at an asparagus field in the village Erzhausen near Frankfurt, Germany, Monday, April 1, 2019. (DPA via AP)
Deutsche Flugsicherung, which oversees air traffic control in Germany, said that the pilot appeared to have lost control while attempting a turn.
She was considered a visionary businesswoman, turning S7 into the second-largest airline in Russia.
As word of her death spread, condolences poured forth.
Director of Irkutsk airport development Andrey Andreev said: “The Filev couple went under nicknames Mama and Papa among S7 Group staff. Many felt they were orphaned today. It is incredibly painful that Natalia Fileva, a formidable woman, a bright personality and a professional to every cell of her bones, is no longer with us.”
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The propellor and other debris of a small plane lies in an asparagus field in the village Erzhausen near Frankfurt, Germany, Monday, April 1, 2019. (AP)
“She combined humanity and entrepreneurship,” Andreev continued, “the romanticism of aviation and understanding of world aviation trends…Thanks to her energy and pushing skills the Russian aviation code was modernized and got closer to world standards.”
Two other people also died in a traffic collision that was related to the plane crash. A police vehicle that was responding to the plane crash was struck head-on by another vehicle, according to Germany’s DPA news agency. Three police officers were seriously hurt, while both occupants of the other car died.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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A Federal District Court judge on Thursday sentenced a Border Patrol agent who lied about being a U.S. citizen to a year of probation and also imposed a $1,000 fine.
Marco A. De La Garza Jr., 38, actually is a Mexican citizen who managed to slip into the U.S. Navy, where he served on a nuclear submarine, and into the Customs and Border Protection agency with a U.S. birth certificate that he obtained with phony documents.
De La Garza pleaded guilty to a count of passport fraud, according to The New York Times.
Authorities opted for leniency, citing his otherwise clean background and dedicated service to the United States.
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The federal judge, Raner C. Collins, said that De La Garza’s record of service in the military and in the government job “ought to count for something.”
Federal probation officers asked the court to spare De La Garza from a jail sentence and to give him a year of probation.
Growing up, my parents told me that I was a U.S. citizen, and my whole childhood I was led to believe this was true,” he wrote in a letter to the judge, the Times reported. “Because of that, I grew up thinking I would do my duty one day and join the U.S. military.
De La Garza maintains that for much of his childhood, he thought he was no different from other U.S. kids in Brownsville, Texas. He said his parents led him to believe he was a U.S. citizen, which is not uncommon in undocumented homes, where parents fear that their children will disclose their status to friends and at school if they are informed of it.
“Growing up, my parents told me that I was a U.S. citizen, and my whole childhood I was led to believe this was true,” he wrote in a letter to the judge, the Times reported. “Because of that, I grew up thinking I would do my duty one day and join the U.S. military.”
He said that it was only after he asked to see his birth certificate that he learned from his parents that they had lied to him about being a U.S. citizen and that he was really a citizen of Mexico.
De La Garza, who has two U.S.-born daughters ages 2 and 4, was able to slip into the Navy and the Border Patrol agency by presenting a U.S. birth certificate his mother had obtained that was issued by this government, but was issued based on phony information that stated his birthplace as Brownsville instead of Mexico.
“In retrospect, I fully understand now that I was being selfish in my desire to serve my country that I had so loved,” the Times said he wrote.
His secret came out after he applied for a U.S. passport in 2017.
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In court documents, reported the Sierra Vista Herald, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said: “Despite knowing he was born in Mexico and a Mexican citizen, De La Garza used the false Texas birth certificate to enter the United States and assert United States’ citizenship. De La Garza stated he was born in Brownsville, Texas on December 1980 and he was a U.S. citizen.”
De La Garza could be deported, but the Times said that the former agent’s attorney contends that immigration officials told him they will not pursue it.
“That’s what we have to look forward to at this point, applying for naturalization in a year,” said the attorney, Matthew H. Green, who added that De La Garza’s veteran status would enable him to apply for citizenship a year after his conviction.
Green said his client wants to remain in the country that he considers home.
“Mr. De La Garza and his family ask only one thing from the United States — they ask for a second chance.”
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Calling it a defensive fund against President Trump’s immigration policies, New York City officials plan to put an extra $1.6 million toward public defenders representing immigrants slated for deportation, according to the New York Daily News.
The move to bolster the funding arose from a deal between New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Council Speaker Corey Johnson.
Attorneys and immigrant rights groups had pushed for money, saying that courts were rushing decisions on deportation and that immigrants were at a disadvantage if they did not have the help of an attorney.
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“This emergency funding will help us provide more attorneys to New Yorkers in need,” Johnson said, according to the Daily News. “This is crucial right now as the ICE deportation machine has ramped up efforts to interfere with the necessary work NYIFUP is doing by pushing people through the system with zero regard for due process. I will continue to fight these un-American and horrific immigration policies.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen)
At present, the city has an allotment of $10 million for public defenders who work on immigration cases. The attorneys had requested an extra $6.6 million, citing the addition of immigration courts in New York aimed at accommodating a backlog of deportation cases, the Daily News said.
The attorneys expressed concern that hearings were being rushed.
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Immigrants facing deportation are not entitled to a public defender. Many areas have non-profits that provide such immigrants with pro-bono attorneys.
The city established the program to address the void.
“All respondents have a right to counsel at no expense to the government,” the Department of Justice’s Executive of Immigration Review said. “EOIR has long worked to improve access to legal information and counseling and increase the level of representation for individuals appearing before the immigration courts and Board of Immigration Appeals.”
“This work has been carried out primarily through initiatives that facilitate access to information and help create new incentives for attorneys, non-profit organizations and their representatives, and law students to accept pro bono cases.”
Meanwhile, Immigration advocates were pressing Gov. Andrew Cuomo to keep public funding for legal services for immigrants around the state who are slated for deportation, as well as immigrants who need other services.
They told the Daily News they are concerned that the governor will cut funding for the Liberty Defense Project, which provides legal counsel and other support services.
“It is inexplicable that as the Trump administration continues its assault on New York’s communities, our State leaders are ripping away its lifeline for legal defense and protection against deportation,” said Steven Choi, the group’s executive director, to the Daily News. “It is a complete sham for our leaders – Governor Cuomo, Speaker Heastie and Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins – to say they stand up to Trump on behalf of our immigrants – and then remove the very assistance that protects New Yorkers from Trump’s deportation force.”
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Three Saudi women who have been jailed nearly a year for their activism and for speaking to foreign journalists were granted temporary release Thursday but still face a trial.
They and about 10 other women’s rights activists were arrested and held by security forces who report to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Although the official Saudi press agency did not identify the women in its announcement, other media said that Aziza al-Yousef, a former professor; Eman al-Nafjan, a linguistics professor; and a third woman, Roqaya al-Muhareb, had been granted temporary release after bail hearings on Thursday.
The move could mark a turning point for other women’s rights activists still detained, notably because two of those released, al-Yousef and al-Najfan, were vilified in state-linked media as traitors and foreign enemies soon after their arrest in May.
About 10 other women activists remain in jail, and could be released in coming days, according to The New York Times. They include Loujain al-Hathloul, Hatoon al-Fassi, Samar Badawi and Naseem al-Sada.
FIRST SAUDI FEMALE AMBASSADOR REPLACES KING’S SON IN U.S.
Saudi authorities had accused the women of being spies for foreign governments and being a threat to national security.
The release of the three women comes on the heels of growing international pressure on the powerful crown prince to let them go. Among those applying pressure were nine U.S. senators who appealed to the Saudi government for the women’s release.
Human rights groups expressed a mix of cautious optimism and skepticism over the release.
“While they’ve been released, their sham trial is still going,” said Rothna Begum of Human Rights Watch to the New York Times. “We really don’t know what the authorities are going to do next. But we hope that the ordeal will be over soon.”
In this March 29, 2014 file photo, Aziza al-Yousef drives a car on a highway in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of a campaign to defy Saudi Arabia’s then ban on women driving. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File)
Thursday’s development comes as the crown prince continues to face widespread international criticism over the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last year in an operation planned by two of the prince’s top aides. Eleven men are on trial in Saudi Arabia for the killing.
Since Khashoggi’s grisly murder, the imprisonment of the women activists has drawn widespread criticism from members of the U.S. Congress, the British Parliament and other Western capitals. Nine U.S. senators urged King Salman in a letter last week to release political prisoners to demonstrate “belated yet welcome respect for human rights.”
The senators’ letter said: “For too long, human rights have taken a back seat in Saudi Arabia. Not only have reputable international organizations detailed the arbitrary detention of peaceful activists and dissidents without trial for long periods, but the systematic discrimination against women, religious minorities, and mistreatment of migrant workers and others has also been well-documented. We have also been troubled by the regular use of the Specialized Criminal Court and counterterrorism law to target peaceful activists and human rights defenders, as well as reports of flawed investigations, coerced confessions, and the use of torture.”
“We urge the unconditional release of detained women’s rights activists Samar Badawi, Loujain al-Hathloul, Eman al-Nafjan, Aziza al-Yousef, Nouf Abdelaziz, Mayaa al-Zahrani, Nassima al-Saada, Hatoon al-Fassi, Shadan al-Onezi, and Amal al-Harbi, some of whom were reportedly tortured during detention, and a supporter of the women’s movement, Mohammed al-Rabea.”
Most of the women had appeared in a Riyadh courtroom on Wednesday to submit their defense. Several people with knowledge of the cases said the women have been charged in connection with their efforts to promote women’s rights and of having contact with accredited foreign reporters, diplomats and human rights groups.
In the presence of their husbands, parents and children, the women told a panel of three judges about the physical and sexual abuse they say they were subjected to by masked interrogators during their imprisonment.
The government has denied charges of abuse as “wild claims” that are “simply wrong.”
Prior to their arrest, several women said they received calls from an aide to Prince Mohammed telling them not to speak to foreign media outlets. Several were surprised to also learn they had been barred from leaving the country. Concerned for their safety, the women stopped posting on Twitter and other social media sites.
As activists faced pressure to keep silent, credit for social reforms like the decision to allow women the right to drive, had largely gone to the crown prince.
The women’s arrest in May — a month before Saudi women were allowed to drive — may have also been a way to convey that top-down decision-making, and not activism, determines the scope and pace of change in Saudi Arabia.
The women activists had long pushed for the right to drive. They also called for an end to restrictive male guardianship laws, which give male relatives final say over a woman’s ability to travel abroad, obtain a passport, marry or undergo certain medical procedures.
In their second court hearing Wednesday, nearly a dozen of the women on trial in Riyadh told the presiding judge how they were caned on their backs and thighs, electrocuted and waterboarded by masked men who did not identify themselves.
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One of the women said that several men, who seemed intoxicated, appeared late one night and took her from her place of detention in Jiddah to a nearby secret location. It was there that the women say they were tortured.
Some women have said they were forcibly touched and groped, made to break their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and threatened with rape and death. One of the women attempted suicide, according to information provided to the AP by people with knowledge of the cases.
Journalists working for foreign media, diplomats and other independent observers have not been allowed to sit in on the hearings.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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A U.S. Appeals Court says the parents of Kate Steinle, who died in 2015 after an undocumented man shot her as she walked with her father on a San Francisco pier, cannot sue the city whose sanctuary policies were widely blamed for the tragedy.
Steinle’s killer, Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate, was released by the San Francisco sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi, after a drug case against him was dropped. The sheriff’s office, which had ended contact between jail employees and immigration officials, ignored a request by federal authorities to hold Garcia-Zarate until they could assume custody and did not inform them that he was being released.
Three months later, Garcia-Zarate, who had been deported to his native Mexico five times, killed Steinle.
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The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously decided to uphold a district court’s 2017 dismissal of Steinle’s parents’ wrongful death lawsuit against San Francisco. The lawsuit maintained that the city’s so-called sanctuary policy and the sheriff bore responsibility for their daughter’s death because it had enabled Garcia-Zarate to roam the streets.
In the 9th Circuit Court decision, Judge Mark Bennett, who was nominated by President Trump, said that while the facts of the case are “undeniably tragic,” the sheriff was well within his authority when he issued a memo that limited his department’s cooperation with immigration officials.
July 2, 2015: Liz Sullivan, left, and Jim Steinle, right, parents of Kathryn "Kate" Steinle, talk to members of the media outside their home in Pleasanton, Calif. (Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
“The tragic and unnecessary death of Steinle may well underscore the policy argument against Sheriff Mirkarimi’s decision to bar his employees from providing the release date of a many times convicted felon to ICE,” Bennett said. “But that policy argument can be acted upon only by California’s state and municipal political branches of government, or perhaps by Congress.”
Federal immigration laws cited by the plaintiffs also did not require Mirkarimi to provide Garcia-Zarate’s release date, Bennett said.
The shooting turned into a major campaign issue in multiple national and local races across the country. Trump repeatedly referred to the shooting during his 2016 campaign to bolster his argument for tougher immigration policies and his opposition to so-called sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with immigration officials.
Groups that support tougher immigration enforcement assailed the appeals court’s decision.
Matthew O’Brien, director of research for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told Fox News that the decision marked “yet another example of judicial activism by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.”
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“San Francisco’s prohibition on the sharing of information with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was a deliberate and intentional violation of federal law,” O’Brien said. “Overall, the handling of the Steinle matter, by both the courts of the State of California and the federal courts within California, sends a clear message that the Golden State is more interested in sheltering criminal illegal aliens from ICE than it is in protecting the life and safety of U.S. citizens.”
A San Francisco jury in 2017 acquitted Garcia-Zarate of murder, but convicted him of illegal gun possession. Garcia-Zarate said a gun he found on the pier accidentally fired when he picked it up. The gun belonged to a federal Bureau of Land Management ranger and was stolen from his parked car a week earlier.
The bullet ricocheted on the pier’s concrete walkway before it struck Steinle, killing her. Zarate has admitted to shooting Steinle, but says it was an accident. However, the prosecution painted a very different picture, telling jurors that Zarate deliberately shot the gun towards Steinle while "playing his own secret version of Russian roulette."
Garcia-Zarate is also facing federal gun charges to which he has pleaded not guilty.
The gun used in the fatal shooting belonged to a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger who reported it stolen from his car parked in San Francisco. Steinle’s parents also named the federal government as a defendant in their lawsuit because the ranger had allegedly left the gun in plain view in an unlocked car on a downtown street. That part of the lawsuit is moving forward.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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Drug busts in New Jersey are taking on a new twist – kids’ cereals.
On Friday, police in Passaic County came across edibles during a drug raid at a home that included Fruity Pebbles and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereals laced with THC, according to Patch.com
THC is the component in marijuana that produces a high.
Police arrested eight people ranging in age from 20 to 42.
It was the second arrest involving THC-laced kids’ cereals in Passaic County recently.
During a traffic stop a few weeks ago, police in the same county found snacks and bags of cereal laced with marijuana and THC, Patch.com reported. The cereals of choice there were Fruity Pebbles, Captain Crunch and Fruit Loops.
Police originally stopped the car because neither the driver nor his passenger were wearing seat belts.
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Police said they found what was used to make the THC-laced snacks, including brown sugar, chocolate syrup, a measuring cup and a mixing bowl.
"I commend my officers for their proactive police work," said Haledon Police Chief Angelo Daniele.
THC-infused kids’ cereals have cropped up elsewhere in recent years.
Last year, two students at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut were charged with selling drugs that included THC-laced cereal, which they called "Marijuana Fruity Pebbles Squares," according to the New York NBC News affiliate.
Also last year, two Georgia women were arrested after officials found one of them selling marijuana edibles at a local church event.
The edibles included marijuana-infused “cereal treats, brownies, and puddings.” the Chatham-Savannah Counter Narcotics Team said in a statement.
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A history professor who, as founder of the Vatican women’s magazine, was among the most high-profile females at the Holy See, has quit because of what she described as sexist working conditions.
The all-female editorial board of the magazine, called "Women Church World", also quit.
The women said that the treatment of them as second-class citizens grew worse when they drew attention to sexual abuse of nuns by clergy.
The Associated Press reported the move after obtaining an as-yet open letter the magazine’s founder, Lucetta Scaraffia, wrote addressed to Pope Francis.
"We are throwing in the towel because we feel surrounded by a climate of distrust and progressive de-legitimization," Scaraffia wrote.
Scaraffia told the AP that the decision was taken after the new editor of L’Osservatore, Andrea Monda, told her earlier this year he would take over as editor. She said he reconsidered after the editorial board threatened to resign and the Catholic weeklies that distribute translations of "Women Church World" in France, Spain and Latin America, told her they would stop distributing.
Lucetta Scaraffia, the magazine’s founder, wrote an open letter to Pope Francis, saying they felt "surrounded by a climate of distrust and progressive de-legitimization" (AP)
"After the attempts to put us under control, came the indirect attempts to delegitimize us," she said, citing other women brought in to write for L’Osservatore "with an editorial line opposed to ours."
The effect, she said, was to "obscure our words, delegitimizing us as a part of the Holy See’s communications."
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Monda denied accusations that he sought to discredit the female editors. He said in a statement that he fully respected the autonomy of the women’s insert.
He said at most that he suggested ideas and people to contribute to "Women Church World."
Scaraffia launched the monthly insert in 2012 and oversaw its growth into a stand-alone Vatican magazine as a voice for women, by women and about issues of interest to the entire Catholic Church. "Women Church World" had enjoyed editorial independence from L’Osservatore, even while being published under its auspices.
In the final editorial, the editorial board said the "conditions no longer exist" to continue working with L’Osservatore, citing its initiatives with other women contributors.
"They are returning to the practice of selecting women who ensure obedience," the editorial read. "They are returning to clerical self-reference and are giving up that `parresia’ (freedom to speak freely) that Pope Francis so often seeks."
The departures are the latest upheaval in the Vatican’s communications operations, following the abrupt Dec. 31 resignations of the Vatican spokesman and his deputy over strategic differences with Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the dicastery for communications.
Scaraffia, a history professor and journalist, is an avowed feminist who nevertheless toed the line on official doctrine. That doesn’t mean she didn’t ruffle feathers with her frequent lament that half of humanity — and the half most responsible for transmitting the faith to future generations — simply is invisible to the men in charge of the Catholic Church.
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She stoked uproar in February when she denounced the sexual abuse of nuns by clergy and the resulting scandal of religious sisters having abortions or giving birth to children who are not recognized by their fathers.
The article prompted Francis to subsequently acknowledge, for the first time, that it was a problem and that he was committed to doing something about it.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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