Traffickers

Colombia's new policy of shielding drug traffickers from extradition in exchange for confessions and promises to quit the trade raises troubling questions. Five traffickers have turned themselves in so far, under a decree issued by President Cesar Gavira. That includes Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, one of the alleged leaders of the Medellin cocaine cartel, who is charged with helping to kill a federal informant.Fabio Ochoa, 33, had not been charged with a crime under Colombian law but has been indicted in the United States of murder and smuggling in $1 billion worth of illicit drugs.

A Washington, D.C., man arrested in July on human trafficking and prostitution charges has pleaded guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence, said the Annapolis Police Department in a prepared statement on Tuesday. Freddy Leguisamon, 28, was arrested by police in connection with a prostitution business he operated. The arrest followed an investigation that combined several government agencies, including the Annapolis Police Department's Hispanic Liaison, Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

On June 12, a Maryland trooper stopped a motorist for speeding on the John F. Kennedy Highway and to his surprise found 71.5 pounds of cocaine in the trunk of the Cadillac.The search of the vehicle took place after the trooper found suspected cocaine on a drivers license that the man had apparently been using as a tool to cut and shape lines of the illegal substance.That seizure was the largest last year by troopers who patrol the state's highways with one eye for traffic violators and another for motorists who arouse their suspicions as possible drug traffickers.

The ad that led to the arrest of a Towson massage parlor owner this month was typical for such businesses, boasting as it did of the availability of "new young girls. " "You have to ask: If they constantly have new girls, where are the other girls going?" Melissa Snow asked. It was a rhetorical question, because as someone who works to stop sex trafficking, Snow has a pretty good idea where they go — to yet another massage parlor that similarly is offering more than rub-downs.

LATE ONE AFTERNOON in July 1987, the front door to our house in San Jose, Costa Rica, suddenly burst open. A half-dozen local narcotics agents, wearing blue jeans and gold chains, charged in, dragging in tow our hysterical secretary, Carmen Araya.The agents ransacked file drawers in our ground-floor office and then tore through the rest of the house, looking for drugs. They found none. No matter, they said, they already had the "smoking gun." They produced a brown paper package addressed to us, with a return address from the Interior Ministry in Nicaragua.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Drug traffickers addressed a communique to U.S. Ambassador Thomas McNamara yesterday, charging that the U.S. justice system is inflexible where Colombians are concerned while it offers deals to U.S. citizens involved in drug cases.Signed "The Extraditables," the name the traffickers adopted when the Colombian government began an anti-drug campaign last year, the message, sent by fax to major local news agencies, is the first ever directed to a representative of the U.S. government.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Cesar Gaviria's policy of enticing major drug traffickers to surrender to Colombian authorities for trial in local courts as a way to avoid extradition to the United States could be threatened by allegations that three of the country's biggest alleged traffickers who accepted the offer are continuing to run their cocaine business from inside prison.Brothers Fabio, Jorge Luis and Juan David Ochoa, suspected members of the Medellin cartel, were the first to accept President Gaviria's offer to surrender.

Undercover narcotics officers posing as drug dealers arrested 11 suspected drug traffickers and users and one prostitute yesterday in crackdowns at three South Baltimore locations, police said."

Baltimore Police Detective Harry Edgerton figured the real target was the younger kid, a 17-year-old street dealer by the name of Dashawn Powell. Five shots fired point-blank into his head and neck suggested that much. The older victim, Kelvin Thompson, was probably an afterthought, shot because he shared a stoop with Powell that night.A veteran of the homicide unit, Detective Edgerton knew that much after an hour's work. A day or two in the neighborhood, and he thought he had the motive: Dashawn had taken 50 bags of dope on consignment from the New Yorkers working the Hollins Street corners.

MEXICO CITY -- The landmark North American Free Trade Agreement has made it easier than ever for Mexican traffickers to smuggle drugs, and U.S. authorities are not doing enough to counter the fast-growing threat, a U.S. task force has concluded.Sophisticated drug gangs are investing in everything from trucking companies and rail lines to warehouses and shipping firms to shield their trafficking activities, according to a confidential report by Operation Alliance, a task force led by the U.S. Customs Service.

The directions to the alleged brothel told the men that if they saw a house with green awnings, they'd gone too far. But some of them apparently misunderstood; would-be customers have shown up for years at the nearby house in Towson. Despite neighbors' complaints, police say, Di Zhang, 42, continued to operate the brothel from a white Colonial-style suburban home on Joppa Road, advertising on websites until this month, when county police and federal agents moved in. Neighbors said they weren't surprised to learn that Zhang, the operator of Jade Heart Health, had been charged with prostitution and human trafficking.

I direct the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and have been studying gun violence for more than 20 years. Much of my research has focused on illegal gun sales and acquisition and strategies to reduce the diversion of guns to criminals. The opinions stated in this letter are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Johns Hopkins University. I support the Gun Trafficking Prevention Act of 2013 ("Cummings to push bipartisan gun control bill," Feb. 4). Illegal gun trafficking is a major contributor to our nation's staggering rate of gun violence and why the rate of firearm homicides in the United States is 20 times higher than that of the average high-income country.

Judith L. Colligan, a Howard County activist whose work included putting an end to human trafficking, aiding city children through Agape House and founding a meditation group, died Jan. 19 of heart failure at her home in Columbia. She was 71. "Judy had lots of energy and was very, very vivacious," said Ruth Ellen Hellyre, a Columbia resident and friend of 35 years. "She was always considerate of other people and very dedicated to acting on what she believed. " "Judy died at the top of her game and with her boots on. And that's what she would have wanted," said Normale Doyle, a retired Social Security Administration computer systems analyst and neighbor.

In generations past, the world's oldest profession was a tawdry trade practiced mostly in the shadows of unlit street corners and darkened alleys. Today, vulnerable young women and girls are still being tricked or forced into selling their bodies to strangers by predatory and amoral pimps who deceive, threaten and abuse them - but the locus of "the stroll" has changed from sidewalks to computer screens. Increasingly, traffickers are going online to market their victims, and as a new study by the Abell Foundation warns, the rise in Internet sex trafficking is rapidly outstripping efforts to combat it. The study's authors concede that hard numbers are notoriously difficult to come by, since the vast majority of transactions take place out of view of authorities, and traffickers have become extremely sophisticated in managing their businesses.

On Oct. 23, a purse was the ticket to a good time at Power of the Purse, an event hosted in Towson by the Baltimore County Commission for Women 's and the nonprofit Samaritan Women. The night's goal was to raise awareness — and ultimately money through the resale of donated purses — to fight human trafficking, an issue that commission members say has shown increasing concern in Baltimore County, and Maryland overall. Outside 7 West Bistro Grille, people were asked to drop off new or gently used purses.

On Tuesday night, Oct. 23, a purse is the ticket to a good time - and for fighting a good cause - at Power of the Purse, an event being hosted in Towson by the Baltimore County Commission for Women and the Samaritan Women organization The night's goal is to raise awareness, and ultimately money through the resale of the donated purses, all to fight human trafficking, an issue that Commission for Women members say has seen increasing concern in...

WASHINGTON -- Searching for a new weapon in the United States' drug battles abroad, the Clinton administration has been debating proposals to impose stringent economic sanctions against Mexico's biggest traffickers.The measures under consideration include freezing the U.S. assets of suspected drug smugglers and their associates, barring the traffickers' legitimate commercial ventures from doing business with companies in the United States, and blocking the traffickers' access to U.S. banks.

TEHRAN, Iran -- The problem of illicit drugs is commonly associated with prosperous, liberty-minded societies in Europe and America, not a theocratic state run by some of the Islamic world's most conservative mullahs. But Iran is slowly discovering that it, too, has a drug problem. It has a drug-smuggling problem. It has a drug violence and kidnapping problem. More and more, it seems, it has a drug-use problem. And increasingly, Iranian authorities have begun to grapple with this problem in the open.

A 27-year-old Takoma Park man, who drove women to locations in the Annapolis area for the purposes of prostitution, has been charged with numerous counts of human trafficking and prostitution. Freddy Leguisamon was arrested last month by Annapolis police, after an investigation that combined the efforts of several law enforcement and government agencies. He faces 54 counts of general prostitution, eight counts of receiving compensation from human trafficking, five counts of taking another person to a place for the purpose of human trafficking, and four counts of operating a prostitution business.

Most Americans probably haven't given much thought to the botched gun trafficking investigation by theBureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosivesknown as "Fast and Furious. " What they do know are probably the most embarrassing details - agents lost track of 2,000 guns that were allowed to "walk" in order to investigate higher-ups in a drug cartel, and two ATF weapons were found at the scene of a 2010 shootout in which a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed. But this week, the matter is threatening to evolve into something much larger.