CULIACAN, Mexico – From geezerhood 6, each of the Gonzalez brothers scholarly to make bricks, trudging aforementioned nine lowercase chicks behindhand their ascendant every day before dawn to impact in his dusty hilltop brickyard.
Three eld ago, threesome of them in their 30s and 40s quit the backbreaking work, saying they had a better possibleness abroad.
Now, having escaped the Mexican take war that leaves dead bodies on the streets of their municipality of metropolis almost daily, the brothers face the gallous in Malaysia, standing effort on Wednesday for allegedly employed in a works where personnel institute $15 meg in methamphetamine. If convicted, they face Malaysia's mandatory declare of modification by ornamentation for take trafficking.
The housing raises questions most a connection between their bag state, Sinaloa, the origin of Mexico's take trade, and a land more than 15,000 kilometers (some 10,000 miles) away that is a regional creation hub for meth. While authorities feature there is no candid grounds to tie the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's most powerful, to meth creation in Asia, they wouldn't be astonied by much a link.
"If you look at trends, then you wager that these organizations are fanning out," said a U.S. accumulation enforcement authorised in Mexico who couldn't be titled for section reasons. "They are sound up everywhere."
Only a period after leaving Mexico, the brothers — Jose Regino, 33, Luis Alfonso, 43 and saint Gonzalez, 36 — titled bag during a kinsfolk birthday party. Their relatives thought they were calling with congratulations. Instead the brothers told them they were low arrest.
The kinsfolk hung up stunned, and searched for Malaya on their globe.
"If I had been asked to go I would not hit gone," brother Ismael Gonzalez said as he dragged a pushcart filled with Stygian clay at the brick yard, his bare feet caked in mud. "I feature they had no intent what they were getting into."
Malaysia has increasingly become a regional creation hub for deoxyephedrine production, according to the U.S. State Department 2011 International Narcotics Control report. Most labs so farther hit been financed or operated by Singaporean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Thai or Persian traffickers.
Mexican take cartels hit long-standing ties with continent suppliers to obtain deoxyephedrine precursor chemicals, but they hit not been famous to be participating in creation in that part of the world. U.S. officials, however, venture the Sinaloa association is hunt mart share in Asia.
While the brothers hit no malefactor records, and the kinsfolk insists they are innocent, the U.S. accumulation enforcement authorised said it would not be unusual for a Mexican cartel to enlist inexperienced foot soldiers for much an operation, and cooking deoxyephedrine is a simple procedure.
Malaysian personnel feature the brothers were inactive in March 2008 at a private meth works along with a Asiatic and a Malaysian. Police seized more than 60 pounds (nearly 30 kilograms) of deoxyephedrine worth $15 million.
The Mexican Foreign Relations Department says threesome added Mexicans were detained in Malaya on take charges around the aforementioned instance and released terminal year. It declined to provide info most their cases. The six are the prototypal Mexicans to be inactive in Malaya on take trafficking charges, according to the department.
The brothers' Asiatic attorney, Kitson Foong, said they were inactive outside the works and were not participating in what was feat on inside. He declined to provide info most what the brothers were doing in Malaya but said "They are not guilty. They are not take traffickers."
Malaysian prosecutor Umar Saifuddin Jaafar said the Mexicans were inactive exclusive the factory. He said the prosecution aggroup was not aware that the brothers came from a hotbed of take trafficking in Mexico but that they "had whatever noesis of the procedure, the equipment" at the laboratory.
"These people knew what they were doing. They operated in a rattling secretive environment. It seems to be that these people are experts," Jaafar said.
Neighbors and relatives feature there was no clew that the brothers aspired to the splashy world of Sinaloa's capos, whose families springy in mansions, intend Jaguars and bury their dead in sporty mausoleums with spiral staircases and balconies.
On good days, the brothers earned most 300 pesos ($25) making and selling bricks. saint injured threesome discs in his backwards individual eld ago, and a doctor urged him to quit.
"He kept working," said their sister, Alejandrina. "It's the exclusive abstract to do in the neighborhood, and it's the exclusive abstract that my ascendant taught him since he was little. Bricks, bricks, bricks."
She said digit men her brothers sometimes played soccer and sport with told them most a employ possibleness abroad and they mitt together.
"They never told us where they were going. They exclusive said they were feat to essay their phenomenon at added job," she said.
When the sound call came in March 2008, the kinsfolk pooled their money and borrowed from friends to beam Alejandrina and a someone to Malaysia. She saw her brothers for the prototypal instance in a courtroom, chained with most a dozen added prisoners from assorted cases. They looked up, stupid to wager their sister, and assured her they did not go there to intend participating in drugs.
Foong said personnel hit mishandled his client's housing from the start. He charged they lost two-thirds of the drugs seized at the works and that at one point they filed a inform claiming the drugs had been stolen. He questionable that quaternary personnel officers were inactive after existence caught on camera stealing whatever of the drugs themselves.
Prosecutor Jaafar said quaternary policemen were investigated in late 2008 on distrustfulness of stealing most 5 kilograms of meth from the grounds shack of the land personnel headquarters. He insisted the theft does not affect the prosecution's housing because chemists had already examined the drugs by then and embattled a inform most their contents.
In February, the Kuala Lumpur High Court refused to throw discover the housing and ordered the brothers to defence trial.
Foong said the brothers hit been bewildered by the Malay-language proceedings, and the Mexican Embassy in Kuala Lumpur says it module provide translators for the trial. The Foreign Relations Department says its consular officials hit visited the brothers from the start.
If convicted, Foong said, the brothers ease hit digit layers of appeals and the coverall impact could terminal added year.
In Simon's older room, threesome photographs of his girl Bianca ease secure on the wall. Now 6, she has started school, but her mother, Brenda, says the child has nightmares and refuses to see to feature or write.
"She says she won't see until her ascendant comes back," the care said. "I tell her, 'No, you staleness see apace so you crapper indite to him.'"
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Associated Press Writers Julia Zappei and Sean Yoong in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.
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