Authorities: Major busts unleash turf war as Sinaloa Cartel takes root

Santo Domingo. – The decapitations of Dominican Republic’s main drug trafficking structures in the wake of arrests of major figures has unleashed a turf war, prompting Mexico’s violent Sinaloa Cartel to send its own personnel to supervise its illicit operations in the country, where it has installed its own mechanisms of torture and hired killings.

The authorities believe that at least five people have been tortured and their bodies burned on orders of the Sinaloa Cartel in the last few days, the latest case being two people who died and torched within a SUV in the Gaspar Hernandez-Tenares road (north) and which initially appeared as a routine traffic accident.

On November 28 newspaper El Nacional published the details of the case of the vehicle which went over a cliff, hit a tree and caught fire.

The autopsies revealed that the people were neither beaten nor shot, which led investigators to suspect they’ve been tortured and burned and then put into the vehicle to fake an accident.

The authorities realized the case’s links to drug trafficking almost by accidental while investigating the ramifications of the structure responsible for the 177 kilos of cocaine seized early November in Santiago’s Gurabo sector.