Costa Rica assassins traveling to Mexico for training: official

By Mimi Yagoub / InSight Crime

November 26th, 2015 (InSight Crime) Assassins from Costa Rica are reportedly traveling to Mexico to receive specialized training from criminal groups, suggesting Costa Rican criminals are growing in sophistication by learning from their more experienced foreign counterparts.

According to Costa Rican Attorney General Jorge Chavarria, local contract killers are traveling to Mexico to learn skills such as target practice, intelligence gathering, escape tactics, and how to use high-caliber weapons like AK-47s, reported La Nacion.

Costa Rica’s Anti-Narcotics Police (PCD) suggested a number of contract killers were instructed by Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, but that some others also travel to different countries for training. The PCD added that new recruits in Costa Rica will often learn from those who have trained abroad, or on the streets.

According to Chavarria, these strategies learnt abroad are evident in the more violent, specialized ways in which assassinations are being carried out.

Specialized assassins in Costa Rica are between 18 and 30 years of age, and typically either work providing security for criminal organizations or as killers for hire, Chavarria stated. The use of motorcycles — in which assassins shoot the victim from the passenger seat while another person drives — is currently the most popular method for contract kills, according to authorities.

Although hired guns began appearing in the country at the end of the 1990s, their use in Costa Rica began intensifying in 2012, according to the PCD.

Costa Rican police on Thursday morning arrested two suspected assassins who are believed to be connected with a brutal October murder in San Jose that sparked national outcry over increasing violence related to organized crime in the country.

This article was originally published by InSight Crime and is licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0 license.

Minor additional editing by ICR News.