Unprecedented wave of narco-violence stuns Argentina city

ROSARIO, Argentina (AP) — The order to kill came from inside a federal prison near Argentina's capital. Unwitting authorities patched a call from drug traffickers tied to one of the country's most notorious gangs to collaborators on the outside. Hiring a 15-year-old hit man, they sealed the fate of a young father they didn't even know.

At a service station on March 9 in Rosario, the picturesque hometown of soccer star Lionel Messi, 25-year-old employee Bruno Bussanich was whistling to himself and checking the day's earnings just before he was shot three times from less than a foot away, surveillance footage shows. The assailant fled without taking a peso.

It was the fourth gang-related fatal shooting in Rosario in almost as many days. Authorities called it an unprecedented rampage in Argentina, which had never witnessed the extremes of drug cartel violence afflicting some other Latin American countries.

A handwritten letter was found near Bussanich's body, addressed to officials who want to curb the power drug kingpins wield from behind bars. “We don’t want to negotiate anything. We want our rights," it says. "We will kill more innocent people.”

Shaken residents interviewed by The Associated Press across Rosario described a sense of dread taking hold.

“Every time I go to work, I say goodbye to my father as if it were the last time,” said 21-year-old Celeste Núñez, who also works at a gas station.

The string of killings offer an early test to the security agenda of populist President Javier Milei, who has tethered his political success to saving Argentina’s tanking economy and eradicating narco-trafficking violence.

Since taking office Dec. 10, the right-wing leader has promised to prosecute gang members as terrorists and change the law to allow the army into crime-ridden streets for the first time since Argentina's brutal military dictatorship ended in 1983.

His law-and-order message has empowered the hardline governor of Santa Fe province, which includes Rosario, to clamp down on incarcerated criminal gangs that authorities say orchestrated 80% of shootings last year. Under the orders of Governor Maximiliano Pullaro, police have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits.

“We are facing a group of narco-terrorists desperate to maintain power and impunity,” Milei said after Bussanich was killed, announcing the deployment of federal forces in Rosario. “We will lock them up, isolate them, take back the streets.”

Milei won 56% of the vote in Rosario, where residents praise his focus on a problem largely neglected by his predecessors. But some worry the government's combative approach traps them in the line of fire.

Gangs started their deadly retaliations just hours after Pullaro’s security minister shared photos showing Argentine prisoners crammed together on the floor, heads pressed against each other’s bare backs — a scene reminiscent of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s harsh anti-gang crackdown.

“It’s a war between the state and the drug traffickers,” said Ezequiel, a 30-year-old employee at the gas station where Bussanich was killed. Ezequiel, who gave only his first name for fear of reprisals, said his mother has since begged him to quit. “We’re the ones paying the price.”

Even Milei's supporters have mixed feelings about the crackdown, including Germán Bussanich, the father of the slain gas station worker.

“They're putting on a show and we're facing the consequences," Bussanich told reporters.

A leafy city 300 kilometers (180 miles) northwest of Buenos Aires, Rosario is where revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born, Messi first kicked a soccer ball and the Argentine flag was first raised in 1812. But it most recently won notoriety because its homicide numbers are five times the national average.

Tucked into a bend in the Paraná River, Rosario's port morphed into Argentina's drug trafficking hub as regional crackdowns pushed the narcotics trade south and criminals started squirreling away cocaine in shipping containers spirited down the river to markets abroad. Although Rosario never suffered the car bombs and police assassinations gripping Mexico, Colombia and most recently Ecuador, the splintering of street gangs has fueled bloodshed.

“It’s not close to the violence in Mexico because we still have the deterrence capacity of the government in Argentina,” said Marcelo Bergman, a social scientist at the National University of Tres de Febrero in Argentina. “But we need to keep an eye on Rosario because the major threats come not so much from big cartels but when these groups proliferate and diversify.”

Drug traffickers keep a tight grip over Rosario's poor neighborhoods full of young men vulnerable to recruitment. One of them was Víctor Emanuel, a 17-year-old killed two years ago by rival gangsters in an area where street murals pay tribute to slain criminal leaders. No one was arrested.

“My neighbors know who’s responsible,” his mother, Gerónima Benítez, told the AP, her eyes shiny with tears. “I looked for help everywhere, I knocked on the doors of the judiciary, the government. No one answered.”

A fearful existence is all Benítez has ever known. But now, for the first time in Argentina, warring drug traffickers are banding together and terrorizing parts of the city previously considered safe.

Imprisoned gang leaders in Latin America have long run criminal enterprises remotely with the help of corrupt guards. But according to an indictment unveiled last week, incarcerated gang bosses in Argentina have been passing instructions on how to kill random civilians via family visits and video calls.

Court documents say the bosses paid underage hit men up to $450 to target four of the recent victims in Argentina’s third-largest city. The killing of Bussanich, two taxi drivers and a bus driver in less than a week in March, federal prosecutors say, “shattered the peace of an entire society."

Street emptied. Schools closed. Bus drivers picketed. People were too terrified to leave their homes.

“This violence is on another level,” 20-year-old Rodrigo Dominguez said from an intersection where a dangling banner demanded justice for another bus driver slain there weeks earlier. “You can’t go outside.”

Panic was still palpable in Rosario last week, as police swarmed the streets and normally bustling bars closed early for lack of customers. A diner managed by Messi’s family, a draw for fans, reported quiet nights and less profit. Women in one neighborhood said they carry 22‐caliber pistols. Analía Manso, 37, said she was too scared to send her children to school.

Pope Francis last month said he was praying for his countrymen in Rosario.

Assaults and public threats continue. This month, a sign appeared on a highway overpass warning Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich that gangs would extend their offensive to Buenos Aires if the government doesn't back down.

Authorities have sought to reassure the public by sending hundreds of federal agents into Rosario. The AP spent a night with police last week as officers patrolled neighborhoods logging suspicious activity and setting up checkpoints.

Georgina Wilke, a 45-year-old Rosario officer in the explosives squad, said she welcomes federal intervention, including the military, to get crime under control. “We've been hit very hard,” Wilke said.

Omar Pereira, the provincial secretary of public security, promised the efforts represent a shift from failed tactics of the past.

“There were always pacts, implicit or explicit, between the state and criminals,” Pereira said, describing how authorities long looked the other way. “What’s the idea of this government? There is no pact."

But experts are skeptical a tough-on-crime approach will stop drug traffickers from buying control over Argentina’s police and prisons.

“Unless the government fixes its problems with corruption, the crackdown on prisons is unlikely to have any long-term effect,” said Christopher Newton, an investigator at Colombia-based research organization InSight Crime.

For years, Rosario's 1.3 million residents have watched warily as presidents and their promises come and go while the violence endures.

“It’s like a cancer that grows and grows,” said Benítez from her home, its windows protected by wrought-iron bars.

“We, on the outside, live in prison,” she said. “Those inside have everything.”

A chain lock reinforces the locked door of a gas station that started closing shop at night after the killing of a worker at a nearby station a few weeks before, in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. The order to kill came from inside Ezeiza Prison from gang leaders who hired a 15-year-old hitman to kill gas station worker Bruno Bussanich on March 9. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Prison guards stand inside the Pinero jail complex in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. President Javier Milei has called for harsher penalties against drug traffickers and military intervention. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

An inmate looks out from a window at Pinero jail in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Authorities have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Inmates play soccer at Pinero jail in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Authorities have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

The Pinero jail complex stands in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. President Javier Milei’s tough-on-crime message has empowered hardline governor Maximiliano Pullaro’s efforts to clamp down on incarcerated criminal groups, which he said planned 80% of shootings in Rosario last year. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

A police officer stands guard on a street in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. President Javier Milei has promised to prosecute gang members as terrorists and change the law to allow the army into crime-ridden streets for the first time since Argentina's brutal military dictatorship ended in 1983. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Prison guards stand behind the entrance to Pinero jail in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Authorities have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

A banner hangs over a bus stop asking for justice regarding the murder of bus driver Cesar Roldan in Rosario, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Geronima Benitez wipes her eyes as she speaks about her son Victor Emanuel, 17, who was murdered by drug traffickers who were never arrested two years ago, during an interview at her home in Rosario, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Benítez said her son’s killer still lives down her street and is not convinced a prison sentence would make a difference. “We, on the outside, live in prison,” she said. “Those inside have everything.” (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Geronima Benitez holds a photograph of her son Victor Emanuel, 17, who was murdered by drug traffickers who were never arrested two years ago, at her home in Rosario, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Benítez said her son’s killer still lives down her street and is not convinced a prison sentence would make a difference. “We, on the outside, live in prison,” she said. “Those inside have everything.” (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Police patrol the streets of Rosario, Argentina, as a family that collects disposed cardboard to resell pushes their children in a shopping cart, late Monday, April 8, 2024. Agents fanned out across hardscrabble areas, spending hours logging neighborhood activity and setting up checkpoints on major thoroughfares. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

A mural of Claudio Ariel Cantero covers a wall alongside a supportive message of him written by his family, in Rosario, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Cantero, known as “El Pajaro,” or The Bird, was the leader of the criminal organization called “Los Monos,” or The Monkeys, and was shot to death at a bowling alley on May 26, 2013 in Santa Fe. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

A resident who did not want to be identified shows the gun she keeps at her home for self-defense as she poses for a photo in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. The homicide rate is five times the national average in Rosario. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

People hang out at a park in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. The birthplace of Lionel Messi and revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara morphed about a decade ago into the country’s drug trafficking hub, as regional crackdowns pushed the trade south. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Police officer Georgina Wilke drives her patrol car in Rosario, Argentina, late Monday, April 8, 2024. Agents fanned out across hardscrabble areas, spending hours logging neighborhood activity and setting up checkpoints on major thoroughfares. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

A child rides a bicycle past a mural of Gabriel Ignacio Romero, a resident who was murdered on the sidewalk outside his home the previous year, in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. For the past decade, the 1.3 million residents of Rosario have watched warily as presidents and their promises come and go. What endures, they say, is violence. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

A mural of soccer player Lionel Messi covers a building in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. The birthplace of Messi and revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara morphed about a decade ago into the country’s drug trafficking hub, as regional crackdowns pushed the trade south. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

A prison guard sits in a watchtower at the Pinero jail in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. President Javier Milei has called for harsher penalties against drug traffickers and military intervention. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

NEW YORK (AP) — Hope Hicks, who served as Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign press secretary and went on to hold various roles in his White House, took the witness stand in his New York hush money case on Friday.

Her testimony on the trial's 11th day was the latest in a frenzied second week of witness testimony and followed that of forensic analyst Douglas Daus and paralegal Georgia Longstreet.

Lawyer Keith Davidson concluded his testimony Thursday after spending nearly 6 1/2 hours on the stand over two days. He laid out for jurors details of his negotiations with Michael Cohen and the National Enquirer on behalf of Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, not shying away from an election night realization that his efforts might have contributed to Trump's 2016 win.

Daus also took the stand that day, testifying about what he found on Cohen's cellphone. Among other things, Daus said Cohen had nearly 40,000 contacts saved to the device.

Prosecutors have said that Trump and others conducted a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by purchasing and burying salacious stories that might hurt his campaign.

Trump is accused of falsifying internal business records to cover up hush money payments — including $130,000 given to Daniels, a porn actor, by Cohen — recording them instead as legal expenses.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

The case is the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president and the first of four prosecutions of Trump to reach a jury.

Currently:

— Donald Trump moves much of his White House campaign to New York

— Key players: Who’s who at Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial

— The hush money case is just one of Trump’s legal cases. See the others here

— Trial begins for financial executive in insider trading case tied to taking Trump media firm public

Here's the latest:

Hope Hicks, who served as Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign press secretary and went on to hold various roles in his White House, took the witness stand in his New York hush money case on Friday.

Her testimony on the trial’s 11th day was the latest in a frenzied second week of witness testimony and followed that of forensic analyst Douglas Daus and paralegal Georgia Longstreet.

Donald Trump has paid his $9,000 fine for violating the gag order in his hush money criminal trial.

The former president paid the penalty Thursday, ahead of a Friday deadline. Trump’s legal team supplied the court clerk’s office with two cashier’s checks — one for $2,000 and one for $7,000.

Judge Juan M. Merchan ordered Trump to pay the fine after holding him in contempt of court and finding that posts he made online about his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, porn actor Stormy Daniels and the composition of the jury had violated the gag order.

Merchan is currently weighing a prosecution request to hold Trump in contempt again and fine him $1,000 for each of four more alleged violations from last week. Merchan has warned Trump that he could be jailed if he keeps breaching the gag order.

A government agency at the heart of Donald Trump’s separate classified documents criminal case got a name drop at his New York hush money trial on Friday.

Georiga Longstreet testified that she used the National Archives and Records Administration’s archive of the official presidential account on Twitter, now known as the social platform X, to help verify the authenticity of Trump’s account.

Longstreet noted that Trump’s official government account, @POTUS45, frequently reposted posts from Trump’s @realdonaldtrump account.

There was no visible reaction from Trump to the mention of the National Archives, whose pursuit of records he took from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after his 2020 election loss led to charges alleging that he illegally hoarded classified documents.

Georgia Longstreet, a paralegal with the Manhattan district attorney's office, was called as the next witness in Donald Trump's hush money case on Friday.

She has been assigned to the Trump case for the past year and a half and her role has been to review publicly available records relevant to the case, including Trump’s social media accounts on the social platform X — formerly known as Twitter — Facebook, LinkedIn and Truth Social.

Picking up where he left off on Thursday, Trump attorney Emil Bove plied Douglas Daus, the forensic analyst, with a set of deeply technical questions Friday meant to suggest that Michael Cohen may have doctored a 2016 recording played in court the previous day.

As evidence, Bove noted that the audio cuts off suddenly, as well as “gaps” in the handling of the phone that Daus agreed were “not ideal.”

Prosecutors say the abrupt ending of the recording was the result of Cohen receiving another call. Under questioning from Bove, Daus said there was no record of an incoming call in the phone’s metadata — but said it would be difficult to say for sure without looking at call log data from Cohen’s phone carrier.

“In many ways, we’re just going to have to take Michael Cohen’s word for it, aren’t we?” Bove said.

“Yes,” Daus replied.

With that, Bove concluded his cross-examination.

Before testimony resumed in Donald Trump's hush money trial, Judge Juan M. Merchan ruled to prevent prosecutors from showing the jury a photograph of Trump with Billy Bush and soap opera actor Arianne Zucker at the time of the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche had asked for the image to be excluded from the trial, pointing to a recent court decision overturning Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction. In that case, the appeals court ordered a retrial because the judge had allowed testimony at trial unrelated to the allegations.

Merchan said the appeals court decision “doesn’t really factor into this” case, noting that the ruling had not laid out any new law, but nevertheless agreed to block prosecutors from introducing the photograph.

Prosecutors had said the image would help establish the timeline of the revelations about the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump could be heard bragging about grabbing women without permission.

Merchan has previously ruled the 2005 tape cannot be played in court for jurors, but said prosecutors can still question witnesses about the recording.

Trump lawyer Emil Bove on Friday morning resumed cross-examination questioning of Douglas Daus, a forensic analyst at the Manhattan district attorney’s office who extracted recordings, text messages and other evidence from two of Michael Cohen’s iPhones.

Judge Juan M. Merchan started the trial day also by clarifying that Donald Trump’s gag order doesn’t prohibit him from testifying on his own behalf, apparently responding to comments the former president made after court the day before.

“The order restricting extrajudicial statements does not prevent you from testifying in any way,” Merchan said, adding that the order does not in any way limit what Trump says on the witness stand.

Merchan directed his comments to Trump and his lawyers, saying it had come to his attention that there may have been a “misunderstanding” regarding the order.

Speaking to reporters before heading into court on Friday, Donald Trump clarified comments he made the day before about his gag order, saying it does not stop him from testifying in the case but it does keep him from “talking about people and responding when they say things about me.”

After court adjourned on Thursday, Trump had responded to questions about what he’d thought of the day’s testimony.

“I’m not allowed to testify. I’m under a gag order,” he said, causing some confusion. The gag order bars him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to the case.

He also commented on the latest job numbers showing that U.S. employers scaled back hiring in April and said they’re “horrible.”

Donald Trump has arrived at the courthouse in Manhattan for the 11th day of his hush money trial.

Hope Hicks, who served as Donald Trump's 2016 campaign press secretary and went on to hold various roles in his White House, could testify in his hush money trial as early as Friday.

The two people who described her forthcoming appearance to The Associated Press insisted on anonymity to discuss internal trial preparations.

Hicks spoke with Trump by phone during a frenzied effort to keep his alleged affairs out of the press in the final weeks before the election.

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Jake Offenhartz in New York contributed to this report.

Despite not yet having testified in Donald Trump's hush money case, Michael Cohen has been very present in the courtroom — in audio recordings of conversations he had and in witness testimony.

On Thursday, jurors heard a taped call between Cohen and Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels' former attorney, wherein Cohen could be heard telling Davidson about a conversation he'd had with someone believed to be Trump.

“I can’t even tell you how many times he said to me, ‘You know, I hate the fact that we did it.’ And my comment to him was, ‘But every person that you’ve spoken to told you it was the right move,’” Cohen said in the recording.

The panel also heard a recording of Cohen briefing Trump in September 2016 on the plan to buy former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story. That particular recording included Cohen detailing that he'd spoken to then-Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg about “how to set the whole thing up with funding.”

Cohen, who is the prosecution's star witness, was Trump's lawyer and personal fixer at the time.

Court proceedings in Donald Trump's hush money case will end early on Friday to accommodate an important appointment one of the jurors has in the late afternoon.

Judge Juan M. Merchan announced the scheduling change just before adjourning court on Thursday. Court will end at 3:45 p.m. Friday, about 45 minutes earlier than normal.

Donald Trump is expected to return to court Friday morning for the 11th day of his hush money trial as the second week of witness testimony wraps up.

Thursday's proceedings saw the former president facing yet another contempt hearing, this time over four more prospective violations of his gag order.

While Judge Juan M. Merchan did not immediately rule on the sanctions request from prosecutors, he told defense attorneys he was concerned about three of the potential violations — including comments that Trump made about the political makeup of the jury. Merchan said he wasn't worried about a comment Trump made last week calling former Enquirer publisher David Pecker a “nice guy.”

Prosecutors said they were only seeking fines and not jail time over the potential violations.

Trump is barred under a gag order from speaking publicly about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to the case. He was fined $9,000 on Tuesday over nine online posts.

The introduction has been updated to correct the spelling of the last name of forensic analyst Douglas Daus, from Daul.

Former President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on Friday, May 3, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday,, May 3, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday,, May 3, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)

Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday,, May 3, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)

Former President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP)

Former President Donald Trump sits inside Manhattan Criminal Court, Thursday, May 2 2024. (Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP)

Former President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP)