The New York Times

Tuesday, November 30, 1999

US Joins Mexico in Mass Grave Probe

By The Associated Press

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) -- FBI forensic experts joined Mexican soldiers and ski-masked police Tuesday in searching two desert ranches near the border for the bodies of more than 100 Mexican and U.S. citizens, apparent victims of a drug gang.

A convoy of 16 vehicles, many with U.S. license plates, rumbled through the white iron gates of Rancho de la Campana, 10 miles southwest of Ciudad Juarez, at midmorning -- joining scores of Mexican soldiers and police already working around the baby blue buildings in the hilly, scrub desert. Some vehicles had newspaper taped over the windows to conceal what, or who, was inside.

Attention seemed concentrated around a concrete barn-like structure where workers were using a backhoe.

Attorney General Jorge Madrazo said in a television interview that investigators suspect the victims were killed by the Juarez drug cartel, once Mexico's largest cocaine smuggling outfit. He said more than 100 people could be buried on the ranches just across the border from El Paso, Texas, with 22 believed to be U.S. citizens.

``We believe these people were killed for their knowledge or for being witnesses to drug trafficking,'' Assistant FBI Director Thomas Pickard said in Washington. ``Most of the information we have shows these individuals were buried there at least two to three years ago, so it's not a recent situation.''

Authorities were led to the ranches by an informant who approached the FBI early this year, a federal law enforcement official said in Washington. The informant said there might be as many as 100 bodies there, including people who had been providing information to U.S. drug agents, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Eighteen-year-old Rodrigo Falcon said his family had been taking care of one of the ranches for the property owner. Other nearby residents who refused to give their names said they had seen parties at the ranch in the past, but it had seemed abandoned recently. While there were stables for horses, the only animal visible was a scrawny dog.

Pickard said digging began late Monday and part of one body had been recovered by midday Tuesday. Sixty-eight FBI agents and forensic experts and other U.S. personnel were at the ranches, he said.

``We've been discussing this for a period of time with the Mexicans,'' he said. ``We've been getting outstanding cooperation from Mexico.

Pickard said elaborate preparations were required to decide where to start digging, to secure the sites and to ``make sure we thoroughly cover the sites with ground-piercing radar,'' using techniques the FBI developed in Kosovo. The FBI sent forensic teams to Kosovo twice this year to exhume bodies in a search for evidence of war crimes by Serbs.

In Washington, President Clinton said he had not received confirmation that 22 Americans were among the suspected victims but condemned the killings as ``a horrible example'' of the excesses of Mexico's drug cartels.

``I think it reinforces the imperative of our trying not only to protect our border but to work with the Mexican authorities to try to combat these (drug cartels),'' Clinton said.

Pickard said it was ``a pretty good assumption'' that Americans are among those buried at the ranches, given ``the proximity to the border.''

At its height, the Juarez cartel was so powerful that it had the chief of Mexico's anti-narcotics forces, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo -- along with many lower-ranking officers -- on its payroll, Mexican prosecutors say. Gutierrez Rebollo was arrested in 1997 and sentenced to 32 years in prison.

The 1997 death of cartel leader Amado Carillo Fuentes, after plastic surgery designed to help him evade law enforcement, set off a bloody fight for control of the cartel's drug routes. Police in both countries have arrested many of the group's alleged ringleaders and the cartel has been eclipsed by other trafficking organizations with which it had feuded.

The local International Association of Relatives and Friends of Missing Persons says 196 people were missing since 1990 in the Ciudad Juarez-El Paso area, the newspaper El Diario de Juarez said.

Late Monday, Madrazo's office said: ``In the last four years, and possibly over more time, citizens of both nationalities have disappeared without leaving any trace'' in the Ciudad Juarez area.

Two relatives showed up Tuesday at the concrete wall around Rancho de la Campana. Santos Alonso Aguilar said two men came to their home in Ciudad Juarez on May 23, 1998, and took away his 33-year-old brother Jose, an auto body repairman. ``They had the look of those who are dressed like this,'' Santos Alonso said, pointing toward Mexican police.

``For more than two years, we have heard nothing of him,'' said another brother, Roman. ``They should give us an answer now.''

But Santos added, ``I hope my brother isn't here.''

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The Mexico's attorney general's office gave two phone numbers for people to call to pass along information or to inquire about missing family members: (800) 338-5856 and (800) 716-7852.