Pubdate: Thu, 02 Dec 1999
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 1999 The Washington Post Company
Address: 1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service
Note: Staff writer Lorraine Adams in Washington and researcher Garance
Burke in Mexico City contributed to this report.

REMAINS OF 5 FOUND AT BORDER RANCH

Mexican, U.S. Authorities Predict Long Investigation Of Suspected Sites

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, Dec. 1 - Mexican authorities said today that
remnants of clothing and bones from five bodies have been excavated from a
ranch on the desert outskirts of this border city where U.S. and Mexican
officials are preparing for a protracted investigation of sites believed to
contain numerous murder victims.

"There is a skull, some bones, some boots; there are bone fragments,
including some that are small," Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo said
in a radio interview, adding, "At this moment, nobody in the world tell you
whom they belong to."

After three days of exploring four sites where an informant alleged that as
many as 100 bodies could be buried, law enforcement authorities from Mexico
and the United States today said they have been unable to determine how
many bodies may have been buried and said it could take weeks to determine
the identities.

Mexican and U.S. law enforcement agents said the bodies are believed to be
those of some of the nearly 200 Mexican and U.S. citizens who have
disappeared from the border area around Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Tex., in
the past five years. While law enforcement officials said most of those who
disappeared were linked to drug trafficking, human rights organizations and
associations representing the families of missing persons, have alleged
that unscrupulous Mexican police and military officials were involved in
the crimes.

While law enforcement authorities started digging Monday following
declarations that as many as 100 bodies could be buried in several graves,
U.S. and Mexican authorities today backed away from making concrete
predictions of their findings.

"With respect to 100 bodies, that isn't an exact number," Jose Larrieta
Carrasco, head of the Mexican attorney general's organized crime unit which
is heading the Mexican part of the investigation, told reporters outside
the small ranch where officials recovered the remains. "We have not said
100 persons or the remains of 100 persons would be found in one place."

"The whole world is talking about a narco-cemetery filled with hundreds of
bodies and up until now, the authorities have not been able to confirm
those facts," said Javier Benavides Gonzalez, chief of the Ciudad Juarez
municipal police who said his officers are not participating in the federal
investigation. "Unfortunately, there has been a lot of speculation."

One U.S. official said today it could take months to find all the bodies,
and law enforcement authorities on both sides of the border said DNA tests
and other methods of identification could require weeks of work on each set
of remains.

Meanwhile, a few teary-eyed relatives of people who had disappeared kept
vigil around the barbed-wire fence surrounding the small ranch of pastel
blue barns, hacienda-style house and white rail fencing.

Throughout the day, vans, trucks and Mexican agents wearing black uniforms
and black ski masks to hide their identities entered the windswept compound
where digging operations were underway.

At least two people identified as caretakers of the ranch, called Rancho de
la Campana, have been sent to Mexico City for questioning by agents of the
attorney general's office, according to Mexican press reports. Authorities
have not identified the property owners.

Although U.S. and Mexican authorities said they are investigating possible
graves at three other remote locations, no remains have been found at those
sites.

Rancho de la Campana is located on a well-traveled highway about 10 miles
south of the city, but backs up to a high ridge of jagged rocks and sprawls
across a desolate expanse of khaki-colored desert dotted by low scrub brush.

No animals have been seen on the property since the excavations began. Its
only neighbors are an archery and shooting range on one side and a
mechanic's shop across the road from the concrete wall that fronts the
property's entrance.

The discoveries of the bodies, three of which were unearthed today and two
Tuesday, and the potential that dozens more bodies lie beneath the desert,
have drawn international attention to one of the most violent areas of the
2,000-mile border between Mexico and the southwestern United States. Ciudad
Juarez, a sprawling city of huge international assembly plants and
shantytowns, is the headquarters of Mexico's most powerful drug mafia, the
Juarez cartel.

Relatives and human rights groups point to the frequent disappearances of
people of all ages and from all walks of life and Mexican and U.S. law
enforcement's inability to resolve the crimes as examples of the impunity
that allows criminals and corrupt police to operate in Mexico.

"The thing is in the Mexican context you have investigation upon
investigation, unfortunately leading nowhere," said Carlos Salinas, Amnesty
International's advocacy director for Latin America. "We would hope this
set of circumstances would. . .bring some kind of closure to these cases
and hold these officials accountable."

But the international attention surrounding the excavations and the
prominent role of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug
Enforcement Administration has caused a political backlash in Mexico where
resentment runs deep against any U.S. involvement in Mexican affairs.

"We are risking that [the FBI and DEA] come to substitute" our police
forces, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, presidential candidate of a leftist party,
told the Mexico City daily La Jornada. "We don't require any direct
intervention from any police from anywhere."

Staff writer Lorraine Adams in Washington and researcher Garance Burke in
Mexico City contributed to this report.
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