Pubdate: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 Source: Times, The (UK) Copyright: 1999 Times Newspapers Ltd Contact: http://www.the-times.co.uk/ MEXICAN GRAVES MAY HOLD 22 US VICTIMS OF DRUGS CARTEL Excavations were under way last night at the sites of two mass graves believed to hold more than 100 victims of unprecedented brutality by one of Mexico's most powerful and ruthless drug cartels. Up to 22 Americans were thought to be among those murdered and buried at two remote ranches close to Mexico's border with Texas. A 68-strong FBI task force joined the Mexican Army to begin exhumations that look likely to shed light on many mysterious disappearances. If the sites yield as many bodies as officials fear, they will be the starkest evidence yet of the depths to which drug-trafficking violence has plunged. Most of the victims are understood to have come from Juarez, the city just across the Rio Grande from El Paso in Texas, which is the base of a notorious cartel that channels billions of dollars worth of Colombian cocaine and other drugs into the United States. A convoy of 16 vehicles, many with US licence plates, rumbled through the white iron gates of Rancho de la Campana at noon yesterday joining scores of Mexican soldiers and police. Attention seemed concentrated around a concrete barn-like structure. In Washington, Thomas Pickard, assistant FBI director, said: "We believe these people were killed for their knowledge or for being witnesses to drug trafficking." Information suggested that those buried at the site had been there for two or three years. So far, part of just one body was confirmed as recovered. Mr Pickard said that extensive preparation was required to secure the site and to decide where to start digging and to make sure "we thoroughly cover the site with ground piercing radar" using techniques developed in Kosovo. The FBI has been investigating the cases of Americans who have vanished from the area for several months. They were reported to have been led to the graves by an informer. The informer, who passed a lie-detector test, admitted complicity in several killings and identified the graves at locations south of Juarez, according to The New York Times. He said that some of the killings had been carried out by Mexican police working for drug gangs and that some victims were FBI informants. The tip-off came within the past few days and eight people were arrested. Armed soldiers, some wearing masks, first surrounded one of the ranches ten miles south of Juarez. The compound, with towering iron gates and high, graffiti-covered walls topped with razor wire, was identified as belonging to an El Paso man, Jorge Ortiz, who was said by a caretaker to have been absent for some time. The site was sealed and later soldiers were seen leaving with duffel bags. Investigators, some of them forensic experts who examined mass graves in Bosnia-Herzegovina, began work with bulldozers, shovels and infra-red detection devices. Some bodies were said to be buried in trenches 12ft deep. Hundreds of FBI and Mexican officers were combing the scenes. A score of FBI forensic scientists were waiting in El Paso to examine the remains. An FBI spokesman said: "Certain drug organisations may have utilised some of these places to bury individuals. We are working with Mexican authorities to recover the remains." Officials said this was the closest co-operation between law enforcement teams across the border for some time. The Mexican authorities said yesterday that up to 22 Americans were among more than 100 bodies expected to be recovered. "At this time the numbers are vague," a government spokesman said. "It could be a couple of days before we find out exactly how many bodies there are." The Mexican Attorney-General's Office said the investigation was "focused on solving a series of assassinations and disappearances relating to drug trafficking, perpetrated against Mexican and United States citizens apparently by members of the so-called Juarez cartel. Over the past four years and possibly longer, in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, citizens of both nationalities have disappeared without a trace." The FBI called the scale of the killing represented by the graves unprecedented, even by the infamous standards of the Mexican cartels. Mark Kleiman, director of the Drug Policy Analysis Programme at the University of California, Los Angeles, said: "I can't think, in the entire history of the illicit drug business, of anything comparable. "Yes, there's certainly been violence in the illicit drug trade, and yes, if you add up the people who were killed by the Medellin drug cartel over the years, it would add up to more than 100. But a mass grave site? I've never seen anything like it." A Los Angeles Times investigation last year found that hundreds, possibly thousands, of drug-related killings occurred in Mexico each year. The worst incident was the slaughter of 19 adults and children last year near Ensenada, 60 miles south of San Diego. Juarez has been the headquarters of a cartel for many years, but it became the most violent city along Mexico's 2,000-mile border with the United States after the death of its former leader, Amado Carillo Fuentes, known as "the Lord of the Skies". He died in 1997 while undergoing plastic surgery. Last year Mexican officials issued warrants for the arrests of 100 senior members of the cartel. The most high-profile arrest was that of General Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebello, head of the anti-drug police. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea