Pubdate: Thu, 02 Dec 1999
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA)
Copyright: 1999 Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Contact:  http://www.seattle-pi.com/
Author:  Pauline Arrillaga, The Associated Press

SEARCH TURNS UP 3 MORE BODIES ON MEXICAN RANCHES

Number Of Buried Is Still Uncertain

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Working on tips from informants, Mexican and U.S.
officials armed with sophisticated technology apparently located the
remains of three more bodies south of the Texas border yesterday, bringing
to five the number found in a slow search for some of 100 people missing in
the region.

"At this moment we have indications that we have the remains of five
persons," Jose Larrieta Carrasco, head of the organized crime unit for
Mexico's attorney general's office, told reporters at the Rancho de la
Campana, about 10 miles southwest of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from
El Paso, Texas.

"We're trying to determine if there are more," he added.

FBI forensic experts worked with Mexican soldiers and ski-masked police
searching four desert ranches near the border, concentrating on two near
Ciudad Juarez, the home base for the Juarez drug cartel, Mexico's largest
and most violent drug-smuggling outfit of the mid-1990s.

While U.S. officials say an informant told them as many as 100 bodies might
be buried at the ranches, officials now say they don't know how many bodies
could be buried there.

Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo has said in several broadcast
interviews that he has a list of about 100 people missing from 1994 to 1996
- -- 22 of them Americans. But he says he does not know how many of the
missing might be buried in the desert.

U.S. officials have suggested that the number of missing Americans is smaller.

The searchers have been using techniques ranging from ground-piercing radar
and DNA analysis to old-fashioned shovels and sieves to hunt for and
identify the dead.

Yesterday, reporters watching from afar at Rancho de la Campana saw
investigators in hospital-type masks and gloves sifting sand and gravel
over a screen near one of the compound's baby-blue buildings.

Mexican officials say some 500 soldiers and 174 federal anti-drug agents
are taking part in the operation. U.S. officials say about 65 FBI personnel
are also involved.

The three bodies discovered yesterday come after remains thought to belong
to two victims were uncovered Tuesday. So far, most of the remains
apparently have been fragmentary.

"There is a skull, some bones, some boots; there are bone fragments,
including some that are small," Madrazo told the Radio Red network in
Mexico early yesterday. He said the remains would undergo DNA and other
analyses by FBI and Mexican experts.

"At this moment, nobody in the world could tell you who they belong to," he
said.

Madrazo has repeatedly said that officials do not believe that bodies of
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration or FBI agents are at the ranches.

But he said agents of the Mexican federal judicial police could be buried
there.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart