Frontera NorteSur March 2001

The Chihuahua state police have interviewed over 40 people in their attempts to resolve the case. They also have in their possession video tape of all the people that left Ojinaga to go into the US on the day of the killing and the following day.

El Diario reports that Ojinaga journalists and Ortega's relatives believe that the writer was killed because of a February 15 article in the Semanario that indicated where drugs were hidden in Aldama, Chihuahua (near Chihuahua City in the center of the state).

Police in Chihuahua are still investigating the year 2000 murder of a Ciudad Juárez journalist. That murder may also be linked to drug cartels as well.

Source: El Diario, February 21, 2001. El Norte, February 24.

Mexican Man Arrested in Dallas in Connection to Rape-Murder in Juárez

José Juárez Rosales, 24, was arrested in Dallas, Texas yesterday at the request of Mexican officials that allege he was a member of the "Los Rebeldes" gang that is allegedly responsible for the brutal rape and murder of seven women in Ciudad Juárez.

Juárez was arrested in 1996 in connection with at least one of the killings but was set free that same year by a judge that ruled the Chihuahua state police did not have enough evidence to hold him. The state attorney general's office appealed Juárez's release and a second judge issued a new arrest warrant on which Juárez was detained yesterday.

The state attorney general's office, the PGJE, which is in charge of the murder investigations has in the past linked many of the women's murders to Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif, an Egyptian national that was working in Cd. Juárez for a US corporation. According to the PGJE, the ritualistic-type rapes and murders of women continued after Sharif was taken into custody because he was allegedly paying gang members to rape and murder women in his style so that it would look like someone still at large had committed the barbaric crimes. Allegedly, Sharif paid US$1,500 for each rape-murder and demanded that the slain women's underwear be brought to him along with a newspaper story reporting the women's death.

Every women's activist with whom Frontera NorteSur has spoken, including Guillermina González of Voces sin Eco (a missing women's advocacy group comprised of family members of the victims and the missing) and Esther Chávez Cano the director of Casa Amiga, the only rape and abuse crisis center in Ciudad Juárez, believes that the PGJE's theory of a conspiracy between Sharif and the gangs is absurd. The activists seem to put faith only in a study done by US FBI agents that they say found that many killers are involved in the murders and that there may be many copy-cat rapist-murderers that are still free or are just beginning to commit crimes. The activists also believe that the PGJE's theories are unlikely because it is widely known that a professional, more-dangerous, drug-related killing in Cd. Juárez can be had for about US$500 or less. The idea of having to pay US$1,500 to kill an unsuspecting girl or woman along with the proof-by-panties theory seems absurd, like something from a bad telenovela (soap opera).

The fact that on March 31, 2000 Judge Mauro Carrasco García reversed a thirty-year sentence against Sharif for lack of evidence does not help build Cd. Juárez's confidence in the PGJE investigation either. Five of the ten Los Rebeldes gang members arrested in 1996 have been freed as well since that time. Members of both Los Rebeldes and Los Choferes (a group of bus drivers accused in some of the murders) say that they were tortured into confessions.

Torture charges by suspects against police are often viewed with skepticism by the Cd. Juárez public but an incident in July, 2000 that involved an investigation into a missing woman would seem to add some credence to such claims. In July, a bus driver not related to Los Choferes, told Suly Ponce Prieto, the Special Investigator into the Murders of Women, that he had beaten by officers after being taken to the grounds of the Police Academy for questioning. Seeing signs of abuse on the driver's face, Ponce had the man taken for medical treatment. Three officers were then put under investigation for the abuse of the driver and the Cd. Juárez press looked at why suspects were being taken to "a quiet place" like the Police Academy for interrogation.

A DWI charge in Dallas was dropped against Juárez and INS officials took the man into custody to begin the process of returning him to Mexico.

Missing Woman Found Murdered

In a separate story El Norte says that the body of Lilia Alejandra García Andrade, a 17-year old mother of two, was found in a vacant lot across from the Plaza Juárez Mall. García, mother of a two-year old girl and a five-month old son, had been missing since she left the maquiladora where she worked on February 14, 2001.

Wounds present on her body indicate that García had been held captive before her death. Although she had disappeared nine days ago it appears that she was murdered by strangulation approximately 42 hours before she was found, according to El Norte.

Relatives told El Norte that García always went straight home after work because she was nursing her infant son. While her mother would always pick her daughter up after work, on February 14, the day of her disappearance, her mother got delayed and García went back into the plant to borrow money for the bus. That was the last time she was seen alive.

"My daughter was very good," was all Lilia's mother could say between tears.

Sources: El Norte, February 23, 2001. Articles by Salvador Castro and Karen Chávez. El Paso Times, February 23, 2001. Article by Diana Washington Valdez.

Alleged Arellano Cartel Members Arrested in Méxicali

A joint operation between the Procuraduría General de la República (Federal Attorney General's Office, PGR) and the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (Secretary of National Defense, Sedena) has resulted in the arrest of six alleged members of the Arellano Félix drug cartel, also called the Tijuana cartel, one of the most powerful drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico. All the arrests took place in Méxicali and law-enforcement officials hope that this has put an end to the cartel's presence in that city.

José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, head of the PGR's Fiscalía Especializada para la Atención de Delitos contra la Salud (Anti-drug Taskforce, FEADS), said that a major break in the case was the arrest of Miguel Angel García Serrano, a Federal Judicial Police Antidrug agent that had been working with the FEADS. He is charged with allegedly providing protection and information for two members of the cartel.

Also arrested were other members of the cartel that allegedly performed such functions as providing falsified documents to the cartel and warehousing and moving drugs including cocaine and marijuana.

Seized during the raid were eight homes with a value of US$2.5 million, 1,800 pounds of marijuana, police radios, 19 guns, ammunition, 18 cars and more.

Source: Frontera (Tijuana), February 20, 2001. Article by Arturo Loyola.

Four Arrested Near Méxicali for Allegedly Shooting at US Border Patrol

Four residents of the Fronteriza colonia (neighborhood) near Méxicali were arrested by city police after they allegedly fired rifle shots at US Border Patrol agents at work in the US. City police say that the four appear to be the same people involved in shooting out video cameras installed along the border.

The four were taken into custody after Border Patrol called the Méxicali city police to report that they were being fired upon from Mexico. Soon after the call city police surrounded the area and detained the four suspects.

The four are allegedly part of a group of human smugglers operating in the area according to Méxicali Police. The police also said that the shooting was done to scare away or distract Border Patrol agents so that undocumented migrants can cross the border without being caught.

Police say that the four were caught with a rifle, two doses of crystal methamphetamine, a marijuana cigarette and baseball bat.

Source: La Crónica, February 12, 2001. Article by Marco Vinicio Blanco.

Student Shoots at Teacher in BC

A thirteen-year old Baja California student shot at his Civic and Ethics Education teacher in what looks to be the internationalization of what was once primarily a US manner of expressing teenage anger and frustration. The unnamed student allegedly shot at an unidentified teacher with a .22 pistol at the Escuela Secundaria Número 20 in Ensenada, BC.

The gun was fired from within a backpack and the bullet struck the floor and shattered sending shrapnel into a wall and a desk. A student was grazed in the leg by the shrapnel but the wound did not require medical attention.

The school principal, Tomás Huerta Olachea, interviewed the boy who told him that the gun belonged to his father and that he had only wanted to wound his instructor whom he did not like. The principal also stated that the boy has been attending the school for 6 months. He described him as quiet and respectful but indifferent to his studies.

The boy is now in the custody of the State Police (Ministerio Público) where he is being questioned and where his teacher went to tell him he forgave him.

Source: Frontera (Tijuana), February 9, 2001. Article by Arturo López Juan.

Ex-PGR Chihuahua Official Escapes

José Manuel Díaz Pérez, the former Chihuahua assistant director of the Policía Judicial Federal (Federal Judicial Police, PJF, a division of the PGR), escaped from a PGR safe house south of Mexico City yesterday.

Díaz Pérez is accused of corruption for allegedly offering a US$500,000 bribe to his superior in Chihuahua, PJF director Norberto Jesús Suárez Gómez. It is alleged that the money was to be used to buy Díaz Pérez a more lucrative position as PJF director in the state of Tamaulipas. Suárez Gómez, who is also under arrest in the same safe house, did not escape.

Díaz Pérez evidently slipped through his eleven guards comprised of five Policía Federal Military (Federal Military Police, PFM) and five PJF agents and one Ministerio Público Federal agent that work for the Unidad Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada (Unit Specializing in Organized Crime, UEDO). The escape occurred between 11:30 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. Details of the escape are not yet available except for the fact that it took place without violence. The agents that were on duty at the time are said to be busy giving testimony on the day's events.

The Procuraduría General de la República (equivalent to the US Attorney General's Office, PGR) said that there were eleven people involved in the escape of Díaz Pérez. It is not known if this is in reference to the eleven agents that were guarding Díaz Pérez. The PGR has also implicated the Juárez/Carrillo Fuentes cartel in the escape as the US$500,000 bribe is assumed to be drug money from the cartel.

Officials from the PGR and the Secretaría de Defensa Nacional (Department of Defense) have made known their decision to take the case away from the UEDO. It will now be in the hands of the PGR's Visitaduría General.

Source: El Diario, February 16, 2001.