Frontera NorteSur November -December  2003

Chihuahua Courts to Determine Fate of Men Accused of Juárez Serial-Killings by End of November, Critics Question Fairness of Trials 

The president of the Chihuahua Supreme Court, Pablo Zapata Zubiaga, has announced that all the cases against men arrested in connection to the Ciudad Juárez serial killings will be decided by the end of November 2003. 

The outstanding cases include one against the first suspect arrested in 1995, Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif, and the cases against the imprisoned members of the Los Rebeldes gang, arrested in 1996. Chihuahua authorities allege that, from jail, Sharif paid Los Rebeldes to rape and kill women in his style so that it would look as if the state had erred in arresting him. 

Other cases include those against four bus drivers known collectively as Los Toltecas. They were arrested in 1999 and police also linked their alleged crimes back to Sharif. Except for law enforcement, the Cd. Juárez public has little faith in the Sharif conspiracy theory woven by the Chihuahua Attorney General's Office. 

Also to be determined by the end of November is the fate of Javier García Uribe, who was arrested in late 2001 for the murder of eleven women, eight of whom were found in a cotton field in central Cd. Juárez in November 2001. García was arrested along with a fellow bus driver, Gustavo González Meza, who died in prison in early 2003 under suspicious circumstances after a hernia operation. 

Both García and González showed signs of police torture to the press after their apprehension and claimed they were forced into signing false confessions to the crimes. Mario César Escobedo Anaya, González's defense lawyer, was killed under highly suspicious circumstances in a police chase on Tuesday, February 5, 2002. For more on Escobedo's case go to the following link and scroll down: http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/feb02/today.html

    Court procedures could result in overturns of decisions

In an interview with the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Norte, Zapata said that state judges have had a double duty in the serial-killing cases, one is to administer justice, the other is to remedy any deficiencies in the cases presented by the prosecution when it is "subjectively" known that the defendant is guilty but the prosecution has had difficulties proving it. This statement by Zapata drew sharp criticism from the Cd. Juárez legal community. 

Lorenzo Villar Chavarría, president of the lawyers' bar in Cd. Juárez, said that if judges do anything to support the prosecution's cases, they should excuse themselves from the trials because they will have broken the law. He also stated that Zapata's statements show that the proceedings are not fair. 

More significantly, Villar noted that defendants will be able to appeal their cases to federal judges if state judges have helped the prosecution. 

Source: El Norte (Cd. Juárez), October 28 & 29, 2003. Articles by Edgar Prado, G.Salcido, M. Breach and R. Pérez. 

State Admits It Might Have Lost DNA Samples from a Half Decade of Juárez Serial-Killing Victims, Might Exhume Bodies

Oscar Valdez Reyes, an assistant attorney general for the state of Chihuahua, says that he cannot rule out the possibility that the Special Taskforce for the Investigation of Women's Killings has lost the tissues samples taken from serial-killing victims between 1993 and 1998. 

According to a story in the Ciudad Juárez newspaper El Norte, a source inside the Attorney General's Office said the Special Taskforce for the Investigation of Women's Killings (Fiscalía Especial para la Investigación de Homicidios de Mujeres) received the 1993-1998 DNA samples from the Departamento de Servicios Periciales y de Medicina Forense (Department of Expert Services and Forensic Medicine) after the taskforce's creation in 1998. Now, El Norte's source says that no one knows where the tissue samples are. 

Valdez stated that if the missing DNA samples are not found filed away somewhere, the state will exhume the bodies to get more tissue. Valdez believes the samples may have been lost when the Special Taskforce moved between buildings approximately one year ago. Previously housed in the Cd. Juárez offices of the state attorney general, the taskforce moved to the state police academy also located in the city.

El Norte also interviewed Valdez about the possibility that the Special Taskforce was considering exhuming the bodies of unidentified serial-killing victims that were buried in the city's common grave. Valdez stated that no decision had yet been made along these lines. 

Source: El Norte, October 10, 2003. Article by Salvador Castro. 

Town in Sierra Tarahumara Repeatedly Robbed by Bandits

From the small town of Basagota, located in Chihuahua's Sierra Tarahumara, in the county of Urique, come reports of repeated armed robberies carried out in broad daylight. Residents report that homes, shops and even the school have been sacked. 

"They arrive well armed, they kick on our doors and they come in our homes. They take money and everything else we have of value," says Alvaro Urías Domínguez, director of the town's elementary school. Urías himself has been robbed three times at night. Fortunately, no one in his family has been physically harmed. 

"They haven't thought of hurting us, they just take our blankets, clothes, pales, kitchenware, solar panels, personal things . . ." Urías said. 

According to the school director, the thieves are from out of town from areas like El Metate, La Uruacha and Paragómachi. He says that he does not recognize the men but that other people from Basagota do. 

"The problem is that no legal authorities have wanted to intervene against them, they've devastated the region, and there's no one to stop them."

News of the Sierra crimes came from the Chihuahua City newspaper El Heraldo. A September 29, 2003 article referred back to an earlier edition of the paper that looked at similar problems in the region. 

    Past crimes

On May 8, 1991, El Heraldo reported that, "a true wave of assaults and robberies of poor communal stores in indigenous towns has been unleashed over the past two months." The newspaper attributed the robberies to former drug traffickers. The article also noted that Urique county's 19 stores were robbed 37 times leaving many of them with no goods or capital. 

    The Attorney General comments

On September 30, the day after the first recent article on the Sierra robberies, El Heraldo reported on comments about the illegal occurrences made by Jesús José Solís Silva, the Chihuahua attorney general.

According to the newspaper, Solís states that there have been no complaints of robberies filed in the region for over a month. He attributes this to the fact that one of the region's most dangerous bandits was arrested a little over four weeks ago. 

He did admit that there are some thieves that operate between Sonora and Chihuahua in the Sierra. Because of their presence, Solís said that more law enforcement agents will soon be sent to the area to collect information and respond to news of the latest crimes. 

"We've always put together cases and arrested those responsible, but for the moment I don't have any knowledge of any other crimes that have occurred," Solís stated. 

Solís invites people from the region to file complaints with law enforcement in the area. 

Source: El Heraldo de Chihuahua, September 29, 2003. Article by Froilan Meza Rivera. 
El Heraldo de Chihuahua, September 30, 2003. 

New Federal Commissioner Named to Investigate Juárez Serial Killings

Guadalupe Morfín Otero, a former president of Jalisco's human rights commission and a long-time defender of women and women's issues, has been named by the Fox administration as the Commissioner to Prevent and Punish Violence against Women in Ciudad Juárez (Comisionada para Prevenir y Sancionar la Violencia contra las Mujeres en Ciudad Juárez). 

Within hours of the announcement of her position, Morfín spoke about the spread of the Cd. Juárez crimes to other cities and said that she will investigate law-enforcement officials that have let the killings continue unpunished. 

"Because the crimes against women were not attended to in Ciudad Juárez--the place where the first symptoms were seen--a contagious malignancy was created and new killings have been noted among women in the capital of Chihuahua [Chihuahua City], León [Guanajuato] and Nogales [Sonora]," Morfín told reporters. 

Although Morfín says she plans to work collaboratively and on all fronts, she says that the hardest part of her duties will be examining the work of law enforcement officials in relation to the crimes. Morfín stated that if official inactivity, omissions, or complicity in the administrations of Chihuahua Governors Barrio or Martínez amount to a crime, she will investigate. 

Morfín is the niece of Efraín González Luna, the founder of President Fox's political party, the Partido Acción Nacional or PAN (National Action Party). 

Source: El Diario, October 18-20, 2003. 

Truck Trailers Recovered in Nuevo Laredo through Joint FBI-Mexico Operation

Seven men were arrested and four truck trailers allegedly stolen from the US were recovered in Nuevo Laredo on October 27, 2003 during an operation that joined the FBI with Mexico's Federal Preventative Police, the Ministerial State Police and city police. 

The operation began when the FBI contacted the Federal Preventative Police (Policía Federal Preventiva, PFP) to tell them that they had located a missing Mesilla Valley Trucking trailer in Nuevo Laredo. The trailer was located by the FBI because of a satellite tracking device that had been previously installed. 

After a five hour search through truck lots, the trailer was located but its identification number had already been changed. The trailer had been repainted and other distinctive features had been modified. 

According to an article in the Nuevo Laredo newspaper El Mañana, the alleged truck thieves would have later created false documents for the trailer and sold it for US$15,000. 

Although PFP officials gave over the alleged thieves to state law enforcement, the seven arrested men will be charged with the federal level crime of robbery abroad. 

Source: El Mañana (Nuevo Laredo), October 28, 2003. Article by Julián  D. Hernández.

Five percent of reported domestic abuse victims in Nuevo Laredo are men, thirty percent are children and the remainder are women, according to José Rafael Pérez Escobar, an official with Tamaulipas' sex crimes and family-violence unit. Pérez says he receives between four and six cases of abused men per month. 

In most cases, abused men file charges related to their injuries, threats of violence and illegal entry, Pérez said. 

Pérez believes that only half of all men report partner abuse of which they are they victim. He says this is because men are embarrassed to report such a crime. 

"When a husband is assaulted by his wife, he prefers to put up with it and not file charges out of embarrassment that other men will laugh at him because in the north men are characterized as being very macho . . ." Pérez stated. 

In cases where a man files charges against his partner, the police open an investigation to obtain information and evidence from the victim and the aggressor. Later, they evaluate their findings to see if someone can be found responsible for the abuse. 

Source: El Mañana (Nuevo Laredo), September 29, 2003. Article by Marco Antonio Martínez. 

Mexican Customs Directors at the US Border: High Turnover for Unstated Reasons

Since 2000, eight northern Mexican border cities have churned through a total of at least 26 customs directors. An article in Reynosa's El Mañana newspaper points out that the greatest number of leadership changes have occurred at Tamaulipa's major border cities. Reynosa has had six different customs chiefs over the past 33 months, Matamoros five and Nuevo Laredo four.

The most recent change along the border came on September 2 when a new customs director took over in Matamoros. Prior to that, on July 10, a new chief was appointed to customs in Nuevo Laredo (and three other administrators resigned one week later during an audit). 

Since 2000, Nogales has had four new Customs chiefs, Ciudad Acuña (Coahuila) three, Sonoyta two, and Tijuana two. Of the eight cities, Piedras Negras has had the same customs director since 2000. 

The reasons given for personnel changes include firings, resignations, rotations and transfers. However, specifics about the changes are not made public, according to El Mañana. At most, authorities might say that someone was removed from office for unmentioned irregularities. 

In the few cases where more information was available to the press, there were a number of reasons given as to why customs chiefs were removed from various cities. These include tax evasion and allowing the passage of contraband in kerosene, diesel, Chinese-made goods, chicken and appliances. 

While aiding in the smuggling of chicken and Chinese goods into Mexico might not sound too lucrative, one Mexican customs official recently told FNS that a corrupt Customs director could make at least US$2 million to US$2.5 million per year. Assistant directors on the take can earn US$50,000 per month, the source said. 

Source: El Mañana (Reynosa), September 14, 2003.

Violence Shifts Trade from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros

The recent disappearance and murder of law enforcement authorities in Nuevo Laredo and the city's eight-month long war between rival drug cartels has resulted in the increased flow of goods through Matamoros, according to Jorge Alberto Chávez Camacho, the head of Customs in that city. 

Between July 2003 and August 2003, Customs saw a 7% increase in the fees it collected from importers, Chávez said. Chávez noted that the magnitude of the revenue increase exceeded what had been expected. 

One Japanese electronics giant that previously imported material into Mexico through Nuevo Laredo has already rerouted its goods through Matamoros, Chávez told the Matamoros newspaper El Bravo. 

"Companies with recognizable brand names have made known their desire to work in Matamoros," said Chávez. "This is because they see that conditions in Nuevo Laredo are no longer appropriate."

Chávez also mentioned that customs brokers are meeting with his office to discuss opening operations in Matamoros. 

"Matamoros Customs is prepared to work in import and export operations and we're happy that they are doing it through here," said Chávez of the city's newfound customers. 

Source: El Bravo (Matamoros), September 1, 2003. Article by Oscar Treviño.

The Baja California Attorney General's Office has announced the discovery of a new path south along which vehicles are taken after they are stolen in Mexicali and Tijuana. 

Working with Sonora authorities, BC's Policía Ministerial (Ministerial Police) have found that some rings of car thieves steal vehicles in BC and then head immediately to Sonora cities such as Sonoita, Caborca and Puerto Peñasco. 

Proof of these routes are two recent joint operations to recover stolen vehicles. Within the last two week, BC's Ministerial Police have recovered 94 BC vehicles in police impound lots where they were taken for traffic violations or after they were seized for other reasons. Most recently, 42 cars were recovered in Sonoita and Puerto Peñasco and on December 4, 52 vehicles were found in Caborca. 

The quick transfer of the vehicles out of BC helps thieves get away with their goods. While BC law enforcement is still searching for stolen vehicles around Mexicali or Tijuana, car thieves are already in Sonora or are headed there. 

BC law enforcement agents found out about the Sonora connection through the declarations of alleged car thieves that they have arrested. This led them to contact Sonora authorities to arrange the above-mentioned recovery activities. 

In Mexicali alone, 300 vehicles per month are stolen, according to the Mexicali newspaper, La Crónica. 

La Crónica also reports that teams of car thieves, comprised of four or five people, go to Mexicali and Tijuana to rob specific models of vehicles. They then take the vehicles directly to Sonora. 

In other cases, La Crónica notes that stolen cars are used to cross drugs and undocumented migrants into the US.

Source: La Crónica, December 12, 2003. Article by Gerardo Franco. 

The Arellano Félix drug cartel (also called the Tijuana Cartel) has lost control of Mexicali, according to an article in the Mexicali newspaper La Crónica. 

Michael Vigil, the head of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), says that the Arellanos have been corralled in Tijuana by the organization of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and his allies. According to Vigil, Zambada's Sinaloa-based organization is the strongest in Mexico, partly because of the alliances it has formed with the organization of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera and the remnants of the Valencia/Milenio cartel.

While Zambada has yet to gain control of all of Baja California, Vigil predicts that sooner or later Zambada will control all of the Arellano's territory. 

The Arellano family began losing power in 2002 with the murder of Ramón Arellano Félix and the capture of his brother Benjamín. Currently, there is a reward out for the arrest of two other brothers, Javier and Eduardo. 

    Six Venezuelans Charged for Stealing Credit and Debit Card Info

Six Venezuelans have been charged with robbery and criminal association for allegedly cloning credit and debit cards. The men, ranging in age from 21 to 28, are being held in Mexicali and do not have the right to to be released on bail. 

On November 29, Baja California state police arrested the men at a Banamex bank in Mexicali. They are accused of putting a credit and debit card cloning machine over an ATM. According to state officials, 33 people were victims of this card fraud. 

The case notes of the Venezuelan men state that the suspects claimed they were were beaten by the state police. However, a medical report reviewed by the judge for the case did not mention any evidence of beatings. 

    Nogales, Sonora police chief arrested on drug charges

Also reported in La Crónica is that the chief of police of Nogales, Sonora,  José Basilio Obeso Montoya, was arrested on Monday, December 8, 2003 by federal law enforcement officials. Arrested in his office at 8:45 a.m. by members of Mexico's Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (Federal Investigations Agency, AFI), Obeso is charged with various drug crimes including criminal association, abuse of authority and disobedience. The AFI arrived at Obeso's office with 30 agents and 15 vehicles and led him away in handcuffs. 

Also arrested on Monday was police officer Cipriano Javier Robles Encinas. Robles was arrested at his home and is linked to Obeso. Later in the day, a former police officer, Francisco Ernesto Soto Domínguez, and Roberto Morales Martínez, an active duty policeman, were also arrested. 

According to La Crónica, on November 7, 2003, city police officers seized 109 kilograms of marijuana and arrested four men allegedly linked to the drugs. Then, according to statements made by José Guillermo Duarte Astorga, a Nogales police commander, Obeso ordered the release of the four arrested men and the return of their marijuana. After disputing with Obeso and Robles, Duarte took his information to Mexico's federal attorney general's office.  

Source: La Crónica (Mexicali), December 9, 2003. 

A new report issued by Mexico's Federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) states that the Sonora border with the US has the most aviation-based drug trafficking of any area in the nation. 

Drugs from the interior of Mexico are flown to Nogales, Agua Prieta and San Luis Río Colorado, according to the PGR report. From these Sonoran border cities, drug traffickers attempt to move the narcotics into the US. 

The PGR report states that two groups control drug flows through the Sonora-Arizona border region: the Carrillo Fuentes cartel and the organization of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. 

The report also states that the Gulf of California is where most maritime drug movements take place in Mexico. One frequent route is from the coasts of Sinaloa and Nayarit across the Gulf to Baja California Sur. Small drug-loaded planes also follow this path, the PGR report noted. 

According to the PGR, the Gulf routes are under the control of the Carrillo Fuentes, Guzmán and the Arellano Félix organization.

The PGR also noted that, for the most part, maritime drug shipments have ended in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Source: El Imparcial (Hermosillo), October 14, 2003.

Arizona Border Vigilantes Receive Jail Time, Area Groups Respond

Two men received jail sentences after pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit unlawful imprisonment. The sentences are in relationship to the men's alleged detainment and gunpoint handcuffing of two Mexican women, a minor and three children on the Arizona-Sonora border. Human rights groups and Mexican officials praised the sentences as a warning to vigilantes. Vigilante groups said the men's arrest and sentences have only won them new members and increased their resolve. 

A Yuma County judge sentenced Matthew Paul Hoffman, age 23, to 120 days in jail and Alexander David Dumas, 26, to 30 days in jail. Both received three years probation and 360 hours of community service. Charges are still pending against Martin Hoffman Jr., the other man allegedly involved in stopping the undocumented migrants on the border. 

The detentions took place on July 31, 2003 in Gadsden, Arizona, a town just across the Colorado River from Mexico near Yuma, Arizona and San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora. The three men allegedly held the group of six Mexicans until Border Patrol arrived. For a previous FNS report on the event go to:  http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/aug03/Mexicalinews.html

Reverend Robin Hoover, president of Humane Borders which puts water in the desert to help immigrants in need, said about the jail time that the men received "It sends the right message . . .  that this kind of behavior won't be tolerated."

A spokesperson for the Mexican consulate in Yuma, Beatriz Chavez, approved of the sentences against Hoffman and Dumas, saying "To see someone pointing a gun at you is very scary, and they were really defenseless because they were just women and children."

Chris Simcox, founder of Civil Homeland Defense, a group that opposes illegal immigration to the US, told the Arizona Republic that he is currently training more than 100 Yuma residents who were united by the charges against the three men. Simcox said over the past year his group has stopped more than 2,000 undocumented immigrants and held them until the arrival of the Border Patrol. 

"Something is just not right with this situation," said Simcox, "The only thing I think they went too overboard was on the handcuffing." Simcox added, "They potentially saved the lives of those kids, and they were only doing what our president has asked us, which is to be vigilant and to report suspicious illegal activities to the proper authorities."

Source: Arizona Republic, October 9, 2003. Article by Daniel González. 

A 150-yard long tunnel that crosses under the Mexicali-Calexico border was discovered late last week. A sophisticated ventilation system, electric lights, and two small carts with metal wheels were some of the elements found in or near the tunnel. Mexico's Attorney General's Office said that an unknown drug organization spent US$400,000 on its construction. 

While September 16 reports about the tunnel from Mexicali's La Crónica newspaper state that the project was still under construction and had not yet entered use, the initial September 12 story on the tunnel said that it had been in use smuggling drugs and people across the border for the past eight to ten months. 

According to the September 12 story, Calexico sewer workers reported the tunnel to US officials. US officials later contacted Mexican authorities who went to the source of the tunnel and detained four people. 

One of the men that was detained told Mexican law enforcement that the tunnel had been in use eight to ten months. He said it was used to move drugs and people to the US. 

The FBI said that it was investigating on the US side of the tunnel but had arrested no one. 

By September 16, the story had changed and the tunnel was said to still be under construction. It was also mentioned that the men detained near the tunnel on September 12 had not been charged with any crimes but were placed under house arrest. Under Mexican law, the men can be held for 30 days in this manner. 

La Crónica also reported that the tunnel is Mexicali's first although it is the fifth in Baja California.. 

Source: La Crónica (Mexicali), September 12 & 16, 2003. Articles by Samuel Murillo, José Manuel Yépiz, and Ernesto Alvarez. 

Since September 11, 2001, Mexican authorities have performed closer screenings of airline passengers and strengthened their inspections of aircraft, says Pablo Rivera Cordero, an official with the Federal Preventative Police's intelligence branch. 

Rivera told the Mexicali newspaper La Crónica that in recent days he has received no official orders to heighten the alert status at the Mexicali airport. However, a source at the Mexicali airport told the newspaper that twelve federal law-enforcement agents arrived to the facility on Friday, September 5, 2003. The agents' duty is to help improve the inspection of planes, the newspaper's source stated. 

According to La Crónica, federal agents were dispatched to Mexicali because of a Thursday, September 4, 2003 Department of Homeland Security advisory.  

Although the US advisory does not mention Mexico by name, it does state the following: "A growing body of credible intelligence indicates Al-Qaeda continues to develop plans for multiple attacks against targets in the US involving commercial aircraft, with some plans calling for hijacking airliners transiting near or flying over the continental United States - but not destined to land at US airports. Operatives have been studying countries to determine which have the least stringent requirements for entry (visas or other documentation). Identifying which countries have the least restrictive requirements for entry may also tell terrorist operatives which airline flights would be easiest to board and take control in order to crash into targets in the US during over flight."

According to La Crónica, Mexicali currently has no direct flights to US cities. Mexicana airline used to have flights to the US from Mexicali but the route was unprofitable and therefore abandoned. 

The major Mexicali air routes are Mexicali-Mexico City and Mexicali-Guadalajara on Mexicana and Aeroméxico airlines. 

Source: La Crónica (Mexicali), September 8, 2003. 

"We hope to never see you here again," Manuel Díaz Lerma, Baja California's secretary of public security, told a group of 60 minors that were being freed from a juvenile detention facility, the Consejo de Menores Infractores (Council of Juvenile Offenders). 

At a public ceremony prior to the release of the youth, some of the young people received awards for their outstanding achievements in job-training workshops or in the classroom. The event also highlighted the skills and knowledge that all of the 60 minors gained from their participation in a social reentry program called ALAS. 

María Elena Rodríguez, the state head of ALAS, said that most of the young people would reenter society via the work place as they have limited economic means. However, education will be just as important to their future, she noted. 

Luz María Féliz Figueroa, president of  the Consejo de Menores Infractores (CIM) in Tijuana, stated that the work begun at CIM must be continued by parents in the home because there is no other way to change the behavior of the young people. 

Díaz Lerma, the secretary of public security, noted that recidivism has dropped over the last two years from 80% to 35% in the state. 

Source: Frontera (Tijuana), December 17, 2003. Article by Agustín Pérez Aguilar. 

On November 20, 2003, Félix Velázquez Moreno and Eleuterio Martínez Hernández were detained in Chihuahua City by state police after taking photos and notes at a public event which Chihuahua Governor Patricio Martínez had attended. 

State police officials said that Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández first tried to tell them that they were journalists. Later, while in custody, police say that the men stated that they were working for military intelligence.

In a December 9 front-page article entitled "Military Agents Spy on Patricio," the Ciudad Juárez newspaper El Diario reported that it had documents in which the two men confessed to be working under the director order of Mexico's Secretariat of National Defense (Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional, Sedena). 

The newspaper also reported that the men had identification cards which stated that they work for the Physical Security Services of Pemex, Mexico's national oil company, in Ciudad Camargo, Chihuahua. The men's work IDs were signed by General de Brigada Diplomado del Estado Mayor Víctor Manuel de la Peña Cortez, a general. 

Besides his worker ID, Martínez Hernández also had a digital camera registered to Pemex and the two men were using a truck registered to Pemex. The men had a cell phone and a satellite phone, according to El Diario. 

    From Spying to Conspiracy to Kill the Governor

By December 10, the case against Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández had changed. According to Antonio Piñon, an assistant attorney general for Chihuahua, the men were detained because they were preparing to kill Chihuahua Governor Martínez. They were posing as journalists to find out how they could get close to Governor Martínez to murder him. 

    Alleged Torture

Now, after nearly a month in custody, Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández are saying that they were tortured into signing documents that they had not read, according to a doctor that met with the men and the men's wives.  

While the doctor, Víctor Talamantes, said that he could see no bruises on the men, he stated that enough time had past for such wounds to heal. The doctor said that Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández told him that they were beaten the first two days they were held by the state police. 

The men's wives told El Diario that their husbands were missing between November 20 and November 24. When they first met with their husbands, they said the men were covered with bruises. They also said that their husbands had been forcibly bathed in water with ice as a means of torture. 

Reporters from El Diario were allowed to meet with the men for a few minutes on December 9. They said that Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández spoke with shaky voices and seemed scared and confused. When asked why they were being held, the men said, "There has been no crime, they are not accusing us of anything."

    Pemex scenario most likely?

While representatives from the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) would not at first  comment on whether Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández worked for the Secretariat, Sedena eventually denied any relationship to the men. 

Manuel Flores, the head of the Oil Workers Union in Camargo, confirmed that the men did work as security guards for Pemex, however they were not members of the union, he said. He also confirmed that as part of their jobs they monitored outbreaks of violence in the region. 

Anonymous sources in Pemex told El Diario that the ID numbers on the men's work identification cards did correspond to Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández. They also confirmed that the men's truck belonged to Pemex. El Diario's sources also stated that the case had been made known to people at the highest level of Pemex. 

In El Diario's December 10 edition, Pemex was reported as acknowledging that the men have been employed for six years and that they are assigned to watching gas lines around Camargo and Jiménez. 

The men's wives confirmed that their husbands worked for Pemex and noted that for years they have gone to the same November 20 parade to see who is in attendance. 

Men that work in security with Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández at Pemex said that "data gathering" like what the two were doing does not just take place in Chihuahua but throughout Mexico. 

Despite the declarations of coworkers and wives, the men's relation, if any, to military intelligence is still unclear. However, El Diario did mention in its December 10 edition that an army general visited Camargo to speak the men's superiors just days after they were detained. 

An unmentioned possibility is that the men might be on Pemex's payroll but also do intelligence work for Sedena. 

    The Case Becomes Politicized 

On December 11, El Diario reported that the Partido Acción Nacional, or PAN, the party of Mexican President Vicente Fox, said that it had fully assumed the legal defense of Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández. This is according to Guillermo Luján Peña, the PAN's coordinator in the Chihuahua congress. 

The PAN became interested in the case after Arturo Zubía Fernández, a deputy in Chihuahua's Congress from Camargo, said that he had known Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández for years as Pemex employees. Zubía told Luján that the men collect information pertaining to the security of Pemex. When Zubía was a Camargo city official, the men would come and ask him about what "movements" were active in the region, he said. 

According to Zubía, the PAN's lawyer Jesús Díaz will defend the men. "As far as I know it's not a crime to watch someone," Zubía stated. 

    Two More Men Detained, Allegedly from the AFI

On December 12, 2003, El Heraldo de Chihuahua reported that two men were detained in Chihuahua City where they were allegedly tapping phone lines. One of the men, Alejandro González Montiel, is said to have identified himself as an agent with Mexico's Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (Federal Investigations Agency, AFI). On the list of phone lines to monitor was the number of Jesús José Solís Silva, the Chihuahua Attorney General.

According to Vicente González of the Chihuahua state police, agents showed up at a house in Chihuahua City with an arrest warrant for a person that allegedly lived in the house. The person was not at the house but the agents looked in and saw a computer hooked up to loudspeakers. 

After a short inspection, a telephone specialist was called in and he discovered that the computer was connected via an illegal line to the phone system. 

González was then detained along with Marco Antonio Fuentes Arenas who said that he is an administrative coordinator. It was not mentioned for whom he works. 

Eventually, state police officials determined that the computer in the house could be used to monitor calls anywhere in the state or country. 

At an improvised press conference in the house, it was explained that the system was connected to a line from a "conector general" (general connector) to the phone system. There were a number of recording devices found in the house. From these, interesting conversations could be stored on a computer and then sent to anywhere. 

Also found in the house were three cell phones used to intercept signals, known as "receivers," and three functioning cell phones and two laptops among other things. 

One apparent contradiction between the police story and the newspaper account is that El Heraldo reports that the downstairs of the house was totally empty of furniture and held just junk food wrappers. The stairs to go to the second floor are near the front door. At the back of the second floor, in what would be a bedroom, is all the alleged phone tapping equipment--which El Heralod reports that the police say they saw from the front door of the house. 

Sources: El Diario, December 9-12, 2003. El Heraldo de Chihuahua, December 12, 2003.

Fox Receives Mothers of Serial-Killing Victims, Protests Still Take Place

Despite a 90 minute meeting on Tuesday, November 25, 2003 between Mexican President Vicente Fox and ten mothers of the Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua City serial-killing victims, approximately 2,000 people continued on with plans to march through the streets of Mexico City demanding the end of the serial killings and justice for the victims. 

Norma Andrade, a leader of the Cd. Juárez-based group Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa (Return Our Daughters Home) and the mother of victim Lilia Alejandra García Andrade, and Norma Ledezma, a leader of the Chihuahua City group Justicia para Nuestras Hijas (Justice for Our Daughters) and the mother of Paloma Angélica Escobar Ledesma, told the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada that although President Fox had met with them in the afternoon they wanted to have a protest because it had already been scheduled and because "we know that it was international and national pressure that obligated Fox to meet with us."

"We march to tell the President that we hope he keeps his promises because words can be taken away on the wind. We want him to know that we will be watching to see if he keeps his promises, and we hope that he does keep them now, since it took him three years to receive us," the women said. 

Mothers and family members of the Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua City  serial-killing victims led the protest through the streets of Mexico City along with Rosario Robles Berlanga, the former head of the PRD political party, and Rosario Ibarra de Piedra and other members of the Comité Eureka, the group that looks into Mexico's political disappearances of the 1960s and 70s.

As the crowd moved through the city streets La Jornada reported that their cry was, "Fox, punish the killers, you know who they are; if you don't act, you're an accomplice." 

This is perhaps in reference to information divulged in an October 31, 2003 La Jornada article in which some of the last names of people allegedly involved in the crimes were published. The names mentioned in that article were "Molinar, Sotelo, Hank, Rivera, Fernández, Zaragoza, Cabada, Molina, Fuentes, Hernández, Urbina, Cano, Martínez, Domínguez and others."  

In its November 26 coverage of events, the newspaper again listed some of the names, although some were dropped and others were expanded: "the Zaragoza Fuentes, the Fernández, the Domínguez, Hank Rohn, Sotelo, Molinar, Urbina and Cabada, among others."

    The meeting with Fox

According to La Jornada, five victims' mothers from Cd. Juárez and five from Chihuahua City arrived with other family members to meet with President Fox in Mexico City at midday on November 25, the International Day to End Violence Against Women. They had been invited there by Fox on November 4, 2003 when some victims' mothers turned up at event in Santa Fe, New Mexico where the Mexican president was speaking. 

After the meeting with Fox, the mothers told La Jornada that they heard Fox's "sensitivity, emotion and promise as the head of state." 

"He gave us his word and we hope that later we will not have to say that he did not keep it," they stated.

Also present at the meeting was Interior Minister Santiago Creel Miranda and Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha. Fox told the mothers that he had already instructed Macedo to establish a DNA bank to help identify bodies and to help solve the crimes. 

The mothers that attended the meeting told La Jornada that Fox instructed Creel and Macedo to work actively, in a coordinated manner, to get results in the cases. 

Fox received the mothers by saying that he wanted to listen directly to them and that "justice sometimes becomes scarce in nations, and in ours, in particular, this happens."

Source: La Jornada (Mexico City), November 26, 2003 and October 31, 2003.