FREE-FIRE ZONE

In Tijuana, a drug war ensnares the press, claiming lives

AUTUMN CRUZ - Union-Tribune Pallbearers accompanied the casket of
editor Francisco Ortiz Franco, whose killing June 22 is believed
linked to the Arellano Felix drug cartel. Ortiz Franco was known
for his crusading reports of drug trafficking. Violence grips Tijuana
two years after leaders of the powerful Tijuana drug cartel were
arrested or killed, leaving rival gangs to shoot it out in the
bustling streets in a battle over lucrative drug smuggling routes.
Editor Francisco Ortiz Franco, gunned down in broad daylight in a
quiet neighborhood near downtown Tijuana on June 22, is believed to be
a victim of this bloody turf war.

Ortiz Franco was killed in a well-orchestrated assassination just two
blocks from state police headquarters. An editor and reporter at the
muckraking weekly Zeta, Ortiz Franco was a quiet, unassuming, and
meticulous journalist who had only recently begun to write about the
drug trade. Federal prosecutors, while not discounting other
possibilities, have publicly linked the murder to the Tijuana drug
cartel, which is controlled by the Arellano Felix family.
Investigators believe that Ortiz Franco was killed because of his work
as a journalist and are considering stories he wrote about the
Arellano Felix cartel as the probable motive.

"The fact that federal prosecutors have taken over the case is a very
important step forward," said Jesus Blancornelas, the editor of Zeta.
"There is political will at the highest level of the Mexican
government to solve this crime. Now that the investigators have
identified the suspects, they need to prosecute the killers and bring
them to justice."

On the morning of June 22, Ortiz Franco, known to his friends as
Pancho, was returning from a doctor's appointment in a largely
residential block close to downtown. He had taken the week off from
Zeta, where he was the tabloid's co-editor, to be treated for facial
paralysis that may have been induced by stress. On the orders of his
doctor, he was taking it easy at home, leaving only to travel back and
forth to the clinic. He gave the bodyguard who usually accompanied him
the week off.

Ortiz Franco's two young children had come with him to the clinic that
morning, and they walked back to their car, a blue Chevrolet, parked
at the end of the block. He buckled 11-year-old Hector Daniel and
9-year-old Andrea into the backseat, walked around the car, and got
in. Before he could start the engine, a black Jeep Grand Cherokee
pulled alongside, and a man wearing a black wool ski mask jumped out.
The gunman fired four times from a 380-caliber handgun through the
driver's side window, hitting Ortiz Franco in the chest, head and neck
and killing him instantly, according to the editor's widow, who has
reviewed the case file. The killer climbed back into the Jeep Cherokee
and sped away. The murder took mere seconds.

Ortiz Franco's children scrambled out of the car and took refuge in
the home of a neighbor. They later told their mother that the handgun
made only a small popping sound that would not have attracted much
attention. Police suspect that a silencer was used.

Five minutes after the murder, Blancornelas received an urgent phone
call from state Attorney General Antonio Martinez Luna telling him
that a Zeta staffer had been shot. Blancornelas quickly went through
the office to account for his employees - forgetting in the panic that
Ortiz Franco was out sick.

Blancornelas dispatched a photographer, his son Ramin Blanco, and a
reporter, Lauro Ortiz Aguilera, the half-brother of Ortiz Franco, to
cover the shooting. Arriving about 10 minutes after the attack, they
found the crime scene cordoned off by yellow tape and a municipal
police team conducting a forensic analysis. When they saw the car,
they realized to their horror that Ortiz Franco was the victim.

Later that day, Mexican President Vicente Fox telephoned Blancornelas
to promise federal support for the investigation, which was then being
carried out by the state police under Martinez Luna. Journalists in
Tijuana and throughout Baja California organized marches demanding
justice.

The week after the murder, Zeta published an investigative article
naming several possible suspects, including gunmen linked to the
powerful Arellano Felix drug cartel.

The Arellano Felix brothers, who run the cartel, were set up in the
drug business by their reputed cousin, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo,
who ran his drug empire out of Culiacan in Sinaloa state until he was
jailed in 1989 for the murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena.

Felix Gallardo built his empire by smuggling locally produced
marijuana and heroin across the border to the United States, but the
Arellano Felix brothers took the business in a different direction.
Using their control over the lucrative Tijuana-San Diego border
crossing as leverage, the Arellano Felix brothers made a strategic
alliance with Colombian traffickers to move cocaine into the United
States. They used the enormous profits to buy off state and municipal
police and relied on brutal but selective violence against their
rivals - particularly the new leadership of the Sinaloa cartel that
emerged after Felix Gallardo was jailed.

Many of the Arellano Felix cartel's most ruthless gunmen were
recruited from violent street gangs in San Diego's Barrio Logan. The
leader of the Barrio Logan assassins was a veteran gangster named
David Barrin Corona, who earned the Arellano Felix family's loyalty by
saving two of the brothers from an ambush. In November 1997,
Blancornelas published an article identifying Barrin Corona as one of
the top cartel enforcers.

Just weeks later, on Nov. 27, Barrin Corona and a team of assassins
ambushed Blancornelas while he was on his way to work. Blancornelas'
bodyguard, Luis Valero, was killed in the attack, and Blancornelas was
gravely wounded. The assassination attempt failed only because Barrin
Corona was killed by one of his own gunmen when a bullet ricocheted
and struck him in the eye.

The attack on Blancornelas received intensive coverage in the Mexican
and international media. Spurred by the popular outrage, the Mexican
government launched a counteroffensive against the cartel. In 2000,
several AFO top lieutenants, including the cartel's financial
mastermind, Jess "Don Chuy" Labra Aviles, were apprehended and
jailed. In March 2002, Mexican authorities arrested cartel leader
Benjamin Arellano Felix. A month earlier, his brother Ramin, the
cartel's chief enforcer, was killed in Mazatlan in what some said was
a trap set by the Sinaloa cartel, led by Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.

"The Arellano Felix organization has been damaged by recent killings
and arrests," says Special Agent John Fernandes, who heads the DEA's
San Diego office. "This has created an opportunity for other groups to
gain territory." Specifically, they opened the door for Zambada and
the rival Sinaloa cartel to move into the border city, several sources
say.

Journalists in Tijuana report a surge in violence, attributing it in
part to the move by the Sinaloa cartel to infiltrate the city. State
Attorney General Martinez Luna disputes this claim but acknowledges
that there have been a number of "spectacular crimes" that have drawn
public attention. Shootouts and executions have become commonplace in
downtown Tijuana this year, but few were as brazen as the murder of
former Assistant State Attorney General Rogelio Delgado Neri, who was
gunned down while having a drink at Ruben's Hood bar in January.

The battle also involves political control, including influence over
the state and municipal police, according to Tijuana human rights
activist Victor Clark. "Zambada has a presence here through his
relationships with police, businesspeople and politicians," Clark
said. "The Sinaloa cartel has begun to buy the loyalty of former
Arellano associates, and they are providing information to Zambada."

While weakened, the Arellano Felix cartel continues to spread around
millions of its own in bribes to municipal, state and federal police,
FBI Supervisory Special Agent John J. Blake said.

The corruption that pervades Tijuana's public agencies has had a
profound impact on the press. Many of the sources journalists use in
Tijuana, from police to government officials, have links to the
cartels and a vested interest in passing along to the media damaging
information about rival organizations. Though cognizant of the overall
risks, journalists are typically unaware of the specific
relationships. Inevitably, members of the media fall into two camps:
the few who follow up on these leads and thus put themselves in
danger, and the many who simply shy away from sensitive news.

Ortiz Franco seldom wrote about drug trafficking during his long
tenure at Zeta, but he began to develop new sources in the months
before he was killed. In April, he interrupted a vacation in Las Vegas
to meet with a source in Mexico City, according to Blancornelas. After
that meeting, Ortiz Franco wrote a story alleging that an Arellano
Felix lieutenant named Arturo Villarreal Albarrin ("El Nalgin") had
led the Jan. 21, 2004, hit on former prosecutor Delgado Neri. Ortiz
Franco was so nervous about the story he asked that it run in Zeta
under Blancornelas' byline. Blancornelas agreed, using his colleague's
reporting to rewrite the story in his own style. Villarreal could not
be located for comment.

Blancornelas said the source for that story was a lawyer in Delgado
Neri's law office named David Valle. Analysts and legal sources say
there is wide, if unproven, speculation that the Arellano Felix cartel
killed Delgado Neri because he had made a deal with rival
traffickers.

Martinez Luna disputes that notion, saying that Delgado Neri left the
state prosecutor's office because of "operational" issues, and that he
was killed for refusing to help a group of drug traffickers.

Blancornelas accuses Valle of giving Ortiz Franco's name to the
traffickers who killed him. He points out that the Delgado Neri story
was published under Blancornelas' byline and that only Valle, as the
main source in the story, could have known that Ortiz Franco had done
the reporting. Valle has gone into hiding along with a second lawyer
from Delgado Neri's office and could not be reached for comment.

A few weeks after the Delgado Neri story, Ortiz Franco published a
second story on drug trafficking, this one under his own byline. On
May 4, FBI Special Agent Blake held a press conference in San Diego
and made public photographs from dozens of fake police credentials
used by Arellano Felix cartel members. Blake noted during the press
conference that the men in the photographs had worn the same jacket
and tie, suggesting that the photos were mass-produced. In his May 14
story, Ortiz Franco drove home this point, noting that "according to
Zeta's sources, the participation of someone from the state Attorney
General's Office was necessary" to prepare the credentials.

Ortiz Franco's story didn't break much news, but by publishing the
photographs prominently in a Tijuana newspaper he deeply angered the
traffickers. As one source notes about the men in the photos, "These
guys lived double lives. Now, all of a sudden, their kids know daddy
is not really a policeman."

Murder is a state crime in Mexico, and the initial investigation into
the Ortiz Franco killing was headed by the state Attorney General's
Office under the direction of Martinez Luna.

This made Blancornelas deeply nervous. The state police in Baja
California have a long history of corruption and ties to the Arellano
Felix cartel. In one notorious incident from March 1994, state police
protecting one of the Arellano brothers shot it out with federal
police in Tijuana and then helped the drug trafficker escape.

To many Tijuana reporters who spoke with the Committee to Protect
Journalists, the fact that Ortiz Franco was murdered just two blocks
from state police headquarters suggests police complicity or
indifference. For Blancornelas, that sense was compounded by the
failure of state police to arrive at the crime scene until about 30
minutes after the murder, according to the account of Ramin Blanco,
the Zeta photographer. Blancornelas was also disconcerted by the call
from Martinez Luna minutes after the murder informing him that
"someone from Zeta" had been killed. How, Blancornelas wonders, did
Martinez Luna know this if his officers had not even arrived at the
crime scene?

Martinez Luna told CPJ that he learned that a Zeta reporter had been
shot from Tijuana's emergency call center, which got the first call.
It was not clear how the caller knew.

He said he believes that his agents were at the scene less than 10
minutes after the murder but "would have to check the file." Martinez
Luna pointed out that state police are detectives who investigate
crimes, not first responders. He said his office pursued the
investigation vigorously and was in frequent contact with
Blancornelas.

Three hours after the crime, police recovered the getaway Jeep
Cherokee after it was abandoned, apparently because the assassins
switched to another vehicle. But there was little additional progress
until August, when federal authorities took over the investigation. At
an Aug. 18 press conference in Tijuana, federal prosecutor Jose Luis
Vasconcelos said they were taking over the case because several men
under arrest for separate crimes had identified the killers and linked
the murder to the Arellano Felix cartel. The connection to drug
trafficking, a federal offense in Mexico, opened the door for federal
investigators to take over.

On Sept. 2, the Mexico City daily El Universal published a story
identifying members of the Arellano Felix cartel, including "El
Nalgin," as suspects in the Ortiz Franco murder. The story, which was
attributed to an unidentified source in the federal Attorney General's
Office, also reported that "former state police agents, who are the
principal operators of the Tijuana cartel in the city of Mexicali ...
are among the six suspected of carrying out the crime, and two of them
are suspected of being the physical authors of the crime."

In an interview with CPJ in Tijuana, Martin Levario Reyes, the special
federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation, confirmed that
gunmen from the Arellano Felix cartel were the leading suspects, and
that Ortiz Franco was likely killed in reprisal for his reporting.
But Levario Reyes cautioned that the investigation was ongoing, and
the Attorney General's Office did not yet have enough evidence to
request arrest warrants. Undercover agents from the AFI, the Mexican
equivalent of the FBI, are conducting the investigation. CPJ sought
additional records of the case in a Sept. 29 letter to Vasconcelos,
but the Attorney General's Office denied the request, citing a Mexican
law that prohibits releasing such information to anyone other than
immediate family.

For Blancornelas, federal authorities' willingness to discuss the
case with CPJ was a positive sign. But the acknowledgement by Levario
Reyes that federal authorities are not ready to issue arrest warrants
troubles him and the Zeta staff, who are acutely aware that getting
warrants for powerful drug traffickers requires great determination
and political will.

Until then, the brazen murder of Ortiz Franco continues to cast a pall
over the Tijuana press corps. The persistent violence against
journalists, as well as the overwhelming impunity for those who commit
such crimes, means that the drug traffickers are free to intimidate
the press - and thus censor the news. On June 7, drug traffickers left
a car loaded with marijuana in the parking lot of the Tijuana daily
Frontera and then called a local television station to report that the
newspaper was involved in drug trafficking. The station reported that
the drug-laden car was a plant, but the traffickers' message was
clear: You accuse us of drug trafficking, but we can just as easily
accuse you.

Reporters at Zeta, including Blancornelas, project calm and
determination, but the Ortiz Franco murder was a devastating blow. The
names of its slain staffers - including editor Hector Felix Miranda
and security guard Luis Valero - remain on the newspaper's masthead
marked by black crosses, an eerie reminder of the cost the newspaper
has paid. Meanwhile, Blancornelas is a virtual prisoner, moving only
between home and office accompanied by 20 heavily armed bodyguards
provided by the Mexican army.

"I feel remorse for having created Zeta," says Blancornelas, four
months after Ortiz Franco's murder. "After losing three colleagues, I
believe the price has been too high. I would have liked to retire a
long time ago ... [but] I cannot allow drug traffickers to think that
they were able to crush Zeta's spirit, and our readers to believe that
we are afraid."

Note:
Simon is the deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Lauria is CPJ's Americas program coordinator. The committee, based in New
York City, is a non-profit organization active internationally on behalf of
threatened journalists. This commentary is a CPJ special report.