MORE THAN 600 SOLDIERS DETAINED IN INVESTIGATION

Families Claim Torture

MEXICO CITY -- About 600 Mexican soldiers have been detained for 11 days
and subject to torture during an investigation into alleged links to drug
traffickers, a human rights group alleged Monday.

The soldiers of the 65th Infantry Battalion are being held in facilities in
the city of Guamuchil, Sinaloa, 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) northwest of
Mexico City, said Benjamin Laureano Luna, president of the non-governmental
Mexican Front for Human Rights.

"They have been confined to the barracks, cut off from communication and
subjected to torture and cruel and degrading treatment," Luna said in a
telephone interview.

Officials from the Department of Defense would not confirm or deny the
soldiers' detentions or comment on the allegations of abuse Monday.

Luna said that the matter was brought to his attention by wives of the
soldiers who complained that their husbands had been held incommunicado for
11 days.

Finally, on Sunday, officials allowed a large group of women who had
gathered outside the facilities to visit with the soldiers, Luna said.

"The women discovered that they had kept them (the soldiers) on their
knees, with their hands behind their heads, that some had been hit or lost
teeth and others had torture marks," Luna said.

Authorities estimate that more than 200 drug distributors operate in
Sinaloa, a sun-dappled state in the west where marijuana and poppy, the
principal ingredient in heroin, are grown in the sprawling Sierra Madre
mountain range.

The state is the birthplace of numerous drug traffickers and has been the
site of bloody battles between warring drug organizations.

Last month, Gov. Juan Millan said that 80 percent of the more than 270
homicides that occurred in the state during the first five months of this
year were drug-related.