GRIPES MOUNT AFTER BUNGLED RAIDS FOR DRUGS

Famous Mexican Paintings Damaged In Tijuana Home

TIJUANA -- Botched drug raids on two homes Tuesday resulted in damaged
world-class paintings, the arrest of a woman, her maid and 13-year-old son
- -- and a stack of complaints against police.

Members of the Mexican federal Attorney General's Office and the Mexican
army -- using explosives -- blasted open the metal door of a home of the
Swedish consul, sending shrapnel flying past paintings by such Mexican
masters as Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

The consul told the Associated Press that he, his wife and his two children
were asleep in their bedrooms when more than 200 police officers and
soldiers raided the home.

Federal agents said they were looking for drug smugglers.

Alejandro Rosas Romandia, the lawyer representing Swedish Consul Rodolfo
Gonzalez Salazar, said, "In the search for secret vaults, they tore down
and damaged original paintings . . . and they didn't find anything,"

The consul reported money and jewelry missing from his home.

In a second raid Tuesday, 40 police officers and soldiers riddled the front
door of another home with bullets before barging in and finding two women
and a 13-year-old boy taking cover in a bedroom, the Baja California state
Attorney General's Office said.

Patricia Navarro de Gonzalez, who is renting the home, her son and her maid
were released from police custody hours later. The home is believed to have
once belonged to the Arellano Felix brothers, leaders of one of the most
violent drug-trafficking rings in Mexico.

The family and the Swedish consul filed complaints with the state Attorney
General's Office and the state Human Rights Office, their lawyers said.