MASS GRAVES TIED TO ABDUCTIONS, DRUGS IN MEXICO

MEXICO CITY -- In 1995, after an El Paso jury had acquitted him of cocaine
trafficking, Alberto Ochoa Soto, reportedly a member of a Colombian drug
cartel, was driven across the Rio Grande and released into Mexico, where his
lawyer greeted him, witnesses have said.

As the two met on the bridge, however, a Chevrolet Suburban drove up the
international bridge, and several men with Mexican Federal Judicial Police
credentials seized Ochoa and the lawyer, Antonio Tarazon Navarro, shoved
them into the car and roared off into Mexico.

For five years, little news emerged on their fate, until last week, when
Mexican and U.S. authorities announced that they had identified six of nine
bodies unearthed by forensic experts from the FBI from three mass graves
near Juarez. That border city is a staging point for drug shipments into El
Paso.

Beyond their names and nationalities, little is known about five of the six
men whose remains were identified. But the sixth skeleton was identified as
that of Tarazon, who was 42 when he disappeared.

The case is well-known to human rights and legal investigators, who have
pressed U.S. and Mexican officials for justice in what they consider a
brazen crime that has focused a spotlight on the involvement of the Mexican
police in scores of border executions.

Tarazon's skeleton was exhumed on a ranch 43 miles west of Juarez, the
senior prosecutor who heads the Mexican Organized Crime Unit, Jose Trinidad
Larrieta, said last week. Tarazon was killed by gunshots to the neck and
face, Larrieta said. A DNA test that used a blood sample provided by
Tarazon's sister definitively identified the remains, Larrieta added.

Tarazon was found buried with one other man, and Mexican and U.S. agents say
they believe the remains are those of Ochoa, who was 51 when he disappeared.
An American who has spoken with FBI agents about the case said the agents
had obtained blood samples from Ochoa's relatives in Medellin and were
awaiting results of a DNA test.

At the time Ochoa and Tarazon vanished, a financial dispute was simmering
between Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, and, according to court records
and U.S. investigators who have studied the case, the Mexican police appear
to have acted as contract killers in the pay of a powerful Mexican
trafficker.

Ochoa had been arrested in Texas and charged with importing 6 tons of
cocaine. But the jury in El Paso acquitted him at his trial months later,
court records show. On Feb. 15, 1995, he was released across the bridge.

After the men had been shoved into the Suburban, all that was know was that
Tarazon left a message on an answering machine at an associate's office
saying Mexican federal agents were holding him.

Ochoa's Mexican wife had reported his detention to Federal Police officers
in an office of the agency in Juarez. With Ochoa's wife listening, a federal
agent called colleagues, who acknowledged that they had Ochoa and Tarazon in
custody, an American who has interviewed Ochoa's wife said.

The agent assured Ochoa's wife that her husband and Tarazon were in no
danger and told her to get back in touch the next day. When she called back,
however, the agent was no longer in the office, and she was never able to
learn more about the fate of the two men, until Larrieta's announcement last
week.

The prosecutor identified three other skeletons as Americans who had lived
in El Paso. They were Jesus Alonso Provencio, Marcelo Javier Aguilar Molina
and Guillermo Jesus Rojo. The other two skeletons were identified as Ignacio
del Real Fierro, a Mexican who lived in El Paso, and Raul Alarcon Sanchez, a
Mexican who lived in Juarez.

No one has been charged yet in any of the men's deaths, Larrieta said.