MEXICAN AND FBI INVESTIGATORS CALL OFF SEARCH FOR BODIES IN JUAREZ REGION

Mexican and FBI investigators have called off the search that turned up
nine bodies at four sites in the Juarez region, Mexico’s top law
enforcement official announced Thursday.

During a press conference in Mexico City, Attorney General Jorge Madrazo
said investigators were interviewing witnesses to the suspected drug slayings.

Jose Larrieta, chief of the Mexican attorney general’s organized crime
unit, said seven of the bodies were tentatively identified. He would not
release their names or indicate if any of them were U.S. citizens.

“What we have developed in this investigation will lead to very interesting
things,” Larrieta said. “We will find the people responsible.”

Madrazo said five people have been detained in the case, but he would not
provide details. Mexican officials said the dead men were killed by the
drug-trafficking organization associated with the late drug kingpin Amado
Carrillo Fuentes.

The binational investigation into the deaths and disappearances of people
in Juarez began Nov. 29, with reports that as many as 100 bodies may be
buried in mass graves around the city.

The initial investigation involved 65 FBI agents, 400 Mexican army soldiers
and 200 Mexican federal officials. Heavily armed soldiers wearing face
masks guarded the FBI agents and Mexican forensics experts during the
excavations.

“There is testimony (from informants and other witnesses) that there were
these graves, and we were investigating more than 100 disappearances,”
Larrieta said in response to questions about initial reports that
investigators were looking for 100 or more bodies at the four ranches.

The FBI specialists finished their work in Juarez in mid-December,
officials said.

El Paso FBI Special Agent Andrea Simmons said, “The FBI is still involved
with the general investigation, and there are still FBI agents actively
investigating the disappearance of U.S. citizens.”

Simmons said the FBI returned the bodies Wednesday to Mexico, “because it’s
their evidence, after FBI experts finished collecting samples for DNA
analysis.”

U.S. and Mexican officials had agreed that “the Mexican attorney general
will notify the victims’s relatives and then release their identities,”
Simmons said.

Forensics experts spent two weeks digging with backhoes and shovels at four
ranch sites: Rancho de la Campana, 18 miles south of El Paso off the Casas
Grandes Highway; a ranchette in the Granjas Santa Elena subdivision 20
miles south of El Paso; a ranchette on Luna Street about two miles from the
Zaragoza Bridge; and Rancho Santa Rosalia, about 40 miles southwest of
Juarez near Asencion.

Officials said all the victims were men, four in their late 30s and five
more than 50 years old. Six had been bound with duct tape, and the others
appeared to have been blindfolded.

Four were shot to death. The cause of death of the other five is still
being investigated.

Madrazo appointed Special Prosecutor Enrique Cocina to investigate the
disappearances. In recent years, Amnesty International and other
international non-governmental groups also have investigated.

In a report, Amnesty International suggested that some of the missing
people could be held clandestinely in one of several military camps in
Mexico. Such camps were used in the past to house political dissidents,
often without notifying relatives or local authorities.

Mexican officials said the people who disappeared from Juarez were involved
in drug-trafficking, were kidnapped by rivals or were targeted because they
investigated drug dealers.