BACKHOE, WRECKER CHURN RANCH DIRT, FIND NOTHING

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- FBI agents and their Mexican hosts Saturday
used a backhoe and large wrecker to search a walled compound
containing a clandestine cemetery operated by a Mexican drug cartel,
but evidently did not add to the six human skeletons unearthed last
week.

Shortly before 5 p.m., several dozen FBI agents in a convoy that
included a backhoe and portable generators, pulled out of the front
gate of a large walled compound 10 miles south of Juarez known as
Rancho La Campana. They were escorted by teams of heavily armed
Mexican federal agents -- wearing black fatigues and ski masks -- who
led them back to the international border.

"They kept looking and digging, but they didn't find anything," said a
Mexican government official, who asked not to be identified. "They
were using dogs, but their machines (hand-held detectors) aren't
finding anything."

During most of Saturday, FBI agents used a backhoe to dig along the
back wall of the compound after dogs alerted them to an area beneath
several abandoned vehicles, the official said, adding: "There are a
lot of animals buried there, and a lot of (animal) bones."

Last Monday, FBI agents in El Paso confirmed they had been asked by
the Mexican attorney general's office to lend technical and forensic
assistance in searching four properties controlled by drug
traffickers, in an effort to determine if more than 100 people who had
disappeared in Juarez are buried there.

On Friday, Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo said a group of his
agency's federal police force who were stationed in Juarez from 1994
to 1996 are being investigated in the disappearances.

Mexican newspapers have identified some of those police as being on
the payroll of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the drug baron who, before his
death, controlled the Juarez cartel.

The six skeletons found in a common grave at Ranch La Campana last
week had their hands and feet bound with wire, their mouths taped shut
with duct tape and their eyes blindfolded with bandages, the Mexican
official said.

FBI officials in El Paso said the search would continue through this
week.

G. Alan Robison Executive Director Drug Policy Forum of Texas Houston,
Texas 713-784-3196; FAX 713-784-0283