PROBE TO FOCUS ON DRUG LORDS, POLICE

Graves: Officials believe dealers were responsible for most of the
disappearances. By Ricardo Sandoval Mercury News Mexico City Bureau

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo, with FBI
Director Louis J. Freeh at his side, said Friday that Mexico and the United
States are investigating connections between drug lords and Mexican police
as the search continues for bodies at four grave sites outside this border
city.

Madrazo's comments came during a press conference after the law enforcement
chiefs inspected a ranch just south of Juarez. Madrazo and Freeh offered
details about the remains of six bodies unearthed this week.

Dozens of U.S. and Mexican agents, forensics experts and archaeologists
have been working since Monday to try to find bodies of Mexicans and
several Americans who disappeared in the region. Authorities fear that the
missing people were killed by the powerful Juarez drug cartel. A tip from
an informant reportedly led officials to the grave sites.

At the press conference, Freeh and Madrazo described what searchers found
this week in a common grave dug behind a barn and a concrete wall lined
with barbed wire.

They said the six bodies were piled on top of each other in a 9-foot-deep
pit. Three of the skeletal remains are of men in their 50s, each about 5
feet, 8 inches tall. They were wearing jeans and boots or sneakers, and at
least one had cloths around his head and neck - indicating that he was
asphyxiated, they said.

FBI forensics experts, working at a temporary lab in El Paso under the
supervision of Mexican prosecutors, have yet to determine the identities of
the six, and how they ended up in the graves.

Around the windswept crime scene, officials said, shell casings were also
found.

At another site farther south of Juarez, clothing and abandoned vehicles
riddled with bullet holes also have been found. Mexican officials said
digging at two other undisclosed sites wouldn't begin for another two weeks.

Both Freeh and Madrazo hailed the Mexican-U.S. cooperation in investigating
reports of missing people that have nagged officials for six years.

Around 200 people, including at least 18 U.S. citizens, have disappeared
with almost no clues as to their fate. Mexican authorities say they have a
list of about 100 people whose disappearances bore signs of police and
drug-cartel involvement.

Yet Freeh and Madrazo declined to guess how many bodies the intense, but
slow, digging will ultimately yield.

Freeh and Madrazo also officially confirmed that authorities believe drug
dealers were responsible for most of the disappearances. And Madrazo said
witnesses have connected some police officers to some of the missing people.

"Testimony from families and friends of the missing - in answers to
questions about who they were last seen with and how they disappeared -
identified people who seemed to have been federal police working here
between 1994 and 1996," said Madrazo.

Madrazo was careful to say that suspicions of police involvement were not
confirmed, but could include local, state and federal authorities.

Many in Juarez and in the United States believe that Mexican police and
drug traffickers teamed up to execute people caught in a turf war over the
principal cocaine and marijuana shipping routes between South America and
the streets of U.S. cities.

"We're just surprised it took so long to find what everyone in Juarez has
been hearing about for years," said Alfredo Quijano, editor of Juarez's
biggest daily newspaper, El Norte.

In the hastily arranged meeting with reporters, the heavily guarded Freeh
and Madrazo also confirmed that five people were being held in Mexico for
questioning in the case. Madrazo also said an unidentified ranch co-owner,
a ranch hand, and two others in custody, have known links to drug
traffickers working in the Juarez area.

Switching to halting Spanish, Freeh also extended U.S. government
condolences to the Mexican families of the missing people. He promised his
agency's best efforts to resolve mysteries that have haunted a city wounded
by years of drug violence and random murders of young women.

But the unusual public show by Freeh and Madrazo was also aimed at
squelching criticism in Mexico City that Mexico is acquiescing to American
pressure to get tougher in the war on drugs.

Mexican officials invited FBI officials into the investigation, Madrazo
said, and Mexican prosecutors are directing the search and forensics work.

Freeh said "direct witness" testimony, corroborated by FBI officials, led
investigators to the four sites, and that the tips were first given to
Mexican officials.