MEXICAN GRAVES MAY HOLD 22 US VICTIMS OF DRUGS CARTEL

Excavations were under way last night at the sites of two mass graves
believed to hold more than 100 victims of unprecedented brutality by
one of Mexico's most powerful and ruthless drug cartels.

Up to 22 Americans were thought to be among those murdered and buried
at two remote ranches close to Mexico's border with Texas.

A 68-strong FBI task force joined the Mexican Army to begin
exhumations that look likely to shed light on many mysterious
disappearances. If the sites yield as many bodies as officials fear,
they will be the starkest evidence yet of the depths to which
drug-trafficking violence has plunged.

Most of the victims are understood to have come from Juarez, the city
just across the Rio Grande from El Paso in Texas, which is the base of
a notorious cartel that channels billions of dollars worth of
Colombian cocaine and other drugs into the United States.

A convoy of 16 vehicles, many with US licence plates, rumbled through
the white iron gates of Rancho de la Campana at noon yesterday joining
scores of Mexican soldiers and police. Attention seemed concentrated
around a concrete barn-like structure.

In Washington, Thomas Pickard, assistant FBI director, said: "We
believe these people were killed for their knowledge or for being
witnesses to drug trafficking." Information suggested that those
buried at the site had been there for two or three years. So far, part
of just one body was confirmed as recovered.

Mr Pickard said that extensive preparation was required to secure the
site and to decide where to start digging and to make sure "we
thoroughly cover the site with ground piercing radar" using techniques
developed in Kosovo.

The FBI has been investigating the cases of Americans who have
vanished from the area for several months. They were reported to have
been led to the graves by an informer. The informer, who passed a
lie-detector test, admitted complicity in several killings and
identified the graves at locations south of Juarez, according to The
New York Times. He said that some of the killings had been carried out
by Mexican police working for drug gangs and that some victims were
FBI informants. The tip-off came within the past few days and eight
people were arrested. Armed soldiers, some wearing masks, first
surrounded one of the ranches ten miles south of Juarez. The compound,
with towering iron gates and high, graffiti-covered walls topped with
razor wire, was identified as belonging to an El Paso man, Jorge
Ortiz, who was said by a caretaker to have been absent for some time.
The site was sealed and later soldiers were seen leaving with duffel
bags. Investigators, some of them forensic experts who examined mass
graves in Bosnia-Herzegovina, began work with bulldozers, shovels and
infra-red detection devices. Some bodies were said to be buried in
trenches 12ft deep. Hundreds of FBI and Mexican officers were combing
the scenes. A score of FBI forensic scientists were waiting in El Paso
to examine the remains.

An FBI spokesman said: "Certain drug organisations may have utilised
some of these places to bury individuals. We are working with Mexican
authorities to recover the remains."

Officials said this was the closest co-operation between law
enforcement teams across the border for some time. The Mexican
authorities said yesterday that up to 22 Americans were among more
than 100 bodies expected to be recovered. "At this time the numbers
are vague," a government spokesman said. "It could be a couple of days
before we find out exactly how many bodies there are." The Mexican
Attorney-General's Office said the investigation was "focused on
solving a series of assassinations and disappearances relating to drug
trafficking, perpetrated against Mexican and United States citizens
apparently by members of the so-called Juarez cartel. Over the past
four years and possibly longer, in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, citizens
of both nationalities have disappeared without a trace."

The FBI called the scale of the killing represented by the graves
unprecedented, even by the infamous standards of the Mexican cartels.

Mark Kleiman, director of the Drug Policy Analysis Programme at the
University of California, Los Angeles, said: "I can't think, in the
entire history of the illicit drug business, of anything comparable.

"Yes, there's certainly been violence in the illicit drug trade, and
yes, if you add up the people who were killed by the Medellin drug
cartel over the years, it would add up to more than 100. But a mass
grave site? I've never seen anything like it." A Los Angeles Times
investigation last year found that hundreds, possibly thousands, of
drug-related killings occurred in Mexico each year. The worst incident
was the slaughter of 19 adults and children last year near Ensenada,
60 miles south of San Diego.

Juarez has been the headquarters of a cartel for many years, but it
became the most violent city along Mexico's 2,000-mile border with the
United States after the death of its former leader, Amado Carillo
Fuentes, known as "the Lord of the Skies". He died in 1997 while
undergoing plastic surgery. Last year Mexican officials issued
warrants for the arrests of 100 senior members of the cartel. The most
high-profile arrest was that of General Jose de Jesus Gutierrez
Rebello, head of the anti-drug police.