FBI JOINS MEXICAN AGENTS IN GRUESOME SEARCH FOR 200
VICTIMS OF DRUGS WAR

THE FBI joined Mexican agents yesterday in the gruesome task of
searching for up to 200 bodies of people murdered in a drug cartel’s
killing fields.

The bodies are believed to be in mass graves on two ranches on the
Mexican side of the border with Texas and all were victims of the war
to control the country’s burgeoning drugs trade.

Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo said they were believed killed
by the Juarez drug cartel, the dominant Mexican drug trafficking
organisation in the mid 1990s.

‘‘The list is of more than 100 persons who hypothetically could be
buried in those points,’’ Madrazo said. Twenty two of them, he said,
were believed to be US citizens. President Bill Clinton condemned the
killings as a horrible example of the excesses of Mexico’s drug cartels.

‘‘There are organised criminal operations there and they are
particularly vicious.’’

Authorities were led to the two ranches by an informant who first
approached the FBI early this year. He said there might be as many as
100 bodies there, including some people who had been providing
information to US drug agents.

An FBI official said investigators checked the informant’s veracity,
including giving him a lie detector test, before beginning the effort
to dig up the bodies. Last night, dozens of armed soldiers, some
wearing black ski masks, surrounded one of the ranches in a desolate
area 10 miles south of Ciudad Juarez, a city across the border from El
Paso, Texas.

White iron gates towered in front of the ranch. A concrete block wall
covered with graffiti surrounded the rest of the property, located
across the street from a junkyard. Topping the concrete wall was a
chain link fence with razor wire.

No bodies were seen being carried out, but several soldiers left the
ranch with duffel bags.

At Mexico’s request, the FBI sent agents and forensic experts to help
recover and identify the remains. ‘‘In the last four years, and
possibly over more time, citizens of both nationalities have
disappeared without leaving any trace,’’ said the Mexican Attorney
General’s office. For years, Ciudad Juarez has been headquarters for
the Juarez cartel, a drug gang formerly run by Amado Carrillo Fuentes.
Carrillo was the country’s number one cocaine trafficker before he
died in 1997 after plastic surgery. His death touched off a war for
control of his empire. Hit men wielding AK 47s killed more than a
dozen people in several high profile assassinations in restaurants in
1997.

CBS News reported that 200 agents and forensic specialists were
committed to the operation and that exhumations were to begin today.