FAMILIES' WAIT: 'IT WILL BE A RELIEF TO KNOW'

Unexplained disappearances leave many questions

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- One couple vanished on the way to a play at
a local theater. Two brothers disappeared on the way to a restaurant.
Many victims were seen by witnesses being stuffed into
official-looking vehicles by assailants wearing Mexican police or
military uniforms.

``It's an incredible, horrible thing,'' Jaime Hervella, who lives in
El Paso and is a founder of the Association of Relatives of
Disappeared Persons, said Tuesday in response to the discovery of
suspected grave sites at two ranches near this border city. ``They
(the bodies) have got to be ours.''

U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials Tuesday continued
excavations at two of several sites that authorities believe contain
the remains of possibly dozens of Americans and Mexicans who have
vanished during an unsettling spate of crimes near the international
border shared by Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas.

Until Monday, when authorities announced the investigations of
possible burial sites, the families of nearly 200 people who have
disappeared over the past five years searched for clues with little
assistance from either Mexican or U.S. law enforcement authorities,
relatives said. Now, while no victim has yet been identified, there's
hope that the mystery may be near an end as authorities reported
finding what could be human remains at one of the sites.

Daughter wants answers

``This is the closest we've gotten to something that is real,'' said
Claudia Sanchez, 21, whose parents vanished May 24, 1994, while
waiting to enter a Ciudad Juarez theater. ``I will suffer in some
ways, but it will be a relief to know they're there, that we have a
place to go and take flowers and pray for them.''

Many, but not all, of the people who disappeared in the Ciudad
Juarez-El Paso area are believed to have had some association with the
drug trade. Many were thought to have been abducted by corrupt Mexican
law enforcement and army officials who may have been on the payroll of
drug cartels, according to family members and human rights
organizations.

``In many cases, someone saw them being taken,'' Hervella said.
``There was a lot of precision and weaponry and dark, funeral-like
Suburbans.''

The 196 names of missing people compiled by the association cover a
broad spectrum of lifestyles, backgrounds and professions: U.S.
citizens, Mexican citizens, Mexican law enforcement agents,
informants, drug traffickers, low-level drug peddlers, restaurant
owners, an auto mechanic and Sanchez's father, who once served in the
U.S. Navy and was a communications whiz.

Although Ciudad Juarez, center of operations for Mexico's most
powerful drug cartel, has always had high murder rates along with
occasional cases of disappearances, the rate at which individuals
vanished over the past five years was staggering, according to groups
monitoring the crimes. And while activists concede that many of the
disappearances may be the work of cartels seeking revenge on those who
betrayed them, they note a telling difference that they say points to
the involvement of law enforcement agents.

``The bodies (of those) killed by the mafia are always found,'' said
Victor Clark of the Tijuana-based International Commission on Human
Rights. ``It's their way of sending messages.''

In Ciudad Juarez, by contrast, the victims simply disappeared and only
now may be found buried beneath the isolated and harsh desert surface
- -- possibly the work of abductors trying to hide evidence.

``The families always hoped that their relatives would come back
alive, that they were being held in clandestine military jails or that
they were in witness-protection programs,'' said Alberto Medrano
Villarreal, an attorney for families of the disappeared and president
of the Ciudad Juarez Bar Association.

``As a lawyer, this is a terrible discovery because you suppose that
you live in a just society where even the worst criminal, even the
most hardened drug trafficker, has the right to a trial,'' said
Medrano. ``We had suspected that police were involved in the
disappearances. . . . Our society can't just say, `He was a
narco-trafficker and it's good that he was executed.' If judges can be
wrong, the triggermen can be wrong, too.''

Remains discovered

The U.S. agents -- and the Mexican federal police who Tuesday wore
black uniforms and ski masks to hide their identities -- discovered
some remains that could be human, according to authorities.

Saul Sanchez Jr. was 39 when he disappeared in 1994 outside the
theater with his wife, Abigail, 38. The U.S. Navy veteran and engineer
invented a device that could track cellular phone calls, which he
developed and sold to the Mexican federal police for use in drug
investigations, according to his family.

His father, Saul Sr., said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he
tried to persuade his son to move from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso
because he feared the federal police's reputation for corruption.

He remembers the day he hectored his son: May 17, 1994. ``A week
later, he and his wife had gone to the theater. Someone from the
Mexican federal police said he had the tickets for the theater, and he
wanted to meet them there,'' said the older Sanchez. ``That was the
last time he was seen.''