DEAD DOCS CHARGED IN DRUG LORD'S DEATH

But Mexico Police Don't Know Why Man Was Killed

By Paige Bierma
Associated Press

Mexico City

If only dead men could tell tales.

The tortured, bound and burned bodies of two doctors are found in oil drums
filled with concrete.

Four days later, prosecutors announce they had charged the doctors with
murdering a fugitive drug lord by injecting him with a lethal analgesic
shortly after he underwent plastic surgery.

Mexican prosecutors won't say why they believe that the pair deliberately
killed Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as the "Lord of the Skies" for using
jetliners to haul cocaine into the United states.

But in announcing the charges against Jaime Godoy Singh and Ricardo Reyes
on Thursday, the government's chief prosecutor of drug crimes was unequivocal.

"We have concluded that the doctors, with the intention of killing
(Carrillo), administered the medicine," Mariano Salvatti said.

Carrillo, who ran the powerful Juarez drug cartel out of northern Mexico,
died after undergoing extensive cosmetic surgery and liposuction on July 4
in an apparent attempt to change his appearance to elude police.

Carrillo's death set off a noholdsbarred battle among drug traffickers in
which at least 30 people have died, Francisco Molina, a former Mexican drug
czar, was quoted by the daily La Jornada as saying.

According to Molina, the battle pits Carrillo's cartel, based in Ciudad
Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas against the equally powerful
Tijuanabased cartel headed by members of the Arellano Felix family. At
stake is control of the flow of cocaine entering the United States.

But like the killings of Godoy and Reyes, none of the recent killingsmost
near the U.S. border have been explained.

Godoy and Reyes were Carrillo's personal physicians and must have known
that the sleep medication they gave Carrillo after his surgery would kill
him, given his weak liver, Salvatti told reporters late Thursday.

But before police could arrest the doctors, three decomposing corpses were
found Sunday in sealed, foulsmelling oil drums along a southern Mexico
highway. Police later identified the bodies as those of Godoy and Reyes.

A third doctor, Carlos Humberto Avila Meljem, also was charged last month,
prosecutors said. Police have yet to say whether his body was the third one
found in an oil drum.

'I'wo of the men in the barrel were strangled and the third died of a
gunshot to the head, authorities said.

Who ordered Carrillo killed and why still remains a mystery.

He was being hunted on both sides of the U.S.Mcxico border, and apparently
he was feeling incrcasingly hemmcd in. With. personal wealth estimated at
$23 billion, hc seems to have decided to branch out.

Hc visited Russia, Cuba, some stillundetermined European countrics and
Chile, where investigators said he had a number of business dealings.
Chilean authorities said he had started to set up a base in thc (2hilcan
capital.

One thing has bccn confirmed: Carrillo wanted to radically change his
appearance and quickly.'The Lord of the Skies' was a tall, burly man with
a thin mustache and a ruddy appearance the result of alcoholism and
addiction to cocaine.

Work was done on his face, and several gallons of fat were sucked out of
his midriff.

Did the Arellano Felix gang have the Lord of the Skies killed? Or did some
other mysterious figure engineer his death? The answer might be difficult
to come by.

Those who might knowthe doctorsare dead.