KILLINGS TAKE DRUG WAR TO MEXICO ELITE

Student Deaths at Prestigious School Lead Wealthy to Criticize
Military Tactics; Victims 'Were the Hope for Our Future'

MEXICO CITY-When shooting broke out between army soldiers and drug
traffickers at Mexico's most prestigious university on March 19, two
people were left dead and an entire campus was in shock. The bodies,
authorities said, belonged to two hit men.

Then came another shock: Javier Arredondo and Jorge Antonio Mercado
weren't assassins, but two graduate students caught in the crossfire
at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education. The
Attorney General's office said the original account was wrong, and
blamed the army for the misinformation. The army hasn't commented on
the account. The killings have brought the country's bloody drug war
close to home for Mexico's middle and upper class, which have
remained at a distance from the daily turf battles between rival
cartels. Now the elites are joining poorer Mexicans in questioning
the use of lethal military force to fight drug cartels in their
cities, and whether the army could be killing more innocent victims
than it claims.

The deaths have ignited a storm in Mexico. Monterrey Tech's rector
said the army had attempted a cover-up to avoid the embarrassment of
having killed innocent civilians. Students began protests while
newspapers fired off angry editorials calling the event a "student massacre."

The shootings were the second high-profile incident from Mexico's
drugs war in as many weeks. Earlier this month, three people related
to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez were gunned down. Officials
said on Monday they had arrested a suspect in the killings of
consulate employee Lesley Enriquez and her husband, Arthur Redelfs,
both Americans.

A similar scenario to the Monterrey Tech shootings occurred in
February in Ciudad Juarez after 15 teenaged students were slaughtered
by hit men at a party. President Felipe Calderon at first described
the incident as a "settling of accounts" between gangs, suggesting
the teens were members of a drug cartel. He was later forced to
backtrack when it became apparent the teens were targeted by mistake.

In the case of the Monterrey Tech shootings, authorities changed
their original stance that the two were criminals only when the
mother of one of the victims identified the body and the university's
Rector Rafael Rangel Sostmann called the press to set the record
straight. "Who can Mexicans trust? How many deaths of innocents are
necessary to change the direction of our authorities and make them
more effective?" asked Claudia Flores, a childhood friend of Mr.
Arredondo. The military has rejected claims of wrongdoing in the
Monterrey deaths, which are under investigation by the government.
Last week, Gen. Guillermo Moreno Serrano, the army's regional
commander, told the Reforma daily: "We aren't assassins." On Monday,
a military spokeswoman declined further comment pending the
government's inquiry on the incident. Monterrey, a wealthy industrial
city near the U.S. border, is the home of much of the country's
English-speaking business elite. Monterrey Tech-Mexico's Harvard or
MIT-is the training ground of this country's ruling class, many of
whom graduate into jobs at the nation's biggest companies, many of
which are also based in Monterrey.

Carlos Gabuardi, an international corporate lawyer who teaches in the
university's law department and has a son attending the school, wrote
in his blog that the deaths were "absurd and unjustified" and
described Monterrey as his "beloved city made sick by the violence"
of the drug war. "I hope this can become a turning point for how
things happen in Mexico," he said in an interview.

Authorities say they're still trying to reconstruct the series of
events on March 19. Shortly after midnight, military men were chasing
suspected drug traffickers who fled to the grounds of the university,
where a firefight erupted, authorities have said. Around that time,
Messrs. Arredondo and Mercado were exiting a campus building after
work, likely heading back to their residences.

It is unclear whose weapons killed the men. According to the
university, Mr. Mercado's injuries appeared to have been caused by a
grenade. Grenades aren't typically used by the military in
confrontations but are often used by drug cartels. Mr. Arredondo
appears to have died of bullet wounds. Since President Calderon took
office in late 2006, more than 18,000 people have been killed in
drug-related violence. The government says some 90% of victims are
cartel members killed by rival drug gangs, and that the rest of the
victims are mostly police and army officials. It says very few
innocent civilians have been killed.

Many of these killings have occurred in poor and lawless corners of
Mexico, where witnesses have less leverage to speak out, say
human-rights advocates. "The usual practice is to call everybody who
ends up getting killed in shootouts with security forces 'gang
members.' Most of them are. Some of them are not," says Jose Miguel
Vivanco, who directs investigations in Latin America for advocacy
group Human Rights Watch.

Mr. Vivanco points to the Monterrey Tech incident as further evidence
of the lack of accountability in Mexico's army.Victims of military
abuse have few avenues to ensure their cases are fairly heard,
because human rights complaints are handled by military tribunals
with little incentive to convict, says Jose Miguel Vivanco, who
directs investigations in Latin America for advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

After a request by Mr. Vivanco's office, the military provided only
one successful conviction in a human-rights case in these tribunals.
Military officials didn't respond to a written request on this case,
or other convictions.

"The war is conducted with virtual carte blanche," said Mr. Vivanco.
"We're talking about an army that's not accountable for its actions."
The two families in Monterrey remain in grief, seeking answers for
what occurred. Mr. Arredondo's cousin says he talked to his deceased
cousin a week and a half before the incident. Mr. Arredondo was going
to graduate in May, with a doctorate at age 24, recalls his cousin,
Juan Carlos Arredondo, who is acting a spokesman for the family.
"With all this killing in the drug war, it was these kinds of people
we needed most-they were the hope for our future."