TRAFFICKERS TERRIFY MEXICAN PLASTIC SURGEONS

Drug traffickers in mexico are using plastic surgery to remodel their faces
and avoid capture.

But the surgeons performing the operations now fear for their lives.

Speaking to BBC World Service's Outlook programme, Jose Luis Valdes
Galicia, a plastic surgeon in Mexico, spoke of the dangers facing surgeons.
"The moment a criminal comes into our surgery we are in danger," he said.

"If we agree to do the job, we risk our lives.

If we don't, we risk it too. I even believe that these people would kill a
surgeon without even threatening him just so he would never say a thing."
Cooperation In September 2001, Mexico's chief prosecutor, Mario Estuardo
Bermudez, appealed to plastic surgeons to help in the fight against drug
barons who were turning to surgery in an effort to change their identities
and escape the authorities. Whilst he now recognises that "there has been
great opposition from surgeons", he still believes that their help is vital
in the fight against organised crime. "Five months ago we appealed to their
professionalism and their spirit of collaboration" he explains, "but also
we wanted to make clear that they are in danger after they perform the
operation." Frog face Mr Bermudez called for the surgeons' assistance after
the true identity of a hit-man from the Tijuana cartel was only revealed
four months after his arrest. Jorge Humberto Rodriguez Banuelos, alias La
Rana (The Frog), had lost weight, had new hair implants and altered his
face by means of surgery.

After an anonymous tip-off, The Frog was detained by police. As they were
expecting a much older looking man with coarser features, it was left to a
give-away scar on the detained man's buttocks to reveal his true identity.
Later the surgeon who performed liposuction on The Frog was believed to
have been murdered. Confidentiality Whilst surgeons believe that
collaboration is possible they are fearful of attacks and believe that
cooperation can only be achieved if secrecy is guaranteed. "We respect [the
surgeons' belief] that the professional secret would be broken, ethics of
the plastic surgeons would be seriously affected," Mr Bermudez explains.
"That is why we are trying to find the way in which communication between
the doctors and us can take place respecting ethics and the law."

Meanwhile Dr Galicia intends to stay on the right side of the law but
remains cautious. "I do know of surgeons who were found dead in some
containers sometime ago." "I believe we should give the police the
information they need - though I might report any suspicious requests for
plastic surgery to the newspapers first so they could investigate and keep
my name out of it."