Pubdate: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2005 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: James C. McKinley Jr. Referenced: Dallas Morning News articles http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1889/a05.html and http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1890/a05.html Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Mexico Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?236 (Corruption - Outside U.S.) MEXICO AGENTS KIDNAPPED 4, PROSECUTOR SAYS TIJUANA, Mexico - Federal agents from Mexico's elite antidrug force were involved in the kidnapping and torture of four assassins linked to a drug cartel who appeared in a grisly video that ended with the murder of at least one of them, according to a senior Mexican federal prosecutor. The videotape, which was first described Thursday in The Dallas Morning News, caused an uproar in Mexico because the four men claimed to have killed a journalist working for the cartel and said they planned to kill a former attorney general and a police chief in the border town of Nuevo Laredo. But the prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, discounted those claims, saying it appeared the men had been coerced into saying certain things by their interrogators, who have not been identified. The videotape shows one of the four men, who belonged to a feared group of professional assassins known as the Zetas, being shot and killed at the end of the interrogation. The other three men have disappeared and are presumed dead, Mr. Vasconcelos said. Excerpts of the videotape were posted on the Internet. In the videotape, the four men, bloodied and bound, appear before a curtain of black garbage bags. They describe themselves as assassins for a drug gang known as the Gulf Cartel and detail how they tortured and killed their enemies. They imply that they are in Nuevo Laredo. But Mr. Vasconcelos said at a news conference in Mexico City on Thursday that the four men were actually kidnapped in Acapulco in May by corrupt federal agents working for Edgar Valdez Villareal, an American-born gangster known as La Barbie. He has been linked to Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman, a drug kingpin who has been waging a brutal turf war with the Gulf Cartel, Mr. Vasconcelos said. So far, the government has arrested eight agents and two civilians in connection with the kidnapping. Three other agents and seven more civilians are being sought for questioning in the case, prosecutors said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake