Pubdate: Sat, 04 Dec 1999 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 1999 San Jose Mercury News Contact: 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190 Fax: (408) 271-3792 Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/ PROBE TO FOCUS ON DRUG LORDS, POLICE Graves: Officials believe dealers were responsible for most of the disappearances. By Ricardo Sandoval Mercury News Mexico City Bureau CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo, with FBI Director Louis J. Freeh at his side, said Friday that Mexico and the United States are investigating connections between drug lords and Mexican police as the search continues for bodies at four grave sites outside this border city. Madrazo's comments came during a press conference after the law enforcement chiefs inspected a ranch just south of Juarez. Madrazo and Freeh offered details about the remains of six bodies unearthed this week. Dozens of U.S. and Mexican agents, forensics experts and archaeologists have been working since Monday to try to find bodies of Mexicans and several Americans who disappeared in the region. Authorities fear that the missing people were killed by the powerful Juarez drug cartel. A tip from an informant reportedly led officials to the grave sites. At the press conference, Freeh and Madrazo described what searchers found this week in a common grave dug behind a barn and a concrete wall lined with barbed wire. They said the six bodies were piled on top of each other in a 9-foot-deep pit. Three of the skeletal remains are of men in their 50s, each about 5 feet, 8 inches tall. They were wearing jeans and boots or sneakers, and at least one had cloths around his head and neck - indicating that he was asphyxiated, they said. FBI forensics experts, working at a temporary lab in El Paso under the supervision of Mexican prosecutors, have yet to determine the identities of the six, and how they ended up in the graves. Around the windswept crime scene, officials said, shell casings were also found. At another site farther south of Juarez, clothing and abandoned vehicles riddled with bullet holes also have been found. Mexican officials said digging at two other undisclosed sites wouldn't begin for another two weeks. Both Freeh and Madrazo hailed the Mexican-U.S. cooperation in investigating reports of missing people that have nagged officials for six years. Around 200 people, including at least 18 U.S. citizens, have disappeared with almost no clues as to their fate. Mexican authorities say they have a list of about 100 people whose disappearances bore signs of police and drug-cartel involvement. Yet Freeh and Madrazo declined to guess how many bodies the intense, but slow, digging will ultimately yield. Freeh and Madrazo also officially confirmed that authorities believe drug dealers were responsible for most of the disappearances. And Madrazo said witnesses have connected some police officers to some of the missing people. "Testimony from families and friends of the missing - in answers to questions about who they were last seen with and how they disappeared - identified people who seemed to have been federal police working here between 1994 and 1996," said Madrazo. Madrazo was careful to say that suspicions of police involvement were not confirmed, but could include local, state and federal authorities. Many in Juarez and in the United States believe that Mexican police and drug traffickers teamed up to execute people caught in a turf war over the principal cocaine and marijuana shipping routes between South America and the streets of U.S. cities. "We're just surprised it took so long to find what everyone in Juarez has been hearing about for years," said Alfredo Quijano, editor of Juarez's biggest daily newspaper, El Norte. In the hastily arranged meeting with reporters, the heavily guarded Freeh and Madrazo also confirmed that five people were being held in Mexico for questioning in the case. Madrazo also said an unidentified ranch co-owner, a ranch hand, and two others in custody, have known links to drug traffickers working in the Juarez area. Switching to halting Spanish, Freeh also extended U.S. government condolences to the Mexican families of the missing people. He promised his agency's best efforts to resolve mysteries that have haunted a city wounded by years of drug violence and random murders of young women. But the unusual public show by Freeh and Madrazo was also aimed at squelching criticism in Mexico City that Mexico is acquiescing to American pressure to get tougher in the war on drugs. Mexican officials invited FBI officials into the investigation, Madrazo said, and Mexican prosecutors are directing the search and forensics work. Freeh said "direct witness" testimony, corroborated by FBI officials, led investigators to the four sites, and that the tips were first given to Mexican officials. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D