cannabisnews.com: Mass Graves Found Near Mexican City 





Mass Graves Found Near Mexican City 
Posted by FoM on November 30, 1999 at 09:55:31 PT
By Esther Schrader & James F. Smith - LA Times
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Police and soldiers are preparing to exhume 100 to 300 bodies from two mass graves near the Mexican border city of Juarez believed to contain the remains of victims of a notorious drug cartel, law enforcement officials said yesterday. 
At least a dozen U.S. citizens are believed to be among the victims, who include former informants for the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. If the mass graves do yield so many victims, it would be by far the most dramatic evidence yet of the extent of the drug-trafficking violence that has ravaged cities and towns across Mexico in recent years. The grave sites, on two remote ranches south of Juarez across the U.S. border from El Paso, were brought to the attention of U.S. law enforcement officials just three days ago. Since then, an FBI task force of forensic experts who helped exhume mass graves in Bosnia-Herzegovina has been working with Mexican army officials to plan the recovery of the bodies. The corpses are believed to be buried in ravines and trenches, some as deep as 12 feet, U.S. law enforcement officials said. More than 200 FBI forensic experts and several hundred Mexican soldiers armed with heavy digging equipment are to begin exhuming the bodies today, the officials said. Dozens of DEA agents are aiding the investigation. One senior U.S. law enforcement official in Washington said investigators believe that the graves contain between 100 and 300 bodies. "We have agents working with Mexican authorities on at least two sites near Juarez, exhuming sites in search of human remains," FBI spokesman Jim Davis said. "It is possible that we could be talking U.S. citizens here." The Mexican Attorney General's Office said the probe sought to solve "a series of killings and disappearances related with drug trafficking, perpetrated against Mexicans and U.S. citizens, apparently by members of the so-called Juarez cartel." The office said Mexico had requested the FBI to assist with the "humanitarian action" to recover the remains of the victims, who are believed to have been killed during the past four years. Most of the victims are believed to have come from Juarez, base of the cartel that funnels billions of dollars' worth of cocaine, marijuana and heroin into the United States each year. Many of the drugs are grown and processed in Colombia. The Juarez cartel has generated fierce violence since the death of its leader, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as the Lord of the Skies, in July 1997 while he was undergoing plastic surgery to change his appearance. An apparent struggle for control of the cartel has produced seemingly endless violence. Dozens of armed soldiers, some wearing black ski masks, surrounded one of the ranches last night in a desolate area about 10 miles south of Juarez. White iron gates towered in front of the ranch, while a concrete block wall covered with graffiti surrounded the rest of the property, which is across the street from a junkyard. Topping the concrete wall was a chain-link fence with razor wire. No bodies were seen being carried out, but several soldiers left the ranch carrying duffel bags. No one at the scene would talk to reporters, and a news conference scheduled for last night in Juarez was canceled. Jaime Hervella, president of the International Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons, with offices in El Paso and Juarez, said that the association was searching for 196 people who had gone missing in Juarez since 1990. Eighteen are U.S. citizens. "We're sitting here waiting on pins and needles to find out some news," Hervella said. He said that a source in the Mexican Attorney General's Office told him "hundreds of bodies" could be found at the sites. Mexican and U.S. officials have said the cartel split into three branches after Carrillo's death.One of the northern branch leaders, Rafael Munoz Talavera, was assassinated in September 1998. Mexican authorities announced in September that they had arrested another of the cartel's major figures, Joan Jose Quintero Payan, in western Mexico when he arrived at a house in Guadalajara for a tryst. This article contains information from Associated Press and Reuters.Published: Novenber 30, 1999© 1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. Related Articles:Investigators Dig for Mass Graves at U.S.-Mexico - 11/30/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3826.shtmlRaiding Mexico's Killing Fields - 11/29/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3821.shtml 
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Comment #1 posted by Tom Paine on November 30, 1999 at 15:37:25 PT
DEATH SQUADS in Bush's TEXAS! Drug War HITS HOME!
Message at MAP bulletin board:http://www.islandnet.com/cgi-bin/postit?login=creator&topic=cmap/forum/dprSubject: DEATH SQUADS in Bush's TEXAS!! Drug War MASS GRAVES found! Date: Sun, Nov 30 1999 14:53. From: Tom Paine. Keywords: Previous: Thanks Tom "PIA" Re: Cliff Schaffer on let-em-die Judge Judy. Resources. (#533). Next: WRITE THE PRESIDENT TODAY TO VETO H.R. 3194! (#532). > ...drug users, "Let 'em die":> > > Her remarks show that she isn't fit to be a judge on television or anywhere> > Damn right. Good post, thanks TomYou're welcome. We now have judges calling for extra-judicial death sentences for drug users and their non-user families. Facilitated by official NAZI government laws actually PREVENTING needle exchange or cheap 10 cent over-the-counter non-prescription syringes and needles. We have CHANCELLOR BOB BARR negating democratic elections in some states such as the District of Colombia, effectively making D.C. a one-party Republican-led, Democrat lap-dog state where elections are only for show, as in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. And now we have discovered the tip of the iceberg of the DEATH SQUADS OPERATING WITH IMPUNITY IN THE USA, THE SAME AS MOST OF LATIN AMERICA:http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3829.shtmland another article: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1294/a06.html?397*11-99. Mexico, U.S. Dig Up Possible MASS GRAVES. DEATH SQUADS in Bush's TEXAS!!!: "SCORES of MEXICANS & AMERICANS who have DISAPPEARED... some... KIDNAPPED from AMERICAN soil... Mexican federal POLICE OFFICERS who worked as hired ASSASSINS."| 
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