SCORES DISAPPEAR IN ANTI-DRUG WAR IN NORTHERN MEXICO
	  id CAA25921; Thu, 9 Oct 1997 02:12:20 -0400


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit


    Copyright 1997 by Agence France-Presse
    Tue, 7 Oct 1997 5:53:17 PDT

   WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (AFP) - Scores of people, including a few
Americans, have disappeared in northern Mexico at the hands of
federal authorities in an ongoing war against drug traffickers, The
New York Times reported Tuesday.
   The disappearances are blamed by human rights groups on Mexican
security forces in the pay of drug traffickers or overzealous police
and soldiers involved in a dirty war against suspected drug
traffickers.
   They are most numerous in the border city of Juarez, stronghold
of Mexico's most powerful drug cartel where nearly 90 people,
including eight US citizens, have vanished after being picked up by
federal authorities, the daily said.
   Evidence suggests some were arrested and killed by police or
soldiers hired by drug traffickers to eliminate rivals or punish
debtors, while others were detained for interrogation by anti-drug
agents.
   Human rights groups said Mexican authorities have appointed a
special investigator, but so far have not solved a single
disappearance.
   "We're seeing disappearances of the type seen in the 1970s (in
Latin America), and the number of reported cases has shot up over
the last year and a half," the head of Amnesty International's
programs in Latin America Morris Tidball Binz is quoted as saying.
   The lack of cooperation from authorities has prompted relatives
of the missing in Juarez and adjacent El Paso to form the
Association of Relatives of Disappeared Persons.
   US consular authorities in Mexico said their involvement has
been limited because only the families of two out of eight missing
Americans have sought help
   Juarez Mayor, Juan Ramon Galindo, told the daily he did not know
who was behind the disappearances but "wouldn't be surprised to find
that federal police are involved.
   "One of our problems is that our officers can be bought. These
are Mexican, not American police, and they reflect Mexico's
problems: the lack of education, poverty. We can't hope that they
will act like police from other places," Galindo said.
 
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