Frontera NorteSur March 2002

Federal Police Arrested in Matamoros

On February 6, 2002, the Unidad Especializada Contra la Delincuencia Organizada (Specialized Unit Against Organized Crime, UEDO) and elite military units arrested between ten and twelve members of the Matamoros staff of the federal Attorney General's Office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR).

Also arrested last week were six members of the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones, including the commander and five agents, and three Tamaulipas state police agents.

According to Angel Buendía Buendía, the visitor general of the PGR, those arrested last week are being charged with breaking laws against organized crime and other illegal acts.

Buendía also told El Mañana that, in its recent moves against corruption, the PGR has taken criminal or administrative action against more than 600 members of the PGR.

Sources: El Mañana (Reynosa), February 14, 12 & 7, 2002.
El Bravo (Matamoros), February 8, 2002. Article by Delia Arellano Contreras.

FBI Presence in Tijuana

Tijuana's Frontera newspaper reported on Wednesday, February 13, 2002 that the FBI has helped the Baja California State Police (PGJE) with antikidnapping operations. The request for help came to the FBI through the Procuraduría General de la República (Federal Attorney General's Office) in San Diego, the newspaper reported.

The following day, Armando Atilano Peña, president of the Colegio de Abogados de Tijuana (Tijuana Lawyers' College), was quoted as saying that as long as the FBI did not violate the sovereignty of Mexican territory, any help it could provide to Mexican authorities should be looked on favorably by Mexicans.

Atilano clarified his statement by adding that while the FBI could provide technical assistance it should not take part in operations.

Because of the high quality of its work, the FBI is a tool of great importance to city police organizations throughout the state, Atilano stated.

On February 15, Frontera newspaper (no relationship to FNS) published another article about the FBI in Baja California. This time it quoted Bernardo Martínez Aguirre, the state secretary of public security, as saying that the FBI has always helped Tijuana and state police with their work.

Collaboration between the FBI and Baja California law enforcement organizations take place only after federal officials have been notified, said Martínez.

Martínez also stated that the FBI does not participate in ground operations because it is illegal for foreign agents to carry weapons on Mexican territory and because the personal safety of US cannot be put at risk.

State Police agents in Tijuana confirmed to Frontera newspaper that for some time now the FBI has conducted flights over Baja California using planes with long-distance sensors. The reason for these flights was not given.

Source: Frontera (Tijuana), February 14 & 15, 2002. Articles by Ernesto Alvarez.

Woman's Body Found, Shot and Burned in Méxicali

On the night of Thursday, January 24, 2002, while looking for a stolen vehicle, Méxicali police officer Guillermo Leyva found a woman's body approximately 300 yards from a police station. The body had been set on fire and shot, according to police.

Due to the position in which the body was found, officials believe that the woman was doused in gasoline and set on fire while still alive. A one-gallon plastic container with gasoline residue still inside was found at the crime site along with two .38 bullet shells. The body has yet to be identified, according to the Méxicali newspaper, La Crónica.

In a separate story, the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada reports that a Oaxaca human rights group has asked the state police to intensify investigations into the rape-murders of sixteen women in that state over the past two years.

Aline Castellanos Jurado, the Oaxaca director of the Liga Mexicana por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights), has called upon the Oaxaca Attorney General, Sergio Santibáñez Franco, to seriously examine these crimes against women. The Liga has also demanded that the Attorney General's Office make public presentations about the progress made in each of the cases.

Sources: La Crónica (Méxicali), January 25, 2002. Article by Juan Galvan & César Valdez.
La Jornada (Mexico City), January 25, 2002. Article by Victor Ruiz Arrazola.

Tijuana's Oldest Finest Remember

Juan Angel Islas still remembers his first day on the job: June 1, 1948. Back then Tijuana was a small city, he said, and had only one hundred police officers and six patrol cars. The police force was poor back then and not all police carried pistols.

The biggest challenge for a new officer was directing traffic at the intersection of Calle Segunda and Revolución, said Islas. If an officer could control that difficult crossing, he could work successfully in any part of the city.

Islas and other long-time agents were interviewed by Frontera newspaper reporter Daniel Salinas (no relationship to FNS) at a breakfast that Jesús González Reyes, the mayor of Tijuana, hosted for some of that city's oldest police officers. The 49 officers in attendance are all considered disabled which means that they receive an active police officer's salary. They are not considered retired or pensioned.

None of the police gathered at the breakfast meeting ever imagined that the city's violence would rise to today's levels. Also, none of them can remember a time when officers' lives were so frequently threatened.

However, this does not mean that Tijuana's veteran police officers did not risk their lives when they went to work.

Maximiliano Topete, who served as a Tijuana police officer from 1967 to 1997, said that he had a rib broken in a scuffle with some suspects on Madero Street. "One of them had a large caliber pistol but I believe that he did not know how to use it because he could have shot me. Later I found out the pistol had been stolen."

Islas, a 40 year veteran, said that violence began in 1953 in Tijuana when US troops would go to the city to get drunk on Revolución, during the Korean Conflict. However, he added that crime was not so common then as now and that police back then did not have to confront organized crime bearing high-powered weapons.

Source: Frontera (Tijuana), February 8, 2002. Article by Daniel Salinas.

Second Young Agua Prieta Woman Found Tortured & Murdered

In less than three months, two young women have been found murdered in Agua Prieta, Sonora. Both bodies showed signs of torture. Agua Prieta is located across the border from Douglas, Arizona.

The Mexico City newspaper La Jornada reported on Sunday, January 13, 2002, that the body of a young woman, between the ages of 17 and 20, was found by a sanitation worker, presumably on January 11 or 12. The unnamed woman was apparently tortured and died from a beating. As in the previous case, it is not known if the woman was sexually assaulted.

Local authorities worry that there may be more killings in the future, similar to what Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua has faced over the past decade. In that city, more than 300 women have been murdered since 1993. Many of these were young women and maquiladora workers that were raped and tortured before their bodies were disposed of in vacant fields or desert areas.

Irma Villalobos de Terán, the mayor of Agua Prieta, said that these crimes "have begun to provoke a collective psychosis throughout the city, that make people think that there is a tie to the murder of women in Ciudad Juárez."

Source: La Jornada, January 13, 2002.

Juárez Rape Crisis Center Receptionist Murdered at Work, Center Loses Funding

María Luisa Carsoli Berumen, age 33, was murdered on December 21, 2001, in Ciudad Juárez, outside of the Casa Amiga Rape and Abuse Crisis Center where she worked as a receptionist. Carsoli Berumen had four children, ages 2, 3, 6 and 8. Police are still looking for Carsoli Berumen's husband, Ricardo Medina Acosta, the suspect in the case.

The Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario reported that an unnamed cleaning woman that works at Casa Amiga stated that Carsoli Berumen's husband, Ricardo Medina Acosta, approached Carsoli Berumen as she arrived at work. The two began to argue and then Medina Acosta twice stabbed his wife, the woman said. The cleaning woman tried to stop Medina Acosta but could not. She yelled for help but no one came to assist, she said.

After the murder, Carsoli Berumen's four children were picked up by authorities because Medina Acosta allegedly threatened to kill them if police attempted to arrest him. According to Adela Lozoya of Casa Amiga, the children have been living with their maternal grandmother since December 24, 2001.

According to Esther Chávez Cano, the director of the not-for-profit Casa Amiga, Carsoli Berumen first came to Casa Amiga about a year ago because her husband had been beating her often. At the time of the murder, Carsoli Berumen and her husband were living separately.

In a press conference after the killing, Chávez said that in Cd. Juárez, men believe they own women. The killing she said is proof that Casa Amiga, the only rape and abuse crisis center in the city of 1.2 million people, can not attend to the needs of all of the city's women.

Citing a lack of available funds, the interim mayor of Cd. Juárez, José Reyes Ferriz told El Diario that the city had to end its monthly contribution of 30,000 pesos (approximately US$3,200) in October, 2001. However, Reyes said that the city will look into how it can support Casa Amiga in the future.

The previous city administration had supported Casa Amiga for three years until its term ended in October, 2001.

Source: El Diario, December 22, 2001. Article by Armando Rodríguez.

Drug Rehab in BC Prisons

In the Baja California state prison known as "El Pueblito," 128 inmates graduated from the Segunda Oportunidad (Second Chance) drug rehabilitation program on Sunday, February 24, 2002.

According to Joy Westrum, the director of Segunda Oportunidad, the program has been in existence for one year and has graduated more than 2,000 people.

A prison official said that approximately 60% of incoming prisoners are drug users and this is one reason why rehabilitation programs are so important. The official also mentioned that prison drug use is a real problem that allows addicts to continue with their habit while they are incarcerated.

Within the next three to four months, Segunda Oportunidad will be offered in the El Hongo state prison, the official said.

Source: Frontera (Tijuana), February 25, 2002. Article by Ernesto Alvarez.

Juárez Lawyer for Rape-Murder Suspect Killed in Police Chase

Mario César Escobedo Anaya, the defense lawyer for Gustavo González Meza, one of two men accused of sexually assaulting and murdering eleven women in Ciudad Juárez, was killed in a police chase on Tuesday, February 5, 2002.

State police said they chased Escobedo Anaya because they mistook him for Francisco Estrada, who allegedly murdered a state police officer. Curiously, Escobedo Anaya was also the defense lawyer for Estrada's mother who was arrested for allegedly helping her son escape arrest.

State police blame Escobedo Anaya for his death because he did not pull over when pursued by them. However, the two police vehicles involved in the chase were unmarked and Escobedo Anaya's passenger told the Cd. Juárez press that he did not know the men chasing them were police until they got out of their vehicles.

There are other discrepancies in the case as well. While the Chihuahua Attorney General's Office stated in a press release that Escobedo Anaya died because of brain damage resulting from an auto accident that occurred while he was fleeing state police officers, the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario reports that Escobedo Anaya's autopsy states he died from a bullet wound to the head.

State police told El Diario that they only opened fire on Escobedo Anaya because he shot at them first. They also say that chemical tests on Escobedo Anaya's body show that he did fire a gun. There were at least 10 bullet holes in Escobedo Anaya's vehicle.

However, accident-scene pictures taken by a photographer from the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Norte show an unmarked Jeep Grand Cherokee that was driven by a state police agent. At the scene, the Jeep showed no bullet holes. A few hours later, an El Norte photographer took a picture of the same Jeep outside the Attorney General's Office. This time it shows a bullet hole in the hood of the Jeep and fresh mud partly covers it. El Norte contends that state police agents shot the Jeep themselves to strengthen their case against Escobedo Anaya.

El Norte also reported that the Jeep is not registered as an official state vehicle but is rather the private vehicle of Commander Roberto Alejandro Castro Valles.

Escobedo Anaya took up the defense of González along with his father, Mario Escobedo Salazar, who is also a Cd. Juárez defense lawyer. Escobedo Salazar said that his son had received various death threats for his involvement in the case. He also stated that they had considered dropping González as a client so as not to put their lives at risk.

The case against González and another suspect appears to be growing weaker by the day as evidence mounts that the men were framed and tortured into confessing to the murders of eleven women in Cd. Juárez.

Escobedo Anaya was married for 12 years at the time of his death and was the father of two girls, ages 7 and 10.

Agents involved in the pursuit have been suspended with pay while they are under investigation.

Sources: El Norte, February 7-10, 2002. Articles by Carlos Huerta. El Diario, February 7, 2002. Articles by A. Rodríguez & R. Ramos.

Cd. Juárez Women's Advocate Fired From Radio Job

Samira Izaguirre, a popular Ciudad Juárez radio announcer that organized a massive, candle light memorial service for the eight young women whose bodies were found in early November, 2001, was fired along with three other radio announcers that all shared the same Radio Cañón talk and news program.

In early January, Izaguirre told Frontera NorteSur that the state government was pressuring Radio Cañón to fire her because she was drawing too much attention to the rape and murder of young women in Cd. Juárez.

On December 2001, Izaguirre went on a radio-announced hunger strike to collect 25,000 candles that would be lit in the field where the bodies of eight young women were found on November 6 and 7, 2001. As part of the memorial service a large, steel cross was planted in the field. Later, Izaguirre and other protesters took the cross and planted it in front of the Chihuahua Attorney General's Cd. Juárez office in criticism of the Office's handling of the murder investigations.

Izaguirre told the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario that she also angered state officials by giving air time to the wives of two bus drivers that are being charged with the murder of the eight women and other women as well. Their cases have fallen under heavy criticism since their arrests but especially since the Attorney General's evidence expert resigned saying that he was being forced to fabricate evidence against the men. The head of the local prison is also out of office because he documented that the bus drivers arrived to him from the Attorney General's Office bearing signs of torture.

Yesterday, February 5, Izaguirre, the three other fired announcers, and at least fifty other people protested outside of the Attorney General's Office, according to El Diario.

"This is the worst case ever of political harassment against journalists in Ciudad Juárez," said Izaguirre.

Previously, an advertisement taken out in El Diario, alleged that Izaguirre frequents strip clubs and runs a bar and is therefore not an appropriate spokesperson for the women of Cd. Juárez.

The advertisement, and others like it which criticized other local women's activists, drew much criticism in the press.

Source: El Diario, February 6, 2002.