Frontera NorteSur September-October 2004

Drug Traffickers Blamed for Murder of Tijuana Editor Ortiz

At a press conference on August 18, 2004, Mexican state and federal law enforcement officials said that Francisco Ortiz Franco, the editor of the Tijuana weekly newspaper Zeta, was murdered by gunmen working for the Arellano Félix Organization. Ortiz was shot to death in Tijuana on Tuesday, June 22, 2004 in the presence of his children.

Speaking at the press conference were Antonio Martínez, Baja California's attorney general, and José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, the federal assistant attorney general in charge of Mexico's anti-organized crime office. Santiago stated that the investigation into Ortiz's death had been taken over by federal authorities.

Typically in Mexico murder is investigated by state authorities but when drugs and/or organized crime are involved then the investigation may go to the federal level.

Santiago said that the Arellano Félix Organization's motive for the murder was Zeta's publication of photos of 76 members of the cartel. The photos were later publicized by the FBI, Santiago said.

Santiago also warned that all of Ortiz's killers will be arrested and that his office will not permit attacks against the freedom of expression.

Zeta is known for its in depth coverage of Mexican drug trafficking, a characteristic trait of the publication that it has paid for in blood.

In 1988, Hector Félix Miranda, the newspaper's cofounder, was ambushed and murdered. One of his killers was a bodyguard at a racetrack owned by Tijuana mayor-elect Jorge Hank Rohn. Indeed, one of the theories put forth about Ortiz's murder by Zeta was that Hank Rohn or his associates may have targeted Ortiz because of Zeta's constant election-time attention to the 1988 murder.

In 1997, a team of killers attempted to murder Zeta owner Jesús Blancornelas. Blancornelas' bodyguard and driver, Luis Lauro Valero Elizalde, was killed in that attack which has been attributed to the Arellano Félix Organization.

Source: La Crónica (Mexicali), August 19, 2004. Article by Ernesto Alvarez.

Suspects Named in June Murder of Tijuana Editor Ortiz

More details related to the June 2004 slaying of Tijuana editor Francisco Ortiz Franco have been made known through leaks from the Procuraduría General de la República (Federal Attorney General's Office, PGR).  According to SUN news agency, three former state ministerial police were allegedly involved in the killing of Ortiz. 

Jorge Alberto Briceño López had already been mentioned as a suspect in the case but SUN now names three other suspects, Hernando Villegas Delgado, Jesús Manuel Molina Hernández, and Arturo Villareal Heredía.  All three men are said to have been Baja California ministerial police agents.  

The three men are allegedly in charge of the operations of the Arellano Félix cartel in Mexicali.  Molina is also suspected of being in charge of recruiting former police officers to the cartel. 

Ministerial police in Mexico are in part responsible for bringing together evidence in crimes and deciding if cases will go in front of judges.  Because of their critical position in the prosecution of crimes, they are often targeted for corruption by drug cartels. 

Law enforcement officials believe that Ortiz was targeted by the men because of Zeta's publication of photos of 76 members of the cartel.  The FBI later republished these photos. 

Ortiz, who was the editor of the Tijuana weekly newspaper Zeta, was was shot to death in Tijuana on Tuesday, June 22, 2004 in the presence of his children.

Zeta is known for its in depth coverage of Mexican drug trafficking, a trait that it has paid for in blood.

In 1988, Hector Félix Miranda, the newspaper's cofounder, was ambushed and murdered. One of his killers was a bodyguard at a racetrack owned by Tijuana mayor-elect Jorge Hank Rohn. Indeed, one of the theories put forth about Ortiz's murder by Zeta was that Hank Rohn or his associates may have targeted Ortiz because of Zeta's constant election-time attention to the 1988 murder.

In 1997, a team of killers attempted to murder Zeta owner Jesús Blancornelas.  Blancornelas' bodyguard and driver, Luis Lauro Valero Elizalde, was killed in that attack which has been attributed to the Arellano Félix Organization.

Source: Frontera (Tijuana), September 3, 2004. Article by SUN news agency.

Federal Investigator's Second Report on Juárez Femicides Draws Anger 

"It's pure garbage," Norma Andrade said of the second federal report on the Ciudad Juárez femicides made by Special Investigator María López Urbina.  Andrade, whose daughter's body was found in an empty lot in February 2001, also said that, "They haven't arrested my daughter's killer and as long as they have nothing, I'll continue saying it." 

Family members of femicide victims and NGOs throughout Chihuahua were also disappointed with López's prior report.  On June 3, 2004, López gave her first report to an audience that included Mexican President Vicente Fox and federal Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha.  At that time López said that there were no indicators of serial crimes among the cases that had been analyzed.  

For that first report López and her team examined 50 of the then 307 femicides that had occurred in Cd. Juárez since 1993.  López repeatedly dodged questions about whether any of the 50 cases were from among the more than 100 which fit a serial pattern.  

More Chihuahua law enforcement agents to be investigated

During her second report López stated that slightly more that half of the 307 cases have now been analyzed.   She also said that another 49 Chihuahua law enforcement officials will be investigated for alleged negligence in investigating the crimes. 

López also stated that a DNA bank had been created which led to the positive identification of four bodies.  She added that scholarships have been given to the children of victims and that families receive various sorts of aid from the Instituto Chihuahuense de la Mujer (Chihuahua Women's Institute).

Bus driver gets 50 years

Cd. Juárez bus driver Victor García Uribe was given a 50 year sentence on October 13 by a Chihuahua judge for the rape and murder of eight women whose bodies were found in a cotton field in November 2001.  

Judge Gustavo Muñoz Gamboa said that when he was reaching his verdict he could not take into account the torture that García Uribe allegedly suffered at the hands of state police.  The judge stated there was no proof of the torture in the case.  García Uribe and Gustavo González Meza, who was arrested with García Uribe, both said that they were tortured into confessing to crimes they did not commit.  

González Meza died in jail in February 2003 after routine hernia surgery (for an injury he said he sustained during his torture).  Prior to that, González's lawyer Mario Escobedo Anaya was shot to death by state police when they said they mistook him for a drug trafficker. Escobedo's death was investigated but no charges were made against the agents involved despite the fact that they appeared to have shot their own vehicle to make it look like Escobedo had fired at them.  

FBI chief raises Juárez femicides with Fox in closed door meeting

The director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, had an unannounced visit with President Fox, Mexican Attorney General Macedo de la Concha, and other law enforcement officials on Wednesday, October 27, 2004.  The group discussed terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and other law enforcement issues.  Among the topics brought up was the Cd. Juárez serial killings, according to an Associated Press article.   

It was Mueller's first visit as FBI director to Mexico.  He was appointed as FBI director on September 4, 2001.

US citizen allegedly raped by federal officer in Cd. Juárez

A US woman detained in Cd. Juárez for allegedly driving a stolen car into the country was allegedly raped by a federal law enforcement official on October 26, 2004.  The 23 year old woman said that the attack occurred inside the Cd. Juárez offices of the Mexican federal Attorney General's Office.  

Detained for the rape is Johva David Hidalgo Tovar, an agent with the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (Federal Investigations Agency, AFI).  The US consulate in Cd. Juárez was notified of the case and the woman was released on bond.

Sources: 
El Norte, October 26, 2004.  Article by Francisco Luján. 
El Diario, October 14, 2004.  Article by Javier Saucedo Alcalá. 
Houston Chronicle, October 28, 2004.  AP article. 

Women’s Bodies found in Chihuahua City and Reynosa

The body of a still unidentified young woman was found on Saturday, October 23, 2004 in the Chihuahua City neighborhood of Granjas Cerro Grande.  The victim is estimated to have been between 14 and 16 years old at the time of her death. 

Autopsy revealed that the victim had been beaten to death and her neck had been broken.  Due to the victim’s state of partial undress it is believed that she was raped but forensic experts have yet to complete the necessary tests to confirm this. 

Ramón Martínez Morales, age 24, was arrested in relation to the case.  He and six other men were seen by neighbors forcing the young woman into an abandoned house were they allegedly assaulted her. 

Martínez has denied the charges against him saying that he and the other men were in a bar at the time of the incident.  However, when taken back to the bar, no one recognized Martínez. 

An article in the Chihuahua City newspaper El Pueblo stated that three of the six men seen with Martínez had left the city and gone to work in the United States.  None of the six men have been apprehended.

It may perhaps be seen as progress that a suspect in a Chihuahua City femicide case was presented to the press claiming that he was innocent instead of saying that he had been tortured into confessing to the murder.  David Meza, who was arrested for the murder of his cousin Neyra Azucena Cervantes, told the press that he was tortured into falsely confessing to her murder.  Ulises Perzabal and Cynthia Kiecker, a US citizen, are currently standing trial for the death of Viviana Rayas and both have said that they were tortured into confessing to crimes they did not commit. 

In the Azucena Cervantes/Meza case it was recently revealed by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in California that although DNA testing they conducted confirmed the identity of Neyra Azucena Cervantes’ body, their forensic experts found that, based on photos, the skull and teeth could not have been hers.  Photos of the skull that are with the body show a bullet hole in the skull.  In the confession that Meza was allegedly forced to sign, it is said that he shot his cousin in the head. 

In the Rayas case, the witnesses against Perzabal and Kiecker recanted their stories saying that they were tortured and/or threatened into making false accusations by state police.  

Reynosa Femicide

Despite the deployment of over 1,000 federal law enforcement agents to Tamaulipas cities including Reynosa, an unidentified young woman was murdered and her body was tossed in the city center without anyone being apprehended.  Although press reports are unclear, the young woman was found on either Saturday, October 23 or early Sunday, October 24. 

Found with her hands and feet bound and bearing signs of torture, the victim had been strangled and had a black bag over her head.  A forensic report found that the young woman had been raped.  It was also noted that the victim’s body had been written on with lip stick. 

Because of this last fact, police are considering motives linked to drugs and to a potentially abusive romantic relationship.  The unidentified woman was found to be very malnourished and authorities believe that this may indicate that the young woman had a substance abuse problem. 

The Tamaulipas on-line news source EnLínea Directa also mentioned the possibility that the city is confronting a possible serial killer.

Sources:
El Pueblo (Chihuahua City), October 25, 2004.  Article by Héctor García. 
El Diario de Chihuahua, October 25, 2004.  Article by Enrique Perea Quintanilla.
EnLínea Directa, October 24, 2004.  Article by Erasmo Sánchez. 

Body of Young Woman Found in Juárez 

The body of a young woman was found on Wednesday, October 6, 2004 in Ciudad Juárez.  The woman is still unidentified but is estimated to be 25 years old.  An unidentified source in law enforcement said that the woman had been raped and was strangled to death. 

The woman has long brown hair and brown skin.  She was wearing blue jeans and a navy blue T-shirt that said "Grupo Chicago".  The woman has a mole on her right cheek and an old scar from a Cesarean section.  

According to the Chihuahua City newspaper El Heraldo, after news of the discovery was aired on television, many parents went to see if the body was that of a missing family member.  

The head of the special state taskforce that is investigating the Cd. Juárez femicides, Angela Talavera Lozoya, and the federal investigator into the killings, María López Urbina, both were at the crime scene according to the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario.  

While López was at the scene, an area resident on a hilltop yelled down to her saying that she did not want her neighborhood to became another Lomas de Poleo.  Lomas de Poleo is where many bodies were discovered in the 1990s.  

A separate story in El Diario stated that López will reveal more results of the federal investigation on October 25.  However, before that time, she wants to meet with the new governor of Chihuahua, José Reyes Baeza, to inform him about the specifics of her work. 

Sources: 
El Diario, October 7, 2004.  Article by Armando Rodríguez. 
El Heraldo de Chihuahua, October 7, 2004.  Article by Moisés Villeda and Jacinto Segura. 

Man Framed for 1999 Murder of Japanese Businessman in Tijuana?

An article in the Tijuana newspaper Frontera casts doubt on the guilt of Jorge Román Frausto who is serving a 23 year sentence for the murder of Japanese business executive Jiro Sasayama.  Frontera (no relation to FNS) revealed in a September 20, 2004 article that Román's alleged accomplice had changed his testimony in front of a judge and that a key witness has said she never pointed out Román or anyone else in a police line up.  Sasayama was killed in Tijuana on May 4, 1999 when he resisted a car-jacking carried out by two men. 

Hugo Buenrostro Ramírez, who was 15 years old when he allegedly confessed to being Román's partner in the car-jacking, was said by police to have confessed to the murder of Sasayama shortly after the killing.  However, court documents show that on May 10, 1999 Buenrostro said in front of a judge that he had never read the confession he signed for police.  On that same occasion he stated that he had never known Román before the killing and had never accused him of the crime. 

In the case against Román, the Baja California attorney general's office only presented one witness.  This was Karla Edith Gamiño de la O.  However, Gamiño told Frontera in an interview that she had never pointed out a suspect to police from photos they gave her to look at or from two line ups of men that they had arranged for her. 

"They stuck me in a room and showed me thousands of photos," Gamiño said.  "The family members of those arrested were outside.  I told them [the police] that I didn't know who it was and could not tell them who it had been.  They pressured me to tell them [and] one of them took me by the arm.  They put five suspects in front of me and then five more.  I never pointed even one of them because I couldn't, I couldn't remember."

Finally, Frontera noted that a test for gunpowder on Román's right hand came back positive meaning that he had fired a gun near the time of Sasayama's death.  However, according to the papers in Román's case notes, he is left handed.  The gun powder test on his left hand came back negative.  

Source:  Frontera (Tijuana), September 20, 2004.  Article by Omar Millán González.

Missing Young Woman From Pharr, Texas Found by Reynosa Police

A young woman, age 14, who had been missing from Pharr, Texas for nearly half a month was located earlier this week by two Reynosa city police officers.  According to her mother, the 14 year old had been missing since early September after she left to dance in a club in Reynosa's red-light district. 

The young woman's mother had previously sought the help of the Reynosa police in finding her daughter.  Eventually the girl was spotted near a bus station by a pair of officers.  She was accompanied by 28 year old man who said he was a security guard in a Reynosa bar. 

After the young woman's mother proved to Reynosa police that she was indeed the mother of the 14 year old, the family was taken to Mexican immigration officials.  From there the pair was handed over to US officials in the middle of the Reyosa-Hidalgo bridge. 

No charges were filed by Mexican authorities against any of those involved.  The man that was with the 14 year old when she was found by police proved to the satisfaction of the police that he was only walking with her and had not had a physical relationship with the young woman. 

Source: EnLínea Directa (Reynosa), September 15, 2004.  Article by Erasmo Sánchez. 

Tamaulipas Journalist Dies From Beating in Matamoros 

Tamaulipas journalist and professor of journalism Francisco Arratia Saldierna died in Matamoros on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 from wounds he sustained after being abducted, tortured and beaten earlier in the day.  The nature of the torture sustained by Arratia suggests that he may have been killed because of his work as a journalist. 

Arratia is the fifth area journalist to be murdered in recent years.  None of the murders have been resolved according to the on-line, Tamaulipas news source EnLínea Directa.   

Arratia's death also comes after the March 2004 killing of Nuevo Laredo editor Roberto Mora García (http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/mar-apr04/Matamorosnews.html) and the June 2004 murder of Tijuana editor Francisco Ortiz Franco.  

According to EnLínea Directa, at 1:30 p.m. on August 31, Arratia argued with two men that had entered a business owned by Arratia's son in law.  Arratia left the business and headed home in his car but  was intercepted by the men he had argued with at the business.  Arratia was not seen again until 2:50 p.m. when he was thrown from a moving car near the city's Red Cross hospital. 

Emergency medical personnel and doctors from the hospital responded immediately but Arratia died three hours later, apparently from a heart attack brought on by the beating.  Due to his injuries, Arratia was incapable of describing or identifying his attackers.  Arratia was found with his wrists bound together, and his shirt, wallet and cell phone missing. 

According to one state investigator, Arratia's "fingers had been crushed and were very black as if someone had put them in acid."  EnLínea Directa interpreted this as a clear message that Arratia had been killed because of his reporting.  

Arratia was working with EnLínea Directa at the time of his death and was working with or had worked with El Imparcial, El Regional, El Mercurio and El Cinco.  His age was given by EnLínea Directa as 55 although Reynosa's El Mañana put his age as 60.  

State officials say they will bring to justice those guilty for Arratia's death no matter who was behind it.  It should be noted that they said much the same thing in relation to the case of Nuevo Laredo editor Roberto Mora García.  However, many people in the state believe that the gay couple arrested for that crime, Mario Medina and  Hiram Oliveros Ortiz, were scapegoats tortured into confessing to Mora's death.  Medina, a US citizen, was murdered in jail on May 13, 2004 despite reassurances from Mexican officials that he would be kept safe. 

Sources: 
EnLínea Directa (Reynosa), September 1, 2004.  Article by Erasmo Sánchez and Julio Manuel Guzmán. 
El Mañana (Reynosa), September 1, 2004.  

Laredo Mother Searches for Missing Daughter in Nuevo Laredo

Mirna Jaqueline López Villanueva, an 18 year old woman from Laredo, Texas, has been missing in Nuevo Laredo since the early morning hours of Friday, August 20, 2004. López is a US citizen that resides in Laredo, Texas.

According to her mother, whose name was not used in a story in the Nuevo Laredo newspaper El Mañana, López phoned her mother on Monday morning and told her that she was trapped in a blue room, entirely alone.

During their brief conversation López told her mother that she was in downtown Nuevo Laredo in the early morning hours of Friday, August 20 when she was hit, almost knocked unconscious and then put into a vehicle.

In a report she gave to the Tamaulipas state police, López's mother said that her daughter did not know whether or not the vehicle was a police vehicle or if she was being held in a jail. Her daughter also said that she was being held by a number of men and one woman, none of whom wore a uniform. None of her captors would identify themselves either.

The woman's mother believes her daughter may have been kidnapped or that she is being held by law enforcement.

It was not explained how López managed to make a phone call to her mother.

The young woman's mother said she had gone to all of the city, state and federal police offices to look for her daughter but without results.

Source: El Mañana (Nuevo Laredo), August 25, 2004. Article by Juan Rodríguez.

Press Association to Protest Killings of Mexican Journalists

In October 2004 the Inter American Press Association will publish an advertisement in 250 newspapers throughout the western hemisphere that will ask the Mexican government to punish those responsible for killing journalists in that country.  So far in 2004 three Mexican journalists including two editors have been murdered.  Recent actions against the Tijuana newspaper Frontera (no relationship to FNS) are also a concern for the IAPA. 

The most recent Mexican journalist to be killed was Francisco Arratia Saldierna, a Tamaulipas writer, who died from a beating on August 31, 2004.   Roberto Mora García, the editor of El Mañana in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas was murdered in March.  Francisco Ortiz Franco, the editor of the Tijuana weekly Zeta was killed in his car in front of his children in June 2004. 

The IAPA has expressed concern about attacks against Tijuana's Frontera newspaper.  On September 9 and September 11 gunfire destroyed parts of the main entrance and windows in parts of the newspaper's buildings.  On June 7, 2004 a vehicle abandoned in the newspaper's parking lot was found to contain 800 kilograms of marijuana.  

Rafael Molina, chairman of the IAPA's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, states that with respect to Mexico the IAPA "is alert of the situation of violence against the press that has been on the rise this year, and is especially concerned over the attacks that have been occurring on the country’s northern border."

He also said that press freedom in Mexico will be brought up at the IAPA's annual meeting in October.  The meeting will be in Guatemala this year. 

The IAPA, known in Spanish as the Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa , or SIP, is based in Miami.

Source: IAPA web site.