cannabisnews.com: Mexico Ties a Mass Grave to Abduction and Cocaine 





Mexico Ties a Mass Grave to Abduction and Cocaine 
Posted by FoM on May 14, 2000 at 15:04:31 PT
By Sam Dillion
Source: New York Times
In 1995, after a Texas jury had acquitted him of cocaine trafficking, Alberto Ochoa Soto, reportedly a member of a Colombian drug cartel, was driven to the top of the arched international bridge over the Rio Grande and released into Mexico, where his lawyer greeted him, witnesses have said. 
As the two met on the bridge, however, a Chevrolet Suburban drove up the bridge, and several men with Mexican Federal Judicial Police credentials seized Mr. Ochoa and the lawyer, Antonio Tarazón Navarro, shoved them into the car and roared off into Mexico. For five years, little news emerged on their fate, until this week, when Mexican and American authorities announced that they had identified six of nine bodies unearthed by forensic experts from the Federal Bureau of Investigation from three mass graves near Ciudad JuaŔrez. That border city is a staging point for drug shipments into El Paso. Beyond their names and nationalities, little is known about five of the six men whose remains were identified. But the sixth skeleton was identified as that of Mr. Tarazón, who was 42 when he disappeared. The brazen abduction of the two men is well known to human rights and legal investigators, who have pressed authorities in the United States and Mexico for justice in scores of border executions in which, as in this case, the Mexican police have been implicated. Mr. Tarazón's skeleton was exhumed on a ranch 43 miles west of Juárez, the senior prosecutor who heads the Mexican Organized Crime Unit, José Trinidad Larrieta, said on Thursday. Mr. Tarazón was killed by gunshots to the neck and face, Mr. Larrieta said. A DNA test that used a blood sample provided by Mr. Tarazón's sister definitively identified the remains, Mr. Larrieta added. Mr. Tarazón was found buried with one other man, and Mexican and American agents presume that the remains are those of Mr. Ochoa, who was 51 when he disappeared. An American who has spoken with F.B.I. agents about the case said the agents had obtained blood samples from Mr. Ochoa's relatives in Medellín and were awaiting results of a DNA test. At the time Mr. Ochoa and Mr. Tarazón vanished, a financial dispute was simmering between Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, and, according to court records and American investigators who have studied the case, the Mexican police appear to have acted as contract killers in the pay of a powerful Mexican trafficker. Mr. Ochoa had been arrested in Texas and charged with importing six tons of cocaine. But the jury in El Paso acquitted him at his trial months later, court records show. On Feb. 15, 1995, he was released across the bridge. An American who has interviewed the Tarazón and Ochoa families said when Mr. Tarazón greeted his client he was wearing dark slacks, a gray shirt and black loafers, the same clothes found with the remains, Mr. Larrieta said. After the men had been shoved into the Suburban, all that was known was that Mr. Tarazón left a message on an answering machine at an associate's office saying Mexican federal agents were holding him. Meanwhile, Mr. Ochoa's Mexican wife had reported his detention to federal police officers in an office of the agency in Juárez. With Mrs. Ochoa listening, a federal agent telephoned colleagues, who acknowledged that they had Mr. Ochoa and Mr. Tarazón in custody, the American who has interviewed Mrs. Ochoa said. The agent assured Mrs. Ochoa that her husband and Mr. Tarazón were in no danger and told her to get back in touch the next day. When she phoned back, however, the agent was no longer in the office, and she was never able to re-establish contact with him or to learn more about the or fate of the two men, until Mr. Larrieta's announcement this week. The prosecutor identified three other skeletons as Americans who had lived in El Paso. They were Jesús Alonso Provencio, Marcelo Javier Aguilar Molina and Guillermo Jesús Rojo. The other two skeletons were identified as Ignácio del Real Fierro, a Mexican who lived in El Paso, and Raúl Alarcón Sánchez, a Mexican who lived in Juárez. No one has been charged in the executions, Mr. Larrieta said. By Sam DillionPublished: May 14, 2000Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company Related Articles:Drug Lab Found At Site of Mexican Mass Graves http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread4010.shtmlFrom Bad To Worse http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3984.shtmlValley Of Death http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3977.shtml Mass Graves Found Near Mexican City http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3829.shtmlInvestigators Dig for Mass Graves at U.S.-Mexico http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3826.shtmlRaiding Mexico's Killing Fieldshttp://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3821.shtml 
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