Time: Wed Oct 01 04:29:17 1997
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Tue, 30 Sep 1997 20:33:30 -0700 (MST)
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Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 20:22:26 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Report links Mexican police, car-drug ring, Sep 30 (fwd)
<snip>
>
>San Antonio Express-News, September 30, 1997
>
>
> Report links Mexican police, car-drug ring
>
>
> By Philip True , Express-News Mexico City Bureau
>
> MEXICO CITY - Federal authorities have uncovered a
> ``stolen-cars-for-cocaine'' ring in which Mexican smugglers exchange
> South American cocaine for cars stolen here, then send it north for
> sale in the United States.
>
> State judicial police officers in the state of Morelos have set up a
> network of chop shops that repaint stolen cars and change their
> serial numbers, then send them in caravans to the Guatemalan border,
> the Mexico City daily Reforma reported on its front page Monday.
>
> There, on a farm that ostensibly grows bananas for export, the cars
> are exchanged for cocaine brought overland from South America by
> Guatemalan smugglers, the newspaper reported.
>
> Accompanied by high-quality false documents, the cars are then sold
> on the open market in Guatemala.
>
> At the farm, the cocaine is repacked, hidden among boxed bananas and
> shipped in trucks to the United States, sometimes escorted by
> Mexican federal highway police.
>
> The discovery last month of more than 130 pounds of cocaine hidden
> in a government airplane carrying 19 drug-enforcement pilots working
> for the federal attorney general's office - or PGR by its Spanish
> initials - could be related to the ring's work, the article said.
>
> A spokesman for the PGR on Monday refused comment on the article,
> and U.S. drug-enforcement officials working in Mexico couldn't be
> reached.
>
> Reforma cited newspaper articles from the Morelos capital of
> Cuernavaca that said the state judicial police official formerly in
> charge of recovering stolen automobiles allegedly headed the ring.
>
> The official, Obet Lopez Rodriguez, who was sacked two months ago
> after being discovered riding with a woman near Cuernavaca in a car
> for which he had no documentation, has obtained an injunction
> against his arrest.
>
> Several members of the band, now held by state authorities on car
> theft charges, allege that Lopez was their leader.
>
> Lopez couldn't be reached for comment.
>
> The author of the Reforma article, Daniel Lizarraga, made headlines
> here when he was kidnapped for several hours Sept. 5 while
> investigating the cocaine found in the PGR airplane.
>
> Lizarraga said he thought his kidnappers appeared to be federal
> judicial police from the PGR.
>
> He was driven around, beaten, asked about his investigation and told
> his family would be harmed if he continued.
>
>
> (c) 1997, San Antonio Express-News
>
<snip>
========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine
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