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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	Tue, 30 Sep 1997 20:22:54 -0700 (MST)
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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