Two Assassinations Follow Targeting of Prominent Lawyers

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service

MAZATLAN, Mexico -- The three couples were on their way to a baseball game on a Sunday afternoon earlier this month. Jose Manuel de Alba and two other
federal judges were looking forward to a break from their heavy workload. They stood chatting in front of de Alba's bungalow, waiting for his wife, when a red
Chevrolet pulled up. Out stepped a man who leveled an AK-47 assault rifle and sprayed them with at least 40 bullets.

In seconds, two judges and the wife of one lay dead.

De Alba escaped by running into his garden. A few days later, at his desk in a federal office building, armed bodyguards stood outside his door and he pondered
how violent drug traffickers who have bloodied so much of Mexico have changed him forever.

"Until now, I hadn't thought about the danger, but now I am afraid," said de Alba, 46. He vowed he will no longer ride his mountain bike to work along the
palm-lined streets of this breezy Pacific beach town in Sinaloa state. "I have to be like a bullfighter controlling my fear," he said, his hands trembling. "I have to have
the courage to overcome this and to try to serve society. Because if we let violence, not laws, govern us, then my security doesn't mean anything."

The killing of two federal judges is a dramatic escalation in Mexico's war with organized crime, which had left the judicial branch largely untouched while claiming
police officers, informants and some prominent political figures. No killer has been publicly identified in the judges' slayings, nor is one likely to be. The recent murder
of a prominent human rights lawyer in Mexico City is also unsolved, as is the attempted slaying last week of a lawyer in the city of Monterrey who had represented
key witnesses against a major drug cartel.

The shootings, and the impunity surrounding them, have added to Mexicans' anxiety about security. They also challenge the effectiveness of President Vicente Fox's
promised "war without mercy" against organized crime. Authorities say it is almost certain that organized crime gangs were behind the judges' killings.

"The message to judges is perfectly clear," said Jose Lavanderos, a Mexico City lawyer who serves on a municipal board that oversees the conduct of judges. "It
says: 'Here we are. We have more power than you. We can destroy you whenever we want to.' "

Genaro Gongora Pimental, president of the Supreme Court, has called for police guards for all judges in the federal judiciary, which handles virtually all drug and
major organized crime cases. He called the killings a "crime against the state" and called on Fox to investigate aggressively.

"It seems to me that we wouldn't be sending any message of strength if we say, 'This can be done and nothing will happen,' " Gongora said in an interview published
yesterday in Proceso magazine. "We would be opening the door to the forces of crime."

Sinaloa Gov. Juan Millan this week ordered police protection for all 24 federal judges in this state. "These types of political killings could once only happen in places
like Colombia, but now they are happening in Mexico," Millan said.

Since Fox came to power one year ago, there have been many high-profile drug arrests. U.S. law enforcement officials said they are encouraged by noticeably better
coordination and cooperation with the Mexicans. They say Mexican officials, who in the past have turned out to be secretly on the drug traffickers' payroll, now
appear to be making a genuinely tougher effort against the cartels.

Some believe that the drug-related violence seen now is a response to a government crackdown. They say one reason judges had not been targeted by drug
traffickers very often in the past is that they frequently were bought off. In a state where drug lords coldly offer public officials "silver or lead" -- take a bribe or take a
bullet -- judges have tended to take the money.

Raul Mejia, a law professor at the Autonomous Technical Institute of Mexico, said he believes the killings resulted from the government's struggle against the impunity
often enjoyed by Mexican criminals. He said violence is a "clear sign of decomposition" of the previous relationship between organized crime and corrupt officials.

Jorge Fernandez, of the Institute for Judicial Studies in Mexico City, which helps train judges, said it was too soon to know why the judges were killed. He said he
could not remember the last time a judge was murdered, and it is not clear why drug traffickers would change their long-standing habit of not killing judges.
Fernandez said that unlike in Colombia, where drug gangs kill judges as a method of doing business, Mexico's powerful criminals have usually found it easier to pay
to avoid prosecution.

"Organized crime's greatest penetration has been among police and politicians," Fernandez said. "In Mexico, there are ways to evade justice that don't necessarily
need a judge's decision."

He noted the even those convicted are not necessarily punished, so it has not been necessary to menace judges. For example, he said, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman,
a notorious drug lord sentenced to prison by a federal judge, was able to escape earlier this year by bribing prison officials.

But the violence is unnerving. On Wednesday in the northern city of Monterrey, a lawyer who defended a key drug dealer who had turned government informant
survived the fourth attempt on her life in three years. The lawyer, Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, was leaving a courthouse when gunmen in two cars drove past, spraying
bullets.

The shootings come three weeks after the assassination of Digna Ochoa y Placido, a prominent human rights lawyer in Mexico City whose clients had alleged torture
by the Mexican military or other security forces. Her killer left a note threatening the lives of other human rights advocates.

"When you put [the judges' killings] in the context of other recent executions and threats, it causes a climate of fear," Mejia said.

Said Fernandez: "Now judges can't work because they'll be killed. Lawyers can't work because they'll be killed. It's a climate of insecurity, and things are getting out
of control."

That climate has descended on Mazatlan, a beach resort about 530 miles northwest of Mexico City. Although drug violence is common in the state capital of
Culiacan, this city has remained a gentler place of lazy poolside afternoons and palm trees arching over long sandy beaches.

De Alba has lived here for seven years, raising two daughters in the El Cid neighborhood, an exclusive community of sand-colored houses hugging a golf course. It
was thought to be a cushy assignment for a federal judge. Along with the seaside, there was the Mazatlan Venados baseball team, which plays in a winter league filled
with U.S. professionals. It was a favorite of the judges who died, and that was where they were headed on the afternoon of Nov. 11.

Now, De Alba wonders how he will react the next time a drug case comes across his desk.

"I'll try to handle it. But it's just human nature that I will have some kind of reaction," he said softly. "A child who's never been hit isn't afraid of beatings. The fear
comes after he's hit."

De Alba said he does not know why his two colleagues, Benito Andrade Ibarra, 39, Jesus Alberto Ayala, 43, and Andrade's wife, Maria del Carmen Cervantes,
were killed. He said he and the other judges did not discuss their cases for "security reasons," but he could not think of any court case that might have led to the
shooting.

De Alba's 14-year-old daughter was at a friend's house when the shooting started, but his 17-year-old daughter was home and heard the automatic gunfire. His wife
missed the shooting by seconds. He is thinking about packing up the family and continuing his career as a judge elsewhere.

"I have many things to think about," he said. "Later, when I calm down, I might have a different perspective. But this has changed me. That is certain."

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