Decade-long run of sexual assaults, slayings targeted

    By ALFREDO CORCHADO / The Dallas Morning News

    CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – Deepening its role in this troubled border city, President Vicente Fox's administration named a special prosecutor Friday to find and punish those responsible for the decade-long string of sex crimes and killings.

    In Mexico City, Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha appointed María López Urbina, his former representative in Coahuila state, to lead a federal team already in place in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso.

    Ms. López, a 15-year veteran of law enforcement, is known as a no-nonsense prosecutor. She said she hopes "to contribute toward a solution of one of the clearest cases of human rights violations, the slaying of women in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua."

    Meanwhile, federal authorities continued the search for bodies in a quiet residential neighborhood of Juárez. Late Thursday, authorities announced they had discovered the 12th body found this week buried in the yard of a house once used by suspected drug traffickers.

    An occupant of the house has confessed to helping kill and bury the victims, all men, on the orders of a police commander and a suspected drug trafficker, authorities said.

    Federal authorities have detained 13 state police officers in the killings and are in pursuit of four others. Officially, authorities say there is no known connection between the graves and the women's killings, but two federal law enforcement officials said their investigation is aimed at determining whether such a link exists.

    Over the years, critics have said that the women's killings have shown law enforcement officials from the state of Chihuahua and the city of Juárez to be incompetent, neglectful or corrupt. Much of the evidence in the cases has been lost, sold or destroyed by authorities, according to sources close to the investigation.

    "The arrests only buttressed what everyone here whispers in loud voices: Any investigation should start with the police force," said Esther Chávez of Casa Amiga, a rape crisis center.

    Since 1993, about 300 women, many of them factory workers, have been slain in Juárez, and at least 96 – most described as pretty and slim, with long dark hair and olive skin – have been victims of what officials have described as ritualistic sexual killings.

    More than a dozen arrests have been made, but only one conviction stands. An Egyptian resident of the United States was found guilty in one of the early killings. That conviction is under appeal.

    The killings have generated worldwide protests. On Friday, Amnesty International announced plans to co-sponsor a Valentine's Day march in Juárez led by Mexican and American actresses, including Jane Fonda, Sally Field and Christine Lahti.

    "Our goal is to keep the pressure on authorities," said Ms. Chávez, whose group is also a co-sponsor. "All we want is justice."

    In October, President Vicente Fox appointed Guadalupe Morfín, a human rights lawyer from Guadalajara, to lead a commission coordinating the efforts of state and federal agencies investigating the slayings.