Approved For Release 2003/09/09
: CIA-RDP96-00788R00 1900750004-7
-
*r\ H
By William A. Orme Jr.
Special to The Wasteigton Post
MEXICO CITY, March 6—The
bodies of kidnaped U.S. Drug En-
forcement
Administration
agent
Enrique Camarena
Salazar
and
a
Mexican colleague were found this
morning near the rural home of a
family of accused narcotics traffick-
ers who died last weekend in a po-
lice
shoot-out,
Mexican
and
U.S.
officials announced.
Preliminary
identification
based
on clothing was made by U.S. and
Mexican authorities this afternoon
in
Guadalajara,
U.S.
Ambassador
M
John Gavin
reported. “There
is a
high degree of certainty that
it is
them,”
said
Francisco
Fonseca,
chief spokesman
for
Mexico's
at-
torney general, adding that a formal
Mexican government statement on
the case might not be issued until
Thursday, “when
all the facts are
known.”
1 The
two men
apparently were
killed shortly after their abduction a
month ago, Mexican sources
said.
Gavin said the two had been dead
“at least 15 days” and he knew of no
evidence to support reports that the.
bodies showed signs of torture. Fch
in
rensjic
reports
were
awaited
on
cause of death.
[In Washington, DEA Acting Ad-
ministrator Jack Lawn said the bod-
ies “had been subjected to physical
violence,” with broken bones but no
bullet wounds. Details on A16.]
Calling the murders of Camarena
and Alfredo Zavala Avelar “losses in
an ongoing war,” Gavin noted that
several
Mexican
police
were
killed—reportedly five-today in a
confrontation with
marijuana
traf-
fickers near San Fernando,
about
70 miles south of Mexico’s eastern
border with Texas.
Although
the
discovery
repre-
-L T
sents “the first real breakthrough p
the case,” apparent discrepanciewn
the officially reported details of me
raid that led to the recovery of the
;
corpses
have
caused
“confusion”
regarding the kidnapers’ presumed
motives and identities, U.S. sources,
said. “There are a
lot of inconsis-
tencies, a lot of holes in the story,
said one.
i
Discovered near
the. city of Za-
mora in the state of Michoacan, the
badly
decomposed
bodies
weret
f.
transported
for
autopsies
ta|
Guadalajara, capital of neighborini|
Jalisco state. Camarena and Zavala|‘
See MEXICO, A16, Col. 1
j
Approved For Release 2003/09/09
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 900750004-7
Approved For Release 2003/09/09
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 900750004-7
)EA Agent’s Bex
^
Lt Site of Mexican Shoot-Out
B Mexican government
pilot who
had
flown
missions
for
the DEA
ghere, had been kidnaped Feb. 7 in
Separate incidents in different parts
of Guadalajara.
|
While the location of the bodies
apparently
was
revealed
by
an
anonymous
Mexican
police
mfor-
nant,
the
$50,000
U.S.
goyern-
nent
reWard
remains
unclaimed,
javin said.
I
The
corpses" were
reportedly
Sound at 4 a.m.
in plastic bags on
property behind the home of Man-
Id
Bravo
Cervantes,
who
was
idfleS on Saturday with his wife and
two
sorts
“a Confrontation with
/lexican
police.' 'A former Micho-
an date cbhWdssman, Bravo Cer-
VaAtes wdHaid by Mexican federal
officials
to
be
involved
in
drug-
runnirig, car theft and highway as-
saults in the Michoacan-Jalisco re-
gion.
"
'
.
-
r “Thfy were not major drug trat-
Ifickers,
one informed U.S. source
'aid.
..
.11
l
According
to
police
reports,
all
|our members of the Bravo family
responded
to
surrender demands
Mth
rifle
fire,
prompting
a
pro-
longed exchange in which one fed-
eral judicial police agent died after
UNITED STATES
Hal JUUi^iai
ieing
hit with 17
bullets from an
lR15 semiautomatic rifle.
When police burst into the fam-
ily’s
modest
cement-block
home,
Bravo Cervantes’ wife, wounded on
the
floor, firecTa Handgun
at the
agents, who shot back and
killed
her, they later reported. Her hus-
band and sons already were dead,
they said.
......
The
gunbattle,
in which federal
and Jalisco state police participated,
provoked an unusual protest from
the
governor
of
Michoacan, who
complained in a message yesterday
to the governor
of Jalisco and
to
Federal
Attorney
General
Sergio
Garcia
Ramirez
that
his
state s
"sovereignty”
had
been
violated.
Michoacan
state
police learned
ot
the
clash “only
after
the
firefight
had begun” and were forcibly kept
at a distance by federal authorities
on
the
scene,
Gov.
Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas said.
Five suspects arrested at or near
the
Bravo home
Saturday
were
brought
to
Guadalajara
for
ques-
tioning and released
late Monday
evening. Among
them
were
the
wives of the two Bravo sons who
died in the gunfight. The two wo-
men were detained, police reports
said,
while
driving
a
car
stocked
with ammunition.
"If this is true, it seems odd that
they would simply be let go,” a U.S.
source commented.
Some local officials and residents
questioned
the
official
account
of
the armed confrontation, with sev-
eral
contending
that
the
Bravos
were denied an opportunity to give
themselves up. “They were victim-
ized,”
said
Octavio
Ortiz,
chief
spokesman
for
Michoacan’s
state
government. If the Bravos had been
arrested alive, Ortiz suggested to-
day in a telephone interview, “they
might also have been released like
the others were.”
The Bravos lived in an unprepos-
sessing two-story home along the
main road in the small rural settle-
ment of La Angostura. Much of the
village turned out yesterday for the
funeral and burial of the Bravo fam-
ily, according to local press reports.
Mexican federal police reported
f^|^J\MEXICO
Guadalaj
'Zamora
BY DAVE COOK—THE WASHINGTON POST
the
confiscation
from
the
Bravo
home of two pounds of cocaine and
several high-powered weapons,
in-
cluding two AR15s and three Mis.
For more than a year prior to his
kidnaping, Camarena was involvedj
in
Operation
Godfather,
a
joint)
U.S.-Mexican investigation of Mex-
;
ican cocaine smuggling. DEA agent
j
Edward Heath, who runs the agen-
cy’s Mexican program, was at the
J
Bravo home this morning to assist
i
in the identification of Camarena s
body, sources reported.
No DEA
agent,
however,
wit-
nessed
Saturday’s
gunfight,
al-
though one arrived “after the dust
had cleared,” the sources said. The
Bravo clan were not among those
suspected of involvement in the kid-
naping by DEA agents here, U.S.
!
sources said.
A
former
federal
police
agent
believed by DEA to have informa-
tion
on
Camarena’s
whereabouts
was released last week after a day
of
questioning. “We
are
satisfied
that he was not involved” in the Ca-
marena abduction, a U.S. Embassy
spokesman said.
U.S.
officials
repeatedly
have
urged
Mexican
law
enforcement
officers to prosecute the leaders of
the “18 major gangs” of traffickers
that DEA says operate
in Mexico.
Yesterday, Luis Octavio Porte Pet-
it, Mexico’s deputy
attorney gen-
eral, formally asked the U.S. Em-
bassy
here
to
provide
“concrete
information”
about
key
figures
in
Mexico’s narcotics trade.
v
Approved For Release 2003/09/09
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 900750004-7
Approved For Release 2003/09/09
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 900750004-7
DEA Cites Data
Indicating Agent
j
Beaten Not Shot
t
.
fv
'
.
•
By Loretta Tofani
- Washington £ost Staff Writer
,
^
The
bodies
found
yesterday
in
Mexico, apparently including that of
a
missing Drug Enforcement Ad-
ministration agent, “had been sub-
,
jected to physical violence,” Acting
DEA Administrator Jack Lawn said
last, night.
Lawn quoted a medical examiner
in Mexico
as saying
the two had
broken bones and one had a gash
across
his
head
that
could
have
been the cause of death.
No bullet wounds were reported,
Lawn
said
at
a
press
conference.
The bodies thought to be those of
Enrique Camarena
Salazar
and
a
Mexican pilot were wrapped in plas-
tic and “dumped on a roadside,” he
^said. The
pilot had flown missions
for DEA.
The bodies, which were decom-
posed,
previously had been buried
at another
location and exhumed,
according to a DEA source.
The bodies were discovered on a
roadside near Zamora by Mexican
federal police, who were acting on a
tip, Lawn
said. Lawn said he
is
in
"regular
contact”
with
the
State
Department, Attorney General Ed-
win Meese and
the White House
about the incident.
Camarena,
37,
Mexican-born
naturalized
American
with
nearly
11 years' experience
at the DEA,
was abducted Feb. 7 as he
left his
Guadalajara
office
to
have
lunch
with
his
wife. An eyewitness
told
DEA
investigators
that Camarena
was grabbed
by
four armed men
and thrown face down
into
a
car.
The
pilot was abducted the same
day in a different section of the city.
Approved For Release 2003/09/09
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 900750004-7