From: Jim Rosenfield <[j n r] at [igc.apc.org]>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: News Stories from the Drug War
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 1995 17:24:46 -0800 (PST)

APn   11/30     Mexico-Drugs

NEW YORK (AP) -- The entire federal police force of a Mexican
state has been transferred after reports that armed men in police
windbreakers helped smugglers unload tons of cocaine from a
disabled jet, a newspaper reported. 
   The Federal Police commander in Baja California Sur and his 29
officers were transferred to headquarters in Mexico City on
Saturday, but weren't arrested, The New York Times said in
Thursday's editions. 
   The newspaper quoted Hector Cruz Solorzano, the state's top
federal prosecutor. 
   According to the Times, Cruz defended the 30 officers, saying
witnesses who saw the cargo transfer failed to identify any of
the federal agents in a police lineup last week. Cruz called
their transfer "a routine rotation." 
   Phones at the Attorney General's Office in Mexico City rang
unanswered late Wednesday. An officer who answered the telephone
at the Federal Judicial Police office in La Paz, Baja California
Sur, referred calls to the state's public information office
during regular working hours. 
   The French-made Caravelle jet went down Nov. 5 at an airstrip
outside the village of Todos Santos, less than one mile from the
Pacific Ocean near the southern tip of Baja California Sur, said
the newspaper. 
   It said fishermen later told authorities they saw 20 armed men
wearing black Federal Police windbreakers help unload the cargo,
which has since disappeared. 
   Cruz said witnesses also told authorities that the armed men,
who arrived in four-wheel-drive vehicles, tried in vain to
destroy and conceal the plane. They cut off its wings, drove a
bulldozer over it and partially covered it with sand.
   The Times quoted unnamed Mexican and U.S. officials as saying
investigators traced the jet's serial numbers to the Cali cocaine
cartel. 
   Colombian smugglers in recent years have begun buying up old
Caravelle and Boeing 727 passenger jets and stripping out the
seats so they can be loaded with tons of cocaine. They are then
flown to clandestine airstrips in Mexico, where the cargo is
unloaded onto trucks and driven into the United States for
distribution and sale. 
   Much of a similar cocaine shipment reportedly mysteriously
disappeared in August 1994 when a big jet landed on an old mining
strip in the central state of Zacatecas. 
   Although reports from Colombia said the plane left the South
American nation with 11 tons of cocaine aboard, police in
Zacatecas reported seizing only 2.7 tons. 
   Officials in Zacatecas have denied any wrongdoing.