Anonymous - 11-22-2004 at 02:52 AM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041121/news_lz1e21...
By Joel Simon and Carlos Laura
November 21, 2004
Violence grips Tijuana two years after leaders of the powerful Tijuana drug cartel were arrested or killed, leaving rival gangs to shoot it out in the
bustling streets in a battle over lucrative drug smuggling routes. Editor Francisco Ort?z Franco, gunned down in broad daylight in a quiet
neighborhood near downtown Tijuana on June 22, is believed to be a victim of this bloody turf war.
Ort?z Franco was killed in a well-orchestrated assassination just two blocks from state police headquarters. An editor and reporter at the muckraking
weekly Zeta, Ort?z Franco was a quiet, unassuming, and meticulous journalist who had only recently begun to write about the drug trade. Federal
prosecutors, while not discounting other possibilities, have publicly linked the murder to the Tijuana drug cartel, which is controlled by the
Arellano F?lix family. Investigators believe that Ort?z Franco was killed because of his work as a journalist and are considering stories he wrote
about the Arellano F?lix cartel as the probable motive.
"The fact that federal prosecutors have taken over the case is a very important step forward," said Jesus Blancornelas, the editor of Zeta. "There is
political will at the highest level of the Mexican government to solve this crime. Now that the investigators have identified the suspects, they need
to prosecute the killers and bring them to justice."
On the morning of June 22, Ort?z Franco, known to his friends as Pancho, was returning from a doctor's appointment in a largely residential block
close to downtown. He had taken the week off from Zeta, where he was the tabloid's co-editor, to be treated for facial paralysis that may have been
induced by stress. On the orders of his doctor, he was taking it easy at home, leaving only to travel back and forth to the clinic. He gave the
bodyguard who usually accompanied him the week off.
Ort?z Franco's two young children had come with him to the clinic that morning, and they walked back to their car, a blue Chevrolet, parked at the end
of the block. He buckled 11-year-old H?ctor Daniel and 9-year-old Andrea into the backseat, walked around the car, and got in. Before he could start
the engine, a black Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled alongside, and a man wearing a black wool ski mask jumped out. The gunman fired four times from a
.380-caliber handgun through the driver's side window, hitting Ort?z Franco in the chest, head and neck and killing him instantly, according to the
editor's widow, who has reviewed the case file. The killer climbed back into the Jeep Cherokee and sped away. The murder took mere seconds.
Ort?z Franco's children scrambled out of the car and took refuge in the home of a neighbor. They later told their mother that the handgun made only a
small popping sound that would not have attracted much attention. Police suspect that a silencer was used.
Five minutes after the murder, Blancornelas received an urgent phone call from state Attorney General Antonio Mart?nez Luna telling him that a Zeta
staffer had been shot. Blancornelas quickly went through the office to account for his employees ? forgetting in the panic that Ort?z Franco was out
sick.
Blancornelas dispatched a photographer, his son Ram?n Blanco, and a reporter, Lauro Ort?z Aguilera, the half-brother of Ort?z Franco, to cover the
shooting. Arriving about 10 minutes after the attack, they found the crime scene cordoned off by yellow tape and a municipal police team conducting a
forensic analysis. When they saw the car, they realized to their horror that Ort?z Franco was the victim.
Later that day, Mexican President Vicente Fox telephoned Blancornelas to promise federal support for the investigation, which was then being carried
out by the state police under Mart?nez Luna. Journalists in Tijuana and throughout Baja California organized marches demanding justice.
The week after the murder, Zeta published an investigative article naming several possible suspects, including gunmen linked to the powerful Arellano
F?lix drug cartel.
The Arellano F?lix brothers, who run the cartel, were set up in the drug business by their reputed cousin, Miguel Angel F?lix Gallardo, who ran his
drug empire out of Culiacan in Sinaloa state until he was jailed in 1989 for the murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena.
F?lix Gallardo built his empire by smuggling locally produced marijuana and heroin across the border to the United States, but the Arellano F?lix
brothers took the business in a different direction. Using their control over the lucrative Tijuana-San Diego border crossing as leverage, the
Arellano F?lix brothers made a strategic alliance with Colombian traffickers to move cocaine into the United States. They used the enormous profits to
buy off state and municipal police and relied on brutal but selective violence against their rivals ? particularly the new leadership of the Sinaloa
cartel that emerged after F?lix Gallardo was jailed.
Many of the Arellano F?lix cartel's most ruthless gunmen were recruited from violent street gangs in San Diego's Barrio Logan. The leader of the
Barrio Logan assassins was a veteran gangster named David Barr?n Corona, who earned the Arellano F?lix family's loyalty by saving two of the brothers
from an ambush. In November 1997, Blancornelas published an article identifying Barr?n Corona as one of the top cartel enforcers.
Just weeks later, on Nov. 27, Barr?n Corona and a team of assassins ambushed Blancornelas while he was on his way to work. Blancornelas' bodyguard,
Luis Valero, was killed in the attack, and Blancornelas was gravely wounded. The assassination attempt failed only because Barr?n Corona was killed by
one of his own gunmen when a bullet ricocheted and struck him in the eye.
The attack on Blancornelas received intensive coverage in the Mexican and international media. Spurred by the popular outrage, the Mexican government
launched a counteroffensive against the cartel. In 2000, several AFO top lieutenants, including the cartel's financial mastermind, Jes?s "Don Chuy"
Labra Aviles, were apprehended and jailed. In March 2002, Mexican authorities arrested cartel leader Benjam?n Arellano F?lix. A month earlier, his
brother Ram?n, the cartel's chief enforcer, was killed in Mazatl?n in what some said was a trap set by the Sinaloa cartel, led by Ismael "El Mayo"
Zambada.
"The Arellano F?lix organization has been damaged by recent killings and arrests," says Special Agent John Fernandes, who heads the DEA's San Diego
office. "This has created an opportunity for other groups to gain territory." Specifically, they opened the door for Zambada and the rival Sinaloa
cartel to move into the border city, several sources say.
Journalists in Tijuana report a surge in violence, attributing it in part to the move by the Sinaloa cartel to infiltrate the city. State Attorney
General Mart?nez Luna disputes this claim but acknowledges that there have been a number of "spectacular crimes" that have drawn public attention.
Shootouts and executions have become commonplace in downtown Tijuana this year, but few were as brazen as the murder of former Assistant State
Attorney General Rogelio Delgado Neri, who was gunned down while having a drink at Ruben's Hood bar in January.
The battle also involves political control, including influence over the state and municipal police, according to Tijuana human rights activist Victor
Clark. "Zambada has a presence here through his relationships with police, businesspeople and politicians," Clark said. "The Sinaloa cartel has begun
to buy the loyalty of former Arellano associates, and they are providing information to Zambada."
While weakened, the Arellano F?lix cartel continues to spread around millions of its own in bribes to municipal, state and federal police, FBI
Supervisory Special Agent John J. Blake said.
The corruption that pervades Tijuana's public agencies has had a profound impact on the press. Many of the sources journalists use in Tijuana, from
police to government officials, have links to the cartels and a vested interest in passing along to the media damaging information about rival
organizations. Though cognizant of the overall risks, journalists are typically unaware of the specific relationships. Inevitably, members of the
media fall into two camps: the few who follow up on these leads and thus put themselves in danger, and the many who simply shy away from sensitive
news.
Ort?z Franco seldom wrote about drug trafficking during his long tenure at Zeta, but he began to develop new sources in the months before he was
killed. In April, he interrupted a vacation in Las Vegas to meet with a source in Mexico City, according to Blancornelas. After that meeting, Ort?z
Franco wrote a story alleging that an Arellano F?lix lieutenant named Arturo Villarreal Albarr?n ("El Nalg?n") had led the Jan. 21, 2004, hit on
former prosecutor Delgado Neri. Ort?z Franco was so nervous about the story he asked that it run in Zeta under Blancornelas' byline. Blancornelas
agreed, using his colleague's reporting to rewrite the story in his own style. Villarreal could not be located for comment.
Blancornelas said the source for that story was a lawyer in Delgado Neri's law office named David Valle. Analysts and legal sources say there is wide,
if unproven, speculation that the Arellano F?lix cartel killed Delgado Neri because he had made a deal with rival traffickers.
Mart?nez Luna disputes that notion, saying that Delgado Neri left the state prosecutor's office because of "operational" issues, and that he was
killed for refusing to help a group of drug traffickers.
Blancornelas accuses Valle of giving Ort?z Franco's name to the traffickers who killed him. He points out that the Delgado Neri story was published
under Blancornelas' byline and that only Valle, as the main source in the story, could have known that Ort?z Franco had done the reporting. Valle has
gone into hiding along with a second lawyer from Delgado Neri's office and could not be reached for comment.
A few weeks after the Delgado Neri story, Ort?z Franco published a second story on drug trafficking, this one under his own byline. On May 4, FBI
Special Agent Blake held a press conference in San Diego and made public photographs from dozens of fake police credentials used by Arellano F?lix
cartel members. Blake noted during the press conference that the men in the photographs had worn the same jacket and tie, suggesting that the photos
were mass-produced. In his May 14 story, Ort?z Franco drove home this point, noting that "according to Zeta's sources, the participation of someone
from the state Attorney General's Office was necessary" to prepare the credentials.
Ort?z Franco's story didn't break much news, but by publishing the photographs prominently in a Tijuana newspaper he deeply angered the traffickers.
As one source notes about the men in the photos, "These guys lived double lives. Now, all of a sudden, their kids know daddy is not really a
policeman."
Murder is a state crime in Mexico, and the initial investigation into the Ort?z Franco killing was headed by the state Attorney General's Office under
the direction of Mart?nez Luna.
This made Blancornelas deeply nervous. The state police in Baja California have a long history of corruption and ties to the Arellano F?lix cartel. In
one notorious incident from March 1994, state police protecting one of the Arellano brothers shot it out with federal police in Tijuana and then
helped the drug trafficker escape.
To many Tijuana reporters who spoke with the Committee to Protect Journalists, the fact that Ort?z Franco was murdered just two blocks from state
police headquarters suggests police complicity or indifference. For Blancornelas, that sense was compounded by the failure of state police to arrive
at the crime scene until about 30 minutes after the murder, according to the account of Ram?n Blanco, the Zeta photographer. Blancornelas was also
disconcerted by the call from Mart?nez Luna minutes after the murder informing him that "someone from Zeta" had been killed. How, Blancornelas
wonders, did Mart?nez Luna know this if his officers had not even arrived at the crime scene?
Mart?nez Luna told CPJ that he learned that a Zeta reporter had been shot from Tijuana's emergency call center, which got the first call. It was not
clear how the caller knew.
He said he believes that his agents were at the scene less than 10 minutes after the murder but "would have to check the file." Mart?nez Luna pointed
out that state police are detectives who investigate crimes, not first responders. He said his office pursued the investigation vigorously and was in
frequent contact with Blancornelas.
Three hours after the crime, police recovered the getaway Jeep Cherokee after it was abandoned, apparently because the assassins switched to another
vehicle. But there was little additional progress until August, when federal authorities took over the investigation. At an Aug. 18 press conference
in Tijuana, federal prosecutor Jos? Luis Vasconcelos said they were taking over the case because several men under arrest for separate crimes had
identified the killers and linked the murder to the Arellano F?lix cartel. The connection to drug trafficking, a federal offense in Mexico, opened the
door for federal investigators to take over.
On Sept. 2, the Mexico City daily El Universal published a story identifying members of the Arellano F?lix cartel, including "El Nalg?n," as suspects
in the Ort?z Franco murder. The story, which was attributed to an unidentified source in the federal Attorney General's Office, also reported that
"former state police agents, who are the principal operators of the Tijuana cartel in the city of Mexicali ... are among the six suspected of carrying
out the crime, and two of them are suspected of being the physical authors of the crime."
In an interview with CPJ in Tijuana, Mart?n Levario Reyes, the special federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation, confirmed that gunmen from
the Arellano F?lix cartel were the leading suspects, and that Ort?z Franco was likely killed in reprisal for his reporting. But Levario Reyes
cautioned that the investigation was ongoing, and the Attorney General's Office did not yet have enough evidence to request arrest warrants.
Undercover agents from the AFI, the Mexican equivalent of the FBI, are conducting the investigation. CPJ sought additional records of the case in a
Sept. 29 letter to Vasconcelos, but the Attorney General's Office denied the request, citing a Mexican law that prohibits releasing such information
to anyone other than immediate family.
For Blancornelas, federal authorities' willingness to discuss the case with CPJ was a positive sign. But the acknowledgement by Levario Reyes that
federal authorities are not ready to issue arrest warrants troubles him and the Zeta staff, who are acutely aware that getting warrants for powerful
drug traffickers requires great determination and political will.
Until then, the brazen murder of Ort?z Franco continues to cast a pall over the Tijuana press corps. The persistent violence against journalists, as
well as the overwhelming impunity for those who commit such crimes, means that the drug traffickers are free to intimidate the press ? and thus censor
the news. On June 7, drug traffickers left a car loaded with marijuana in the parking lot of the Tijuana daily Frontera and then called a local
television station to report that the newspaper was involved in drug trafficking. The station reported that the drug-laden car was a plant, but the
traffickers' message was clear: You accuse us of drug trafficking, but we can just as easily accuse you.
Reporters at Zeta, including Blancornelas, project calm and determination, but the Ort?z Franco murder was a devastating blow. The names of its slain
staffers ? including editor H?ctor F?lix Miranda and security guard Luis Valero ? remain on the newspaper's masthead marked by black crosses, an eerie
reminder of the cost the newspaper has paid. Meanwhile, Blancornelas is a virtual prisoner, moving only between home and office accompanied by 20
heavily armed bodyguards provided by the Mexican army.
"I feel remorse for having created Zeta," says Blancornelas, four months after Ort?z Franco's murder. "After losing three colleagues, I believe the
price has been too high. I would have liked to retire a long time ago ... [but] I cannot allow drug traffickers to think that they were able to crush
Zeta's spirit, and our readers to believe that we are afraid."