Associated Press
February 8, 2002
By Mark Stevenson

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Chihuahua - Lawyers and rights activists denounced what they called a "climate of repression" in the border city of Ciudad Juarez Thursday, after police shot to death a lawyer who was working on a politically sensitive murder case.

Activists claim the Chihuahua state government, embarrassed by its inability to stop a string of up to 260 rape-murders committed here since 1993, has engaged in a campaign to silence criticism of its investigation.

Chihuahua state police said they mistook lawyer Mario Escobedo, 29, for a wanted fugitive when they followed his van and tried to pull him over late Tuesday. They said Escobedo fired two shots at the officers, who then riddled his vehicle with bullets. Escobedo died at the scene.

"This has all the signs of being a crime aimed at executing a lawyer for his work in exposing the illicit means that state police use to extract confessions," said Chihuahua Sen. Javier Corral Jurado.

State Attorney General Jose Silva told a news conference "we regret the death of this person, who, out of confusion or error, did not stop when told to do so." But the victim's father, Mario Escobedo, told local media he blamed the state police for his son's death, and said his son had received telephone calls threatening to kill him unless he gave up the case, in which his client is one of two suspects in the most recent eight murders.

"Ever since we took on the defense of these poor men, we began receiving threats, and they said they were going to leave a little present at our offices," said the father, who is also a lawyer in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Escobedo claimed his client was tortured into confessing to the murder of eight women whose bodies were discovered in Ciudad Juarez in November. Days before his death, Escobedo had announced he would file a criminal complaint against state officials for allegedly kidnapping and torturing his client.

Residents of Ciudad Juarez are frustrated by police investigations that quickly round up suspects and base their cases against them on confessions rather than physical evidence. Like the two men arrested in November after a four-day investigation, most suspects have later recanted their confessions, claiming they were tortured. And after each round of arrests, the rape murders -- which have targeted young women -- have continued unabated.

Sergio Dante Almaraz, who represents the other suspect arrested in November, said he has also received telephone death threats telling him to give up his defense work. Dante Almaraz said he had no doubt that state police were responsible for the threats, but said he would not give up the case.

"The next time you call me, I'll probably be dead, too," Dante Almaraz said in a telephone interview.

Oscar Mainez, the former director of the state police forensics laboratory who resigned in disgust in January over what he called a flawed investigation and signs of evidence tampering, said, "state police are returning to old-style police tactics."

"They are incapable of investigating crimes, but are used for repression, instead," Mainez said.

In separate interviews with the Associated Press in December, two local journalists said they or their editors had been pressured by state officials to tone down criticism of investigations into the politically embarrassing murder cases.

And in January, in an open letter to President Vicente Fox, women's groups here have complained Chihuahua state officials have launched a campaign to discredit and silence them.

Fernando Medina, spokesman for the governors' office, denied anyone had been pressured.