Ernesto Ibarra Santes, the federal police commander in Tijuana, Mexico, fearlessly vowed to topple a vicious drug organization that controls the busiest cocaine corridor into the United States.
Twenty-eight days after he took office, Ibarra, along with two government agents and a taxi driver, was gunned down in a cab outside Mexico City's airport.According to statements filed in federal court in San Diego, Ibarra's Sept. 14 assassination was committed by members of the Arellano Felix drug organization. The attorney general of Baja California, Mexico, and his officers routinely provided protection to the Arellanos and told them about Ibarra's last trip to the capital, according to one of the statements.
The statements of three admitted members of the organization are contained in extradition papers for Emilio Valdez Mainero, an alleged Arellano henchman arrested in the United States. The papers have provided a behind-the-scenes look at an assassination already widely believed to be the work of the Arellanos.
According to testimony given to Mexican authorities, the Arellanos - led by brothers Benjamin, Ramon, Javier and Francisco - have been able to coordinate major assassinations with the aid of the attorney general of Baja California, Jose Luis Anaya Bautista.
No charges have been filed against Anaya, and he denies the allegations.
The cohorts also said the Arellanos had on their payroll Mexican immigration agents who waved cocaine shipments across the border.
Most of the cocaine entering the United States comes from Mexico, and most of it passes through the Arellanos' undisputed turf - Baja California, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Mexican officials wanted Valdez, 32, for allegedly gunning down an aspiring boxer over a personal grudge in 1996 at a Holiday Inn in the state of Mexico. Valdez - the godfather of one of the Arellanos' children - was arrested in September in Coronado, Calif. An extradition hearing began Thursday for Valdez and another man.
Gerardo Cruz Pacheco, a former presidential security guard, told Mexican officials he helped the gunmen escape after the Holiday Inn murder by forming a wall of cars as they drove off. Cruz also said he transported weapons used in Ibarra's slaying.
Another Mexican, questioned by prosecutors while in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Encinitas, Calif., said the hit on the 50-year-old Ibarra was planned carefully by Arellano organization members.
"Wear black clothes," the man, Gustavo Miranda Santacruz, said he was told by his superior. "Take out your . . . AK-47, and you are going to (expletive) him right now."
Miranda infuriated his boss by refusing to do the hit because he had plans to go shopping with his family. He ended up in the hospital with gunshot wounds he said were inflicted by a member of the Arellano organization.
A significant portion of the men's statements were taken in Mexico by officials putting together the case against Valdez and his companion at the time of his arrest, 25-year-old Alfredo Hodoyan de Palacios.
Hodoyan was taken into custody for carrying an AK-47 He later was charged with several murders, including Ibarra's.
Peter Lupsha, an expert on drug trafficking and former professor at University of New Mexico, said this case suggests that a corrupt Mexican government thwarted previous drug investigations.