Monday, September 12, 2005
FOIA Records Link U.S. Officials to Mass Murder in Mexico
Newly Released Documents Trace “House of Death” Cover-Up to Upper Levels of the Justice Department
A dozen people were tortured and murdered between August 2003 and mid-January 2004 in a house in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas. The murders were carried out as part of a criminal enterprise overseen by Heriberto Santillan-Tabares, who U.S. prosecutors claim was a top lieutenant in Vicente Carrillo Fuentes’ (VCF’s) Juárez drug organization. The reason we know this is because federal agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in El Paso had an informant inside of Santillan’s criminal syndicate. The federal agents, along with a U.S. prosecutor in El Paso, were using the informant to snare Santillan.