51 ORDINARY CITIZENS HAVE DISAPPEARED

ABDUCTIONS TIED TO SECURITY FORCES, FIGHT AGAINST TRAFFICKERS.

MEXICO CITY The owner of a department store in the provincial capital
of Culiacan was driving to work one morning last September when three unmarked
sedans without license plates surrounded his gray Oldsmobile.

As passersby watched in terror, four men brandishing assault rifles hauled
the man, Romulo Rico Urrea, out of his car, forced him into one of theirs
and sped away.

Rico has not been seen since Sept. 25, 1996. But a notebook dropped in
his car by one of the kidnappers, as well as evidence gathered by military
investigators, links the abduction to Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, the
former head Of Mexico's antidrug agency who was arrested last month on
charges of collaborating with one of the country's most powerful cocaine
barons.

Romulo Rico is one of at least 51 Mexicans who have disappeared in the
last three years after kidnappings in which there were signs of government
security force involvement, according to lists compiled by relatives, human
rights organizations and the press. Now, evidence is emerging to tie many
of these abductions to the war against Powerful drug traffickers, which has
increasingly been under the command of Mexico=92s military.

"We are everyday citizens under attack, caught in the crossfire between
narcos, authorities and narcoauthorities" said Lucia Solis de Jurado,
whose husband, a trader in semiprecious Stones from Ciudad Juarez, was
seized On the front step of his home on Oct. 6,1996. "It has gotten to the
point where it can happen to anyone."

The majority of the victims have no proven ties to drug traffickers or
other criminal activities, relatives and human lights leaders contend,
although a number have had brushes with the authorities.

"They tend to be businessmen, students and other citizens who were going
about their lives," said Oscar Loza of the Commission for the Defense of
Human Rights in the state of Sinaloa, where at least nine people have
disappeared.

Mexico's military has traditionally played a supporting role in the drug
trafficking fight, mainly by eradicating narcotics crops. But shortly
after he took office in 1994, President Ernesto Zedillo facing widespread
corruption in the state and federal police began to place military
officers and troops in key positions in the battle against the drug cartels.

Gutierrez was named Mexico's chief antidrug official in December 1996,
and army officers were given command of state and municipal police forces
in Sinaloa, through which large quantities of drugs flow Just recently,
the army took over narcotics operations in the border state of Baja Califom

Since the arrest of Gutierrez, a number of families of missing Mexicans
have come forward.

The number of known victims growing. There is evidence that in addition
to Rico, five men who disappeared since last September in northern Mexico
were abducted in operations commanded by Gutierrez and carried out by his
deputies during his twomonth tenure as head Of the national drug agency or
before that, when he was the senior commander of the Fifth Military, Region
in central Mexico. The abductions in which Gutierrez appears to have had a
are only a fraction of those reported. The general's lawyers did not
respond to requests for comment.

The disclosures about the kidnappings raise new questions about
Gutierrez's ascent to the highest position in Mexico's war on drugs, and
about Zedillo's moves to expand the role of the armed forces, in the
anti-narcotics campaign.

Several months before Defense Minister Enriqte Cervantes Aguirre
recommended Gutierrez to the president for the top antidrug job, the
Mexican military had substantial evidence implicating the general's two
closest ides in the kidnapping of Rico. both aides were arrested with their
commander on drug charges on February 18th.

The kidnapping allegations apparently never reached the highest levels.
Cervares acknowledged that neither he nor Zedillo had had any doubts about
Gutierrez until about two weeks before his arrest.

Rico's relatives believe he came under suspicion of drug trafficking
because his brother, Miguel Rico Urrea, was falsely accused of drug charges
in 1992 and served prison time before he was cleared. A judge ordered his
release, but the day he was to leave prison he was murdered.

On Sept. 1 1996, soldiers m Culiacan swarned into the house of Enrique Rico
another brother. The raid conduced without a warrant, was led by a brash
officer who identified himself with a name that later proved false.

Romulo Rico was seized nine days later. At first, federal agents told his
relatives he was in custody at their headquarters. But 24 hours later,
the same agents denied they had ever seen him, relatives said.

At about the same time, Rico's wife, Teresa, received an anonymous
telephone call from a man who said her husband had been detained by someone
named Horacio Montenegro Ortiz. The caller said he had seen Montenegro
escorting his prisoner onto a military plane at the local airport.

The family did not recognize the name at the time, but it turned out to
be significant. Montenegro, a former army captain, had long worked closely
with Gutierrez.

Rico's family discovered a notebook that one of his abductors had
accidently dropped between front seats of his car. The scribbled,
sometimes encoded phrases showed that the writer was a military officer who
was in Sinaloa pursuing an inquiry into the murder in Mexico City on Sept.
14 of a leading antinarcotics police commander, Ernesto Ibarra Santes.

The huge operation to find and capture lbarra's killers was commanded by
Gutierrez, senior army commanders recently confirmed.

Unlike many families of the disappeared, the Ricos did not remain silent.

They took the notebook to military and police authorities and human rights
groups in the state and the capital.

In October, shortly before Gutierrez was named commissioner of the
National Institute to Combat Drugs, more than a hundred federal legislators
signed a petition calling for a deeper investigation into kidnapping.