MEXICO AGENTS KIDNAPPED 4, PROSECUTOR SAYS

TIJUANA, Mexico - Federal agents from Mexico's elite antidrug force
were involved in the kidnapping and torture of four assassins linked
to a drug cartel who appeared in a grisly video that ended with the
murder of at least one of them, according to a senior Mexican federal
prosecutor.

The videotape, which was first described Thursday in The Dallas
Morning News, caused an uproar in Mexico because the four men claimed
to have killed a journalist working for the cartel and said they
planned to kill a former attorney general and a police chief in the
border town of Nuevo Laredo.

But the prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, discounted those
claims, saying it appeared the men had been coerced into saying
certain things by their interrogators, who have not been identified.

The videotape shows one of the four men, who belonged to a feared
group of professional assassins known as the Zetas, being shot and
killed at the end of the interrogation. The other three men have
disappeared and are presumed dead, Mr. Vasconcelos said.

Excerpts of the videotape were posted on the Internet. In the
videotape, the four men, bloodied and bound, appear before a curtain
of black garbage bags.

They describe themselves as assassins for a drug gang known as the
Gulf Cartel and detail how they tortured and killed their enemies.
They imply that they are in Nuevo Laredo.

But Mr. Vasconcelos said at a news conference in Mexico City on
Thursday that the four men were actually kidnapped in Acapulco in May
by corrupt federal agents working for Edgar Valdez Villareal, an
American-born gangster known as La Barbie.

He has been linked to Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman, a drug kingpin who
has been waging a brutal turf war with the Gulf Cartel, Mr.
Vasconcelos said.

So far, the government has arrested eight agents and two civilians in
connection with the kidnapping. Three other agents and seven more
civilians are being sought for questioning in the case, prosecutors
said.