Drug war death tolls a guess without bodies

REYNOSA, Mexico (AP) — Heavy gunfire echoed along the main thoroughfare and across several neighborhoods in a firefight that lasted for hours, leaving perforated and burned vehicles scattered across the border city.

Social media exploded with reports of dozens dead. Witnesses saw at least 12.

But the hours of intense gun battles in Reynosa on March 10 gave way to an official body count the next day of a head-scratching two.

The men who handle the city's dead insist the real figure is upward of 35, likely even more than 50. Ask where those bodies are and they avert their eyes and shift in their seats.

Cartel members, they say, are retrieving and burying their own casualties.

"Physically, there are no bodies," said Ramon Martinez, director of Funerales San Jose in Reynosa, who put the toll at between 40 and 50. "It's very delicate."

If Reynosa is an example, even the government can't count how many are dying from drug violence. The Felipe Calderon government stopped counting in September 2011. Since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office Dec. 1, the government has issued monthly statistics, saying that January killings were down slightly from December, and that February saw the lowest number of killings in 40 months — without providing numbers for the other 39 months.

Even officials have trouble settling on a figure. In April, the mayor of a town in Sinaloa state told news media that at least 40 people had died in shootouts between armed men and soldiers. State police later said seven. Local news media said 13.

Mexico City's Reforma newspaper is keeping its own count. It says the killings in Pena Nieto's first 100 days exceed those in the first 100 days of his predecessor, who intensified the country's assault on organized crime.

In Reynosa, the fight for territory has caused at least four major gunbattles this month, the result of a split within the Gulf Cartel after the Mexican government made significant blows to its leadership. The biggest was the capture of Gulf capo Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez in September, leaving a power vacuum and the anticipation that the battle would intensify south of the Texas border in northeast Mexico, a region that has seen some of the most horrific violence.

Michael Villarreal, also known as "Gringo Mike," had moved against the man recently appointed by Gulf cartel boss Mario "Pelon" Ramirez Trevino to run the cartel's business in Reynosa, U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the situation said Monday.

The local boss heard Villarreal was coming for him and, with Ramirez's support, beat back Villarreal and his men.

"They went in to whack him and got whacked themselves," said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and had no independent count of how many people died in the battle.

State authorities said that "armed civilians" fought their way through the city across the border from McAllen, Texas, on March 10, blocking streets and leaving two bystanders dead. The day after the battle, a spokesman at the local army base said the fighting was among "delinquents," usually shorthand for cartel gunmen.

"It's illogical," said one funeral director, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons, speaking four days later. "People here agree that more than 50 have died."

After all, the fighting lasted for hours in a densely populated city and the government said it seized 22 vehicles afterward. The local media as usual reported nothing, leaving residents to rely on Twitter and other social media, where details can be exaggerated.

That funeral director said his company used to pick up the bodies from shootouts and take them to the city's morgue. But that stopped about a year and a half ago when his management decided to step back and a new funeral home started taking all that business. He said they let it go because they often weren't getting paid for their services in those cases, but he added, "We live with fear here."

His company still drives bodies to the morgue, "but not this kind of people," not people who die in shootouts, he said.

A man washing down a forensics van at the city morgue under the gaze of soldiers referred questions about the body count to a supervisor downtown. That supervisor kicked inquiries upstairs, where an investigator with the state attorney general's office pulled out two thin manila folders and said, "officially, only these two."

They were a 37-year-old taxi driver shot through his windshield and an 8-year-old boy shot inside his father's car at a convenience store. His father was also hit in the neck, but survived.

An employee at another funeral home, who also declined to give his name for safety reasons, said they too used to go to the crime scenes to transport bodies to the morgue, but now they don't bother. Either the bodies are already gone or the authorities take them.

"People say there were many (bodies), but where are they?" he asked.

His competitors say Martinez at Funerales San Jose knows the answer. Without logos on their shirts or vehicles, San Jose's people pick up the bodies, competitors say.

One competitor at first said he had no idea where Funerales San Jose was located. Later he acknowledged he did know, but was afraid to share it.

San Jose is a white stucco building on a small lot in a residential neighborhood near schools and a supermarket. Unlike its competitors' polished showrooms, plush furnishings and uniformed attendants, it is a small, spare operation.

A young man in T-shirt and jeans sat on a chair in its empty gravel lot playing with his phone. Martinez arrived in a pickup with flashy rims and welcomed a visitor into his office. The cramped room, which smelled heavily of cigarettes, doubled as the showroom. With a wave at the eight caskets, some still wrapped in plastic, stacked along two walls, he said, "I'm tiny, small."

One competitor said Martinez cremates the gunmen he retrieves. Martinez said that was ridiculous and guessed that the cartel takes them to their own secret graves.

Martinez, the only funeral director who agreed to be identified, didn't seem surprised by the allegation though.

"It's like all businesses, there's jealousy," he said.

Martinez is the new guy in town. He expanded about two years ago from Diaz Ordaz, a smaller town and hotbed of cartel activity about 25 miles up the border. That's about when his competitors say they stopped getting the bodies from shootouts. Martinez said Reynosa's established parlors just don't like the competition.

Word had apparently trickled onto the street that Funerales San Jose does the mopping up. Martinez said that since Sunday's shooting, at least 10 people had come to him looking for their loved ones. He declined to share their contact information saying it was confidential. He said he took down their descriptions and promised to call if they turn up, but he swears he hasn't received any bodies.

Authorities drive by his business all the time, Martinez said. If he were taking bodies without the proper documentation, he'd wind up in jail, he said.

"I provide a public service like any other," he said.

That afternoon, March 14, a few miles away on Miguel Hidalgo, one of Reynosa's main arteries, traffic glided slowly through the city's center where the four lanes curve to parallel a canal.

A silver Jeep Grand Cherokee was parked on one corner. A young man, clad in jeans and a casual shirt faced traffic, his head swiveling from side to side. He held an AK-47 style assault rifle with its signature curved ammunition clip. More men, similarly armed, piled out of the Jeep and moved with purpose along the side of a building where still more armed men waited. The Jeep and a large grey pickup briefly backed into traffic and then quickly disappeared up the side street.

Traffic continued unabated. A block away people strolled down the sidewalk, and the street window washers splashed and scraped the windshields of cars waiting at the stoplight.

In the hours that followed, social media burst again with reports of gunfights and photos of bullet-riddled trucks.

The next day, the state announced that gunmen had battled soldiers and state police at various points in the city.

Officially, one gunman was killed.

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Christopher Sherman can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/chrisshermanap .

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Bodies exhumed in killings tied to Mandela ex-wife

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Forensic scientists on Tuesday exhumed two bodies believed to belong to young activists last seen 24 years ago at the home of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as police said they have opened a new murder investigation.

The case reopens a dark chapter in the life of the then-wife of Nelson Mandela. Many South Africans still revere the 76-year-old as "the mother of the nation," but others have feared as a vengeful and heartless operator. She had "the blood of African children on her hands," her former friend Xoliswa Falati told South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In the late 1990s, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that Madikizela-Mandela was responsible for the disappearances in November 1988 of 21-year-old Lolo Sono and his friend Sibuniso Tshabalala, 19. But nothing was done to pursue allegations she was directly involved in their killings, even though her chief bodyguard Jerry Richardson told the commission he and a colleague stabbed the young men to death on Madikizela-Mandela's orders.

Mortuary records indicate the two bodies that were unearthed on Tuesday had multiple stab wounds

In front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Madikizela-Mandela denied all knowledge of the two and said allegations she was involved in six other killings were rubbish. Madikizela-Mandela could not be reached for comment.

Richardson was head of the Mandela United Football Club, a crowd of young men who acted as Madikizela-Mandela's bodyguards and also as vigilantes who, some charge, she used to get rid of enemies.

On Tuesday, the African National Congress party — which Madikizela-Mandela serves as a recently re-elected member of the National Executive Council — orchestrated the ceremony that brought more than 100 family members to watch the uncovering of the skeletal remains believed to belong to Sono and Tshabalala.

Most attendees responded only lukewarmly to traditional ANC slogans, causing one official to urge them to respond with more vigor. Another told them to "make sure everyone knows you are ANC families."

ANC officials tried to prevent family members, some of whom have accused Madikizela-Mandela of killing their sons, from talking to reporters.

John Sono, uncle of one of the missing men, insisted on speaking, saying "We are getting some relief because we know that we are closing the chapter of 'we don't know' and we are opening the chapter of 'here lies our son.'"

When a journalist asked if he wanted justice, Sono said, "That one is still very far, we still need to talk about it," before an ANC official shoved his hand in front of TV microphones saying "No, no he can't answer that one."

Piers Pigou, the senior investigator for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission who cross-examined Madikizela-Mandela during its hearings, told The Associated Press that "I think the standard of proof used by the Truth Commission basically established prima facie (enough evidence to prosecute) cases against Mrs. Mandela and members of the Mandela United Football Club, including in the disappearances of Sono and Tshabalala."

Pigou said he found it particularly distressing to know that the men's bodies were taken to the mortuary the day after they disappeared, and that police were unable to link them to the two missing men who were being desperately sought by their families.

The commission lambasted police investigations into the disappearances, causing some to wonder whether the incompetence was purposeful. Pigou said there was "a pattern of incredibly incompetent investigations" with an "enormous number of missing dockets."

"Does it add up to a conspiracy or not that investigations were not being pursued when they could be pursued?" he asked.

This time, the two new murder dockets have been opened by the Hawks, the police priority investigative unit, Capt. Paul Ramaloko told The Associated Press.

He said there had been no investigation since the original case was opened and 1988 and closed soon after. "It's too early to be saying if we have suspects or not," Ramaloko, the Hawks spokesman, said, but added they were asking anyone with information about what happened 24 years ago to come forward.

Asked if investigators would be questioning Madikizela-Mandela, he said "At this stage we don't have an affidavit or statement guiding us to that direction, but should it transpire at a later stage, we would obviously do the right thing ... Whoever the investigation identifies as the suspect in this case, we would obviously bring the person forth to answer some questions."

At the truth commission, Nicodemus Sono, father of one of the missing men, described how Madikizela-Mandela had come to his home with his son held at gunpoint and his face bruised from beatings, in November 1988. Sono said she had demanded photographs and documents, telling the father that his son was a spy for the apartheid police.

Sono had begged her to give him back his son. But he said she had driven away saying "the movement" would decide what to do with him.

Nomsa Tshabalala, mother of the other missing man, accused Madikizela-Mandela of killing her son when she gave testimony to the commission. "I would request Winnie to give Siboniso back to me. I want Siboniso or his bones and remains," she said. "She knows, deep inside of her, she knows . I'd like to find out as the where my son has been buried."

On Tuesday, she stood with a stern face at the grave site at Avalon Cemetery as scientists wielding miniature trowels and paint brushes delicately uncovered a skeleton caked in red clay.

Madeleine Fullard, head of the missing persons department of the National Prosecuting Authority, cautioned the families that DNA tests must be done and it could be months before a definitive identification is made. Family members already have submitted DNA samples.

Fullard said her team stumbled on mortuary records a year ago that led to Tuesday's exhumation. An anthropologist in search of other records came across a document indicating the bodies of two young men with multiple stab wounds had been found lying in a field the day after the young men had disappeared. Those bodies had been buried in a paupers' grave with others at Avalon.

The scientists then searched through "hundreds, hundreds and more hundreds" of dusty archived dockets before they found the photographs of the bodies found in the field. All bodies brought to mortuaries are routinely photographed.

When they took the photos to the families and the young men were identified, everyone cried, including the scientists, Fullard said.

In 1991, Madikizela-Mandela was sentenced to six years' jail for kidnapping and assault in the death of 14-year-old James Seipei "Stompie" Moeketsi, who also had last been seen at her home and who was beaten to death. She appealed, the assault conviction was overturned and the sentence reduced to a suspended jail term.

Madikizela-Mandela could not immediately be reached for comment. She had been openly contemptuous of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission where she made an appearance 15 years ago. She has said that the commission headed by Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu had wrongfully sacrificed justice for reconciliation. She said Tutu never once asked her about all the years of torture, assault, death threats, banishment and 18 months of solitary confinement that she suffered while her husband was imprisoned and she became a leading symbol of the struggle in South Africa.

Tutu had begged her for the truth. "If you are able to bring yourself to say something went wrong, I beg you, I beg you, I beg you," he said. "You are a great person and you don't know how your greatness would be enhanced if you were to say: 'Sorry, things went wrong. Forgive me.'"

The commission noted her contempt "not only for the commission but for the notion of accountability." She had been incensed that the commission treated victims and perpetrators of apartheid equally.

"They have a nerve to suggest that freedom fighters who fought for freedom must account for their actions while the perpetrators of the worst atrocities are walking the streets laughing at the efforts of our struggle," she said at the time.

The final report said: "The commission finds that those who opposed Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela and the Mandela United Football Club, or dissented from them, were branded as informers, and killed. ... The commission finds further that Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela herself was responsible for committing such gross violations of human rights."

Madikizela-Mandela was separated from Mandela in 1992, two years after he was released from 27 years of incarceration. Their divorce was finalized in 1996. In 1994 he was elected president of South Africa, with the all-race vote marking the final blow to apartheid, the cruel system of white rule.

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Nigeria: Video shows bodies of foreign hostages

KANO, Nigeria (AP) — A video posted online appears to show the corpses of some of the seven foreign hostages abducted by Islamic extremists in northern Nigeria and later killed, a gruesome warning of the growing dangers in the region.

The video, viewed by The Associated Press on Monday, matched still images released earlier by the Islamic extremist group Ansaru when it claimed the killings. The face of one of the corpses in the video also resembled that of one of the hostages already named by authorities.

European diplomats said Sunday that the hostages had been killed.

On Monday, Nigerian Interior Minister Abba Moro told the BBC's Hausa language radio service that those nations said that it was "likely" that their citizens had died in the attack.

"We hope they're alive," Moro said. Moro did not respond to requests for comment Monday from the AP. Nigerian officials often speak to the BBC Hausa service, as it is viewed as one of the dominant independent news sources in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north.

In the video, a gunman stands in sand, holding a rifle near what appears to be dead bodies. A later shot in the video shows three male corpses, one of whom appears to have been killed by a gunshot wound to the head from a high-powered weapon.

The video has no sound. An accompanying caption for the video in Arabic calls it: "The killing of seven Christian hostages in Nigeria." Another description includes the statement Ansaru released Saturday claiming that it killed the hostages, signed by a man with the nom de guerre Abu Usamatal Ansary.

Ansaru fighters kidnapped the foreigners Feb. 16 from a camp for the construction company Setraco at Jama'are, a town 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Bauchi, the capital of Bauchi state. In the attack, gunmen first assaulted a local prison and burned police trucks, authorities said. Then the attackers blew up a back fence at the construction company's compound and took over, killing a guard in the process, witnesses and police said.

Those kidnapped included four Lebanese and one citizen each from the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy. Local officials in Nigeria initially identified one of the hostages as a Filipino, something the Philippines government later denied.

The gunmen appeared to be organized and knew who they wanted to target, leaving the Nigerian household staff at the residence unharmed, while quickly abducting the foreigners, a witness said.

In an online statement Saturday in which it claimed the killings, Ansaru said it killed the hostages in part because of reports in the Nigerian press of the arrival of British military aircraft to Bauchi. However, the local news articles cited by Ansaru reported that the airplanes were spotted at the international airport in Abuja, the nation's central capital 180 miles (290 kilometers) southwest.

The British Defense Ministry said Sunday the planes it flew to Abuja ferried Nigerian troops and equipment to Bamako, Mali. Nigerian soldiers have been sent to Mali to help French forces and Malian troops battle Islamic extremists there. The British military said it also transported Ghanaian soldiers to Mali the same way. Ansaru had said it believed the planes were part of a Nigerian and British rescue mission for the abducted hostages.

Nigerian authorities have yet to comment publicly about Ansaru's claim, and the news of the killing of the hostages comes as the nation's security forces remain unable to stop the guerrilla campaign of bombings, shootings and kidnappings across the country's north. The majority of those attacks have been blamed on Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group that grew out of the remains of a sect that sparked a riot and a security crackdown in Nigeria in 2009 in which about 700 people were killed.

Boko Haram has hit international targets before, including an August 2011 car bombing of the United Nations office in Abuja that killed 25 people and wounded more than 100. An online video also purportedly claims that Boko Haram is currently holding hostage a family of seven French tourists who were abducted from neighboring Cameroon in late February. The group is blamed for killing at least 792 people last year alone, according to an AP count.

Ansaru, which analysts believe split from Boko Haram in January 2012, seems to be focusing much more on Western targets. Analysts say it has closer links to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and cares more about international issues, as opposed to Boko Haram's largely local grievances. But much remains unknown about Ansaru, which has communicated through short, sometimes muddled online statements.

The hostage killings appear to be the worst in decades targeting foreigners working in Nigeria, an oil-rich nation that's a major crude supplier to the United States. Most kidnappings in the country's southern oil delta see foreigners released after companies pay ransoms. The latest kidnappings in Nigeria's north, however, have seen the hostages killed either by their captors or in military raids to free them, suggesting a new level of danger for expatriate workers there.

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Associated Press writer Sunday Alamba contributed to this report.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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