State agents on Monday said they had begun investigating 54 of the 81 officials cited for incompetence in a federal report analyzing a decade-long string of killings of women in Ciudad Juarez.
Jesus Antonio Pinon, attorney general for Chihuahua state, where Juarez is located, said his office is considering criminal charges against 54 officials, including eight prosecutors, 12 forensic scientists and 21 state police officers.
Some of those under investigation have since left their posts, but all were employed by Chihuahua between 1992 and 1998 and were involved in investigating homicides against women in Juarez, he said.
The remaining 27 state officials listed in the federal report have yet to be properly identified, Chihuahua's top law enforcement official said.
"These are errors committed by our colleagues," Pinon said. "But everyone make mistakes, from the attorney general right down to the prosecutors."
This month, a report presented by Maria Lopez Urbina, the special prosecutor charged with getting to the bottom of the Juarez slayings, scrutinized the first 50 cases of the 307 women known to have been killed here since 1993.
Lopez Urbina determined that 81 investigative officials, including detectives, forensics experts and police officers, lost evidence, contaminated crime scenes and had been sluggish to act to protect women who had complained of domestic abuse and other threats.
The federal review did not turn up evidence of a serial killer. It was Lopez Urbina's first report since she was named to the post six months ago.
Human-rights groups applauded the report, but questioned whether Chihuahua officials investigating their own state colleagues will do a fair job in determining wrongdoing. But Pinon said special internal affairs agents who have been vetted by anti-corruption experts are heading up the investigation of the current and former state officials.
Lopez Urbina said at least 307 women had been killed since 1993 in the city of 1.3 million across the border from El Paso, Texas. About 100 of the killings were similar in nature, with the victims sexually assaulted, strangled and dumped in the nearby desert -- leading to fears of serial killers.
Human-rights groups in Mexico and around the globe say the government has vastly undercounted the number of victims here since 1993, however.
Also on Monday, forensics experts using DNA evidence identified two of the women whose bodies were discovered dumped in the desert.
Family members claimed the body of Maria Elena Chavez and accompanied it to the nearby border town of Anapra for a public viewing on Monday night and yesterday morning.
Chavez's body was discovered in a desert clearing in southern Juarez in October 2000, four months after family members had reported her missing. Exactly what killed the 16-year-old maid remains unclear and her case is among those unsolved.
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