18 die in Juárez drug-rehab center 'execution' killings

MEXICO CITY — The deed was stomach-turning: Hooded gunmen burst into a Ciudad Juárez drug-treatment center, gathered together those inside and lined them up before opening fire with semi-automatic weapons. When the shooting was over, 18 people were dead.

Attention focused immediately on the site of Wednesday night's killings, a rehab center where addicts go to get clean, suggesting a new level of depravity in Mexico's drug violence.

It was the third attack on a drug-treatment center in Ciudad Juárez. Chihuahua state authorities said Thursday they were investigating reports that rehab centers have turned into hide-outs for drug smugglers being sought by police and hit men from rival gangs.

Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, Mexico's top law-enforcement official, said rehab clinics were also being used as recruiting and training centers by drug cartels.

He said a recently detained drug suspect belonging to the La Familia cartel oversaw various private, nonprofit drug-rehab centers across western Michoacán state. The suspect, Rafael Cedeño, claimed to have trained 9,000 recruits for the cartel in 2008.

"We're checking to see if there is a link with what we've found (in Michoacán)," Garcia Luna said.

Garcia Luna said that in Michoacán, Cedeño's rehab centers held retreats to train members, and if addicts did not cooperate, they were executed. He said the La Familia gang preferred recovered addicts because they were less likely to touch the drug loads.

What was remarkable about the killings at the rehab center — from which El Paso, Texas, can be seen just across the U.S. border — was how unremarkable that sort of violence has become in the city, which has seen about 3,000 such deaths since the start of last year. In the week before the clinic attack, at least 75 people in the city were killed, including a man who was beheaded, another suspended by handcuffs from a chain-link fence and four other people whose bodies were piled on a sidewalk.

The clinic killings, which President Felipe Calderón labeled "dramatic and terrible," illustrated Mexico's emerging struggle with drug abuse.

"Criminal activity went from being low profile and nonintrusive in the lives of citizens to being defiant and, particularly, violent," Calderón said in his state-of-the-nation speech Wednesday.

"The search for markets for consumption in Mexico has spread practically throughout the whole country," the Mexican president said, defending his government's 33-month offensive against drug traffickers.

Mexico's burgeoning drug trade has fed a growing drug-abuse problem, particularly in border cities where gangs have a heavy presence.

Government data show that addiction rates in Mexico have risen quickly. A government survey released last year found that more than 460,000 Mexicans are addicted to drugs, a 51 percent increase from six years earlier.

The Ciudad Juárez clinic, a converted house called Aliviane, sits in a neighborhood next to the border that is plagued by gangs, prostitution and drug use. On Thursday, the floor of the pink-painted house was coated in blood.

Authorities provided scant detail on the attack. Victor Valencia, public-security secretary for the state of Chihuahua, said 20 people were in a meeting room when the attackers burst in. The gunmen ushered them outside and opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles, he said. Investigators found at least 80 spent casings. Two victims were wounded but survived.

The father of Jaime Saul Perez, a 17-year-old who was slain, said his son had finished eight months of rehab, but continued living at the center to attend prayer meetings. "He was getting out," said Jaime Perez, the father. "He promised me he was going to change."

Valencia, interviewed on Mexican television, said the slayings may have stemmed from a dispute between rival criminal gangs. The El Diario newspaper reported that a number of the dead were members of the Aztecas, a well-known gang.

Ciudad Juárez, a city of 1.3 million, has for more than a year been the scene of the worst violence in Mexico amid the government's war against drug traffickers.

More than 11,000 people have been killed nationwide since Calderón launched the crackdown in December 2006.

Calderón has mobilized 48,000 troops and 5,000 federal police in the nationwide offensive. But despite the deployment of more than 9,000 soldiers and police to Ciudad Juárez alone, the bloodshed continues.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.