Defense, Prosecution to Appeal in Juarez Murder Case
Associated Press
February 26th, 2003
CHIHUAHUA, Mexico - Both defense and prosecutor lawyers say they will appeal a 20-year sentence against an Egyptian man convicted in one of the first in a series of murders of women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
"I'm innocent!" shouted Abdel Latif Sharif as Judge Hector Talamantes read the verdict and sentence on Tuesday.
More than 80 women have been raped, murdered and dumped in the desert on the outskirts of the border city since the 1993 and the failure of officials to clearly resolve the cases has created a national scandal.
The 1995 arrest of Sharif, a chemist in a border assembly plant, initially seemed to be a major break in a mass-murder case. He had been accused of five of what were then nine slayings.
He was finally convicted in 1999 of one killing, that of Elizabeth Castro Garcia, 17, and was sentenced to 30 years.
But an appeals court ordered a retrial because of problems with the evidence.
On Tuesday, Talamantes acknowledged that there was a 12- to 15-centimeter (5- to 6-inch) difference between Castro's height as reported by her family and that of the body prosecutors say belonged to her. The body also appeared to be dark-skinned while Castro was light-skinned.
But the judge said that there was "much more evidence" - notably the clothes the body was wearing - that confirmed it was Castro.
Prosecutor Antonio Pinon Jimenez said his office would appeal the sentence, seeking a 40-year term. He also said charges would again be lodged against Sharif in other cases.
Defense attorney Saul Martinez Nateras, hired by the Egyptian Embassy, said he would appeal the verdict, arguing that there was not even clear evidence of the victim's identity. Sharif denies having even met Castro.
Sharif was first arrested on Oct. 3, 1995, on charges of kidnapping and raping a 19-year-old woman. Those charges were dismissed one year later, but he was immediately re-arrested on charges of killing Castro Garcia and three other women.
Prosecutors claim he also hired other men to commit several murders in order to divert attention from him.
Apart from Sharif, prosecutors have built only one other strong case in a single murder: bus driver Jesus Manuel Guardado was arrested in 1999 after a girl who was raped, strangled and left for dead in the desert survived and identified him as her attacker.
While it is unclear if a serial killer is involved, the crimes have been quite similar: young, slender women who were kidnapped - usually on their way to work or school. There were raped and strangled and their half-clad bodies were tossed in the desert outside Juarez, a city of more than 1 million across the border from El Paso, Texas.
As the killings continued, state police were increasingly accused of picking up suspects - usually bus drivers, since many of the victims were last seen waiting at bus stops - and torturing them to force them to confess.
Those confessions - like the police's sloppy forensics work - have seldom held up in court. Meanwhile, the killings have continued, and even prosecutors no longer claim the most recent murders have any connection with Sharif.
Some women's' rights groups have said they doubt the cases against Sharif and others arrested, saying police appear to have been seeking scapegoats.
Suspicions were re-inflamed earlier this month when a man accused of involvement in eight of the slayings was found dead in his prison cell of what officials said were complications from a hernia operation.
His relatives - and some women's' groups in the area - charged that Gustavo Gonzalez Meza had probably died of complications from injuries suffered in torture.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press | found at SignOnSanDiego.com