Jailed Suspect Sharif Remains In Mexican Jail
By Diana Washington Valdez
El Paso Times
Egyptian chemist Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif has been at the center of the serial deaths controversy in Juárez since his arrest six and a half years ago.
Chihuahua state authorities said he was responsible for 20 or more serial killings. But while he was in jail women continued to be killed in the same manner as the previous victims attributed to him. Sharif’s case, like aspects of this saga, is filled with contradictions, allegations of wrongdoing, officials pressured to resign and threats.
Sharif’s arrest was the first of at least 17 in the serial killings that have raised questions and created doubts about the state’s investigation.
"People no longer buy the idea that Sharif did it all," says Esther Chavez Cano, a longtime Juárez activist. "People have lost confidence in the authorities."
Sharif was in the United States in 1993 when the first of the suspected serial killings was discovered.
"I did not kill anybody. I did not pay anyone to kill any of these women. Someone else is getting away with it," said Sharif, who was living in Midland when a federal court in El Paso ordered him deported to Mexico in June 1995.
He was forced to leave the United States because of his criminal record in Florida, where he had served time in prison for sexual battery.
Sharif first was arrested in Juárez on Oct. 3, 1995, when authorities alleged that he raped a prostitute. His former lawyer, Mario Chacon, said "medical tests proved that no rape had occurred. However, the authorities kept him in jail."
Since then, Chihuahua state authorities have accused Sharif twice of masterminding the killings of 24 young women in Juárez. Both times, in 1996 and 1999, Mexican officials allegedly were forced to resign their posts after refusing to cooperate with higher-ups in the homicide cases against Sharif. The officials included ex-Cereso Director Abelardo Gonzales.
In 1996, authorities alleged that Sharif paid a gang called the Rebeldes (Rebels) to kill as many as 17 women. In 1999, officials said he hired five bus drivers and an El Paso man to kill seven women. Both times, officials said, the motive was to deflect suspicion from himself.
In 1999, a Chihuahua state judge cleared Sharif of all the earlier charges related to the Rebeldes gang. After that, the same judge convicted him of the 1996 murder of Elizabeth Castro and sentenced him to 30 years in prison. Sharif appealed, and a court revoked the sentence two years ago. But Sharif remains in jail.
"I’m afraid ... I don’t know what’s going to become of me," Sharif said.
Sharif’s previous lawyers said corruption has kept the former Texas resident in prison for crimes he didn’t commit.
"In Sharif, the authorities found the perfect scapegoat," lawyer Maximino Salazar said.
Gustavo De La Rosa Hickerson, a Juárez lawyer and Cereso director in 1995 and 1996, said he monitored Sharif and the alleged Rebeldes members closely, "and I never saw any evidence that they plotted together to kill anyone."
Sharif’s lawyers also claimed the description of Castro’s body does not match the body authorities said is hers. Castro’s family was unwilling to have the body exhumed but wouldn’t say why.
Because some of the victims attributed to Sharif had bite marks, his teeth were examined to determine a possible match, said Dr. Irma Rodriguez, the Chihuahua state forensic specialist who worked on the case.
"Sharif’s teeth did not match," she said.
At one point, Sharif was charged with the death of Elizabeth Ontiveros, who turned up later at police offices to show that she was alive. The body that had been identified as Ontiveros was exhumed and determined to be that of Silvia Rivera Salas, a teen-ager whom police said was stabbed to death by two other men.
Police also said Adriana Torres, a 1995 victim, was seen with Sharif the night before she disappeared. But her family said that was not true; she was with them that entire night.
Ex-state police officials Francisco Minjares and Antonio Navarrette supervised the 1996 investigations against Sharif and the Rebeldes.
Minjares, who stepped down in January as chief of Chihuahua state’s anti-kidnapping unit, resigned abruptly after the federal attorney general’s office asked to see his files on dozens of forced abductions in Juárez that dated back to 1993. He denied any wrongdoing in the investigations.
Sharif’s previous lawyers alleged that Navarrette pointed a gun at a witness who testified against Sharif while her testimony was videotaped. The witness in the 1996 case appeared to speak normally, but a judge threw out the taped testimony after defense lawyers showed him where the tape had been edited.
Navarrette, who also denied any wrongdoing, was accused later by a police superior of protecting drug dealers. He laughed off the accusations and said, "The investigation against Sharif and the Rebeldes was the most expensive and professional investigation we ever had in the state of Chihuahua."
Navarrette was not charged with any crime. He retired from the city police force last year and is active in politics.
Former Cereso Director Gonzales said he was forced to step down after he refused to alter the prison’s visitor logs to help state officials prove their 1999 case against Sharif. Gonzales said the five men accused of conspiring with Sharif to kill women in the second case never visited Sharif’s cell.
Former Chihuahua state prosecutor Suly Ponce, who supervised the 1999 case against Sharif, said he "is a psychopath who should be locked up for life." She said during a radio interview that Sharif’s Egyptian background contributed to his aggression against women.
Ponce also denied that officials tortured the five Juárez bus drivers and El Pasoan Victor Moreno, who had a petty crime record before the murder charges against him.
She alleged, as did prosecutors before her, that Sharif got the money to pay his accomplices from patents he developed for U.S. companies. She said he kept the money in secret U.S. bank accounts. Working with Chihuahua, the FBI found no evidence of such bank accounts. Although Sharif had developed 17 patents for a couple of companies, his former employers said he received no royalties or other income from them.
"None of the inventors are paid for (the patents), said former employer David Harry, an executive with Benchmark Research and Technology. "They, including Sharif, developed these patents for us as a part of their employment."
"Sharif was a brilliant chemist ... I considered him a friend," Harry said.
Sharif said, "I wish it were true that I had all this money. I would be able to pay a lawyer to represent me now. I don’t have anyone who can appeal my case to higher courts, and I can’t afford a private investigator to help me."
But Sharif’s record in the United States was damaging.
Police Capt. Sadie Darnell of the Gainesville, Fla., Police Department, said her department considered Sharif a predator of women and asked the INS to deport him. She also said he claimed to have a doctorate, which was "bogus", and used several aliases. She said he had two convictions for sexual battery.
Chihuahua state authorities moved Sharif and Moreno and the other suspects they alleged had killed for him to the Chihuahua City prison, about 230 miles south of Juárez. None of them is being processed through the courts on formal murder charges.
Sharif was awaiting the outcome of a conference of forensic specialists who provided findings on the Castro case. Chihuahua City prison Director Rafael Nieto Castrana said June 18 that "as far as I know, Sharif is pending sentencing by a state judge."
Copyright 2002 El Paso Times