Suspect in border
slayings extradited to Mexico
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By MARINA MONTEMAYOR
Associated Press
Writer
CIUDAD JUAREZ,
MEXICO --
A Mexican citizen
who allegedly confessed to killing at least 10 women in the violent
border city of Juarez was back in his home country on Wednesday to face
justice.
Jose Francisco
Granados de la Paz was extradited on Tuesday to stand trial for
aggravated homicide in a string of slayings of women, the U.S. Justice
Department said. He was expected to appear before a Mexican judge next
week.
Granados de la Paz,
30, allegedly acknowledged to Mexican and Texas authorities that he
killed at least 10 women near Ciudad Juarez from about 1993 to 2006 as
"offerings to Satan," according to the extradition complaint.
The U.S. Justice
Department said the extradition is the first use of a special provision
of the U.S.-Mexico Extradition Treaty that allows suspects to serve the
remainder of their sentence in another country.
In April 2006,
Granados de la Paz was sentenced to more than three years in prison for
immigration violations in the U.S. He has been serving time at the
Lewisburg Federal Prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, but will serve the
rest of his sentence in Mexico, in addition to any sentence he may
receive from a Mexican court.
"By working
together, we ensure criminals are brought to justice on both sides of
the border," U.S. Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich
said in a statement.
The extradition
request was granted last year and focused on Granados de la Paz's
alleged confession to stabbing Mayra Juliana Reyes Solis in 2001.
Her body, and the
remains of four other women, were found five months later in a canal in
Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
In 2006, Denver
police arrested a suspected accomplice, construction worker Edgar
Alvarez Cruz, whom Mexican authorities have charged with the killing.
Alvarez Cruz owned and was driving the car in which Reyes Solis was
killed, according to excerpts from Granados de la Paz's confession that
were included in the extradition complaint.
During the decade
that ended in 2003, more than 100 women disappeared in Ciudad Juarez.
Many of them were young women last seen in the city's downtown area or
after boarding buses. The victims' bodies were often dumped in the
desert outside the city.
Activists in Ciudad
Juarez said they weren't convinced Granados de la Paz was involved in
the killings, mostly because previous investigations of the killings had
been botched.
"We are going to pay
close attention to what Granados de la Paz does, what he says, how he
says it, given that he has said he was too high on drugs to have carried
out the killings," said Victoria Caraveo of Women in Search of Justice.
