Families Left in Dark After Tragedies in Mexican Jails : Human rights: Many turn to Joe Amado for help after his tireless pursuit of the truth in his brother’s death.

In the 10 months since his brother’s death in a Rosarito jail cell, Joe Amado has been championing the causes of other families who allege that their relatives have been abused--or murdered--while in the custody of Mexican police.

Where Amado has received some answers in his brother Mario’s death--obtaining, for example, an autopsy declaring it a homicide--other families still search.

Some families sought out Amado. In some cases, he tracked them down, later briefing U.S. officials or reporters on their cases as well as his own. Last week, after helping organize a news conference for the family of a Los Angeles man killed in a Guadalajara jail April 14, Amado flew to Puerto Rico to tape a Mexican talk show and discuss his brother’s death and other incidents in Mexican jails.

Mexican authorities say they thoroughly investigate all allegations of abuse in their jails. U.S. officials say they can express concern about the treatment of U.S. nationals abroad but have no power to influence the affairs of a sovereign country.

Following is a sampling of the unsettled cases Amado is pursuing. Mexican officials deny any wrongdoing in all the cases.

* Last August, William Yost, a Peace Corps worker from Washington, D.C., fatally shot himself in the mouth in a Mexico City detention cell while awaiting deportation for smuggling someone into the country, Mexican authorities say.

Mexican officials have told Yost’s family the case is closed, but family members insist that Yost never would have committed suicide. They cite an independent investigation and autopsy that they say turned up many inconsistencies in official accounts of his death.

Among them: Yost had no reason or inclination to kill himself, and there were no gunpowder burns near his face and mouth--a clear indication that he probably did not fire the gun, they say.

“There are a ton of questions, questions that could be readily answered by the Mexicans,” family lawyer Abbe Lowell said. “But they won’t give me access.”

* Florida welder Randy Lee Rogers, 36, was arrested on drug charges during a fishing trip to the Yucatan Peninsula and tortured for 18 months until his parents paid $200,000 to get him out last November, the Rogers family said. The family also alleges he was arrested on trumped-up charges.

“When he got home,” Rose Rogers said of her son, “his mind was just gone. Those people are crazy down there, absolute terrorists. I’m surprised the American government doesn’t do anything about it.”

* Frederick Simmonds, 68, of Pacific Grove, Calif., alleges that he was routinely tortured in a Guadalajara jail and that U.S. consular officials did little besides visit him a few times. “My government let me down,” he said. “The bastards didn’t help me one bit.”

* Joshua Swindell, a Diamond Bar skateboarding champ, spent three months in Tijuana’s notorious La Mesa prison after authorities found three guns hidden in a borrowed van he was driving. Swindell, 20, faced 30 years in prison but was released by an appellate court judge April 13 after a lobbying and letter-writing campaign by his mother and human rights advocates.

Swindell was not mistreated but said he saw many others who were. Guards allowed an atmosphere of lawlessness to prevail, he said.

“It was hell, gunshots every night and people getting stabbed every day,” he said. “Bodies were getting carried out day and night.”

Swindell’s family says U.S. authorities did little to help them, a charge U.S. officials deny. The family wrote to the White House for help and, two weeks after Swindell’s release, his mother got a form letter from a White House deputy assistant giving her the address of the U.S. State Department, but no contact person.