8 Suspects Identified in Kidnapping

Under pressure to solve the kidnapping of a Sanyo official in Tijuana last month, authorities Wednesday released a wanted poster of eight suspects and said an unidentified Mexican police official is “most likely” involved in the crime.

Baja California Atty. Gen. Jose Luis Anaya Bautista would not give any more information on the policeman suspected in the Aug. 10 kidnapping, saying only that he was not connected to Baja California law enforcement.

At a news conference, authorities also announced that an unspecified reward is being offered for information leading to the capture of the suspects.

Sanyo’s video components president, Mamoru Konno, was abducted at gunpoint after attending a company outing at a Tijuana park, then released unharmed Aug. 18 after his employers paid a $2-million ransom.

The kidnapping--the first known incident involving an executive at Mexico’s maquiladoras--sent tremors throughout the international business community. Maquiladoras, the foreign-owned factories set up to manufacture mainly export goods with low-cost Mexican labor, have grown rapidly in the last several years, particularly with the arrival of big Asian consumer electronics manufacturers such as Sanyo, Sony and Hitachi of Japan and Samsung and Hyundai of South Korea.

But that growth has occurred under an illusion of relative safety in border cities, an image that Tijuana is having more trouble maintaining in light of heightened drug violence and a wave of kidnappings that usually target wealthy residents.

Anaya said there have been at least six kidnappings in Baja California this year.

Baja officials have been promising an imminent break in the Konno case since he was released. They figured that an arrest would help calm the jitters of the 8,000 foreign executives who regularly commute--mainly from the San Diego area--to work in Tijuana and those of companies considering moving their operations here.

But despite surveillance photos, voice recordings and identifications of eight suspects, no arrests have been made.

Most of the eight suspects identified on the wanted poster come from a city in Sinaloa state called El Naranjo, which is famous for producing kidnapping bands, Anaya said. Several of the suspects have been arrested in connection with previous kidnappings.

Arrest warrants have been issued for the eight suspects. Two others--the man with possible police ties and an unidentified South American--are involved with the gang, authorities said.

The gang apparently is the same one behind at least two other Baja crimes, a July seizure of a wealthy farmer, Rafael Rodriguez, and the kidnapping of a Mexicali businessman this year.

The gang followed a similar modus operandi in the Konno and Rodriguez cases, Anaya said. The ransom in each case was $2 million, family or associates were informed within a few minutes of the ransom demands, and voice and handwriting samples of alleged gang members matched up. The kidnappers gave similar ransom drop-off instructions in both cases.

The eight suspects are identified as alleged ringleader Sergio Perez Fuentes, also known as Heriberto Norzargaray Beltran; Carlos Cardenas Lugo; Bon Saldivar Sabino; Leobardo Sanchez Montes; Jose Ariel Lugo Serrano; Maximiliano Torres Rubio, also known as Felipe de Jesus Torres; Darey Higuera Zavala, and Juan Manuel Lugo Serrano, also known as Jose Luis Soto Miranda.

In response to questions, Anaya said no evidence has turned up linking the kidnappers to Sanyo employees or to Mexican guerrilla groups.