The case against the bounty hunters may still be open to legal recourse by Mexican prosecutors.

Mexican prosecutors have created confusion in the past over bank account totals by listing only deposits without calculating withdrawals.

Mexican prosecutors announced triumphantly that he was facing 60 years in jail.

Attorney General Jorge Madrazo said today that federal Mexican prosecutors were questioning the 14 suspects but had not yet decided what charges to press.

In return they gave him loads of cocaine and marijuana to move across the border, allowing him to keep the proceeds, he told Mexican prosecutors.

In the last days of November 1996, he summoned Mexican civilian prosecutors to Guadalajara.

Since then, courts have cleared Mr. Arellano in three of the six indictments filed by Mexican prosecutors.

Several water-rights activists, however, question the theory of the Mexican prosecutors that the assassination was carried out by Castro Luque's substitute.

So was Mr. Cocina, the Mexican special prosecutor looking into the disappearances.

Diplomats here said that Mexican prosecutors accustomed to malleable judges were surprised by the strict standards of the Newark court.