13 eastern Europeans detained in Tijuana
Police say they found two handguns in van
By Sandra Dibble
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
January 17, 2001

Tijuana, Mexico -- Thirteen eastern Europeans, including two women and a 12-year-old boy, were being questioned yesterday by Mexican authorities who said they found two loaded semiautomatic weapons hidden in the group's van.

The detainees are citizens of Russia, Armenia and Ukraine; two had documents identifying them as California residents.

Eleven members of the group were traveling in the van Sunday morning when they were stopped by Tijuana police in a middle-class neighborhood east of downtown. They were accompanied by a 29-year-old Tijuana resident, Adrián Germán López.

According to the police report, patrol officers stopped the white Dodge panel truck with Mexico City license plates after noticing "suspicious" behavior of its passengers. When police ordered the van to stop, several of the passengers tried to run away.

A search of the vehicle yielded two 9 mm handguns, the report said. Shortly after the van was stopped, two people arrived in a late-model truck and offered police $30,000 to release the detainees, the report said. The police seized the money and arrested everyone.

Patricia Ordoñez, a spokeswoman at the federal attorney general's office in Mexico City, said some of the people were apparently being smuggled into the United States.

One member of the group, Alexei Kovalev Peresipkin, told a Tijuana television station, Notivisa-Channel 12, that he and his companions were touring Mexico. They had driven up from Mexico City in a rented van and were preparing to drive down the Baja California peninsula when they were arrested.

In footage filmed Sunday afternoon after their arrest, the travelers appeared relaxed and smiling.

"They haven't the slightest idea of what has happened to them, and neither do I," Peresipkin told Notivisa. "The police should be more responsible about making statements."

Two of the Russians -- Sargis Simonyan and Oganes Tangabankyan -- were identified as residents of Glendale. An official with the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana said the consulate hadn't been contacted by Mexican authorities in the case, indicating that the two aren't U.S. citizens.

The arrest was an unusual joint operation between Mexico's federal preventive police and the Tijuana municipal police. The detainees have been turned over to the federal attorney general's office and couldn't be reached for comment.

In an unrelated matter, two U.S. citizens who were detained by Mexican authorities at the border on Dec. 30 remain in jail in Tijuana after being charged with weapons smuggling.

The 22-year-old man and 18-year-old woman, both residents of Salem, Ore., were stopped after crossing into Mexico at San Ysidro. Inspectors found 12 firearms, 22 bullets and eight knives.

© Copyright 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.