TRAFFICKERS TERRIFY MEXICAN PLASTIC SURGEONS

Drug traffickers in mexico are using plastic surgery to remodel their faces and avoid capture.

But the surgeons performing the operations now fear for their lives.

Speaking to BBC World Service's Outlook programme, Jose Luis Valdes Galicia, a plastic surgeon in Mexico, spoke of the dangers facing surgeons. "The moment a criminal comes into our surgery we are in danger," he said.

"If we agree to do the job, we risk our lives.

If we don't, we risk it too. I even believe that these people would kill a surgeon without even threatening him just so he would never say a thing." Cooperation In September 2001, Mexico's chief prosecutor, Mario Estuardo Bermudez, appealed to plastic surgeons to help in the fight against drug barons who were turning to surgery in an effort to change their identities and escape the authorities. Whilst he now recognises that "there has been great opposition from surgeons", he still believes that their help is vital in the fight against organised crime. "Five months ago we appealed to their professionalism and their spirit of collaboration" he explains, "but also we wanted to make clear that they are in danger after they perform the operation." Frog face Mr Bermudez called for the surgeons' assistance after the true identity of a hit-man from the Tijuana cartel was only revealed four months after his arrest. Jorge Humberto Rodriguez Banuelos, alias La Rana ( The Frog ), had lost weight, had new hair implants and altered his face by means of surgery.

After an anonymous tip-off, The Frog was detained by police. As they were expecting a much older looking man with coarser features, it was left to a give-away scar on the detained man's buttocks to reveal his true identity. Later the surgeon who performed liposuction on The Frog was believed to have been murdered. Confidentiality Whilst surgeons believe that collaboration is possible they are fearful of attacks and believe that cooperation can only be achieved if secrecy is guaranteed. "We respect [the surgeons' belief] that the professional secret would be broken, ethics of the plastic surgeons would be seriously affected," Mr Bermudez explains. "That is why we are trying to find the way in which communication between the doctors and us can take place respecting ethics and the law."

Meanwhile Dr Galicia intends to stay on the right side of the law but remains cautious. "I do know of surgeons who were found dead in some containers sometime ago." "I believe we should give the police the information they need - though I might report any suspicious requests for plastic surgery to the newspapers first so they could investigate and keep my name out of it."