MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- About 600 Mexican soldiers have been
                  detained for 11 days and tortured during an investigation into alleged
                  links to drug traffickers, a human rights group alleged Monday.

                  The soldiers are being held in facilities in the city of Guamuchil, Sinaloa, 680 miles northwest of
                  Mexico City, said Benjamin Laureano Luna, president of the non-governmental Mexican Front for
                  Human Rights.

                  "They have been confined to th e barracks, cut off from communication and subjected to torture
                  and cruel and degrading treatment," Luna said in a telephone interview.

                  Officials from the Department of Defense would not confirm or deny the detentions or comment
                  on the allegations of abuse.

                  Luna said that the matter was brought to his attention by wives of the soldiers who complained
                  that their husbands had been held incommunicado for 11 days.

                  Finally, on Sunday, officials allowed a large group of women who had gathered outside the
                  facilities to visit with the soldiers, Luna said.

                  "The women discovered that they had kept the soldiers on their knees, with their hands behind
                  their heads, that some had been hit or lost teeth and others had torture marks," Luna said.

                  Authorities estimate that more than 200 drug distributors operate in Sinaloa, a state in western
                  Mexico where marijuana and poppy, the principal ingredient in heroin, are grown in the Sierra
                  Madre mountains.

                  The state is the birthplace of many drug traffickers and has been the site of bloody battles
                  between warring smugglers.

                  Last month, Gov. Juan Millan said 80 percent of the more than 270 homicides that occurred in
                  the state during the first five months of this year were drug-related.

                  Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.