Camarena Prosecutor Says Drug Ring Ran Guadalajara

Corrupt Mexican law enforcement officials aided the growth of a multibillion-dollar narcotics cartel and created an atmosphere of lawlessness where the drug traffickers believed they could murder U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena and get away with it, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday in Los Angeles federal court.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Manuel Medrano’s remarks came during closing arguments in the trial of four men accused of involvement in the February, 1985, kidnaping and murder of Camarena in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Medrano said the traffickers “did whatever they wanted because they thought they were beyond the reach of the law, and in Mexico they were.”

He described the drug cartel in Guadalajara as a “multi-headed monster” run by men who were “powerful . . . immensely wealthy and profoundly violent.”

“They were supported and facilitated by corrupt Mexican law enforcement officials,” Medrano said. “In Guadalajara, virtually every law enforcement agency was corrupt.”

The prosecutor specifically cited Mexico’s Federal Security Directorate, the Social and Political Investigations Agency, the Federal Judicial Police and “even the army” as institutions that were corrupt in Guadalajara in the mid-1980s.

“But the tentacles of this corruption extended far beyond Guadalajara,” said the prosecutor. “The tentacles extended to the heart of the government, to the capital Mexico City.”

The tenacious investigation by the U.S Drug Enforcement Administration of Camarena’s murder, and two federal trials that have resulted from it, have generated considerable friction between the United States and Mexico.

Thus far, seven current and former Mexican law enforcement officials are among the 22 people who have been indicted in Los Angeles on charges stemming from Camarena’s murder. None of the major officials, however, have been brought to trial here.

Medrano specifically lambasted several prominent Mexican law enforcement individuals by name, including Javier Garcia Paniagua, Mexico City’s current police chief, who has not been indicted in the Camarena case. He said Garcia had attended two of the five meetings where Camarena’s kidnaping was planned in late 1984 and early 1985.

Additionally, he said, Miguel Ibarra Herrera, director of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police from 1982 to 1985, and Manuel Aldana Ibarra, director of Interpol in Mexico, the international police agency, from 1982 to 1985, participated in meetings planning Camarena’s kidnaping. Both men have been indicted in Los Angeles, but they have not been extradited.

After describing the narcotics cartel’s rise, Medrano declared: “Into this den of wolves came the DEA.” He said that the DEA’s Guadalajara office was staffed by “four brave men,” and characterized Camarena as “the star agent” in the office.

Camarena was abducted off a Guadalajara street on Feb. 7, 1985, as he was on his way to a lunch date with his wife.

Medrano said Camarena and his fellow agents in Guadalajara had done impressive work in Mexico, despite the handicaps of being unarmed and being unable to arrest people.

But a more important problem encountered by the agents, Medrano said, was the way they were impeded in their work by corrupt Mexican law enforcement officials who, on at least one occasion, warned drug traffickers so they could flee before a major raid.

“This is the method of operation, the ‘M.O.,’ of corrupt officials,” Medrano said. “On the one hand, they appear to be cooperating. On the other hand, they tip off drug traffickers because they are in cahoots with them.”

A representative of the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles, Fernando Viveros Castaneda, sat in the packed courtroom listening attentively. At a recess, he said that nothing in Medrano’s remarks surprised him, but he added that U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials are meeting in Mexico this week to improve joint efforts against drug trafficking.

The four men on trial include Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, a convicted Honduran drug lord, and three Mexican men, including a former state police officer, Juan Jose Bernabe Ramirez. The other defendants are Ruben Zuno Arce, a prominent Mexican businessman, and Javier Vasquez Velasco. All the defendants face life imprisonment if convicted of the charges against them.

Medrano said the drug traffickers’ motive for kidnaping Camarena was that the DEA had inflicted heavy losses on them in a series of major raids in 1984.

The prosecutor reviewed at length the evidence presented against each defendant during the eight-week trial.

Medrano said that Zuno played a unique role in the drug cartel’s operations because he was a politically powerful man--the brother-in-law of former Mexican President Luis Echeverria Alvarez. In this regard, he said that Zuno had on two occasions provided official credentials from the Federal Security Directorate to drug traffickers.

The prosecutor accused Zuno of being a “drug trafficker in his own right,” and said testimony had been presented that Zuno participated in three of the five meetings where Camarena’s kidnaping was planned. He said that Matta had attended two of the meetings and that Bernabe and Vasquez had served as bodyguards outside some of the meetings.

He also stressed that an FBI forensics expert testified that hair matching Matta’s had been found at the Guadalajara house where Camarena was tortured.

U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie, who has presided over the trial, agreed to consolidate the Camarena case and the killing of two other Americans in Guadalajara after finding that there was a significant connection between the crimes.