Mexico Slow to Reveal Escape of Drug Figure

MEXICO CITY —  In the latest in a series of embarrassments in Mexico’s struggle to battle its powerful narcotics cartels, two federal agents were under arrest Saturday after the brother of convicted drug kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego “inexplicably” walked out of a federal police lockup.

The attorney general’s office said it is continuing to investigate Humberto Garcia Abrego’s mysterious escape last week, which authorities did not announce until midnight Friday--well after President Clinton announced that Mexico is doing its share to prosecute the multibillion-dollar drug trade that supplies up to 75% of the cocaine sold in the United States.

Clinton, who faced congressional and law enforcement pressure not to recertify Mexico’s counter-narcotics efforts, defended his decision during his weekly radio address Saturday.

Clinton acknowledged that Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo faces hurdles in his government’s effort against powerful drug trafficking gangs that have corrupted the federal police, the judiciary and even factions of the Mexican military.

“Mexican President Zedillo is fighting a tough, uphill battle against the drug cartels which corrupt Mexico’s law enforcement agencies,” Clinton said. “But President Zedillo has taken brave action.”

The escape of Humberto Garcia Abrego was yet another setback in that battle. Garcia Abrego, who was jailed last July on charges that he laundered millions of dollars in drug proceeds for his brother’s cartel, simply “left” a jail cell at an anti-drug agency office, federal authorities confirmed Saturday.

The escape, which authorities said happened sometime Wednesday or Thursday in the northern border state of Tamaulipas, also underscores flaws and corruption in Mexico’s criminal justice system that are among Zedillo’s biggest hurdles in the drug war.

Garcia Abrego--whose brother Juan was sentenced to life in prison and fined $128 million in Houston federal court in January for shipping tons of marijuana and cocaine to the United States--had been freed Tuesday night on a judicial order that is unique to Mexico. Known as an amparo, it is a preemptive release from possibly illegal prosecution. Drug traffickers have been known to bribe judges and police for their freedom.

But authorities ordered him detained anew while they prepared additional charges. It was during that period that Humberto left the jail cell in Ciudad Victoria, the statement from the attorney general’s office confirmed.

“Inexplicably, the official in charge of the investigation told his superiors that Humberto Garcia Abrego had ‘left’ the National Institute to Combat Drugs before the investigation was completed,” the statement said.

Two of the institute’s agents were arrested, and authorities were questioning them Saturday on why they “disobeyed precise orders from superiors” to detain and question Garcia Abrego, the statement added.

Bolstering the impression of revolving-door Mexican justice in combating the drug trade, Garcia Abrego walked out of his jail cell about the same time federal agents were bringing in the alleged chief of Juan Garcia Abrego’s Gulf cartel, Oscar Malherbe de Leon.

U.S. and Mexico drug enforcement officials say that Malherbe, who is under indictment in Houston, took over the cartel’s operations after Juan Garcia Abrego was arrested in Mexico and deported to the United States in January 1996; the latter had been on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list.

Malherbe was arrested in a Mexico City shopping center Wednesday. But, clearly reflecting the politics of the U.S. drug-certification process, the attorney general’s office did not announce the arrest until just before the Clinton administration’s announcement Friday--just as it did not announce Garcia Abrego’s escape until after certification was official.

There have been other setbacks to the counter-narcotics effort recently. Anti-drug czar Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo was jailed on charges that he was collaborating with the man alleged to be the nation’s biggest cocaine trafficker. And another cartel chief--arrested in June 1995 in a major military operation in Guadalajara--was cleared of all drug charges by a federal judge there in January.

In explaining his decision, however, Clinton cited the firing of hundreds of Mexican officials suspected of corruption; the first-ever extradition of Mexican criminals to the United States last year; tough new laws against drug money laundering and organized crime; and even last month’s arrest of Gutierrez, Zedillo’s handpicked military anti-drug chief.

“Make no mistake about it--Mexico has a serious drug problem,” Clinton said, but he added: “Stamping out the drug trade is a long-term battle.”

In certifying Mexico, Clinton put aside not only the objections of 40 U.S. senators who signed a letter urging him to decertify it but also the concerns of many U.S. drug enforcement agents, who say Mexican drug corruption is so widespread that they do not trust their counterparts with sensitive intelligence data.

On the morning after Mexico’s recertification, politicians in Mexico City were focusing not on the corruption but on the certification process itself.

Leaders of all three major parties released a statement blasting the process as “extraterritorial” and hypocritical. In doing so, all chided “the largest illegal-drug-consuming nation in the world” for passing judgment on nations that produce and ship the drugs.

Decertification could have meant a halt in all U.S. aid to Mexico except for anti-drug funds and a U.S. veto of any loans to the country from international financial institutions.