Word: camarena
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...Honduran drug dealer, returned from Colombia in 1986 and settled in the capital city of Tegucigalpa. Matta, who has been described as a chief contact between the Medellin suppliers and Mexican smugglers, is wanted by the DEA in connection with the 1985 murder in Mexico of DEA Agent Enrique Camarena Salazar. In Honduras, which does not allow extradition, Matta is living the good life, flamboyantly dispensing money to the poor who line up outside his palatial estate. His assets are said to amount to more than $1 billion; he reportedly paid $2 million in bribes to facilitate his 1986 escape...
...harsh tone reflects the strain in U.S.-Mexican relations that set in following the torture-murder three years ago of DEA Agent Camarena. In December a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted nine people, including Drug Barons Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, and three former Mexican police officials. U.S. authorities charge that the Mexican police hindered the investigation and are still withholding evidence that might help to arrest other suspects...
Upset by U.S. complaints, Mexican officials point out that in the same year in which Camarena was murdered, twelve members of a Mexican antidrug unit were killed, presumably by drug thugs. The Mexicans note that the estimated $130 billion spent annually on drugs by U.S. users could pay off the entire Mexican foreign debt. Complains Leonardo Ffrench, a press officer at the Mexican embassy in Washington: "It is deeply unfair and even ridiculous that some officials of a country like the United States, which has not been able to solve its own drug problems, keep blaming other countries with...
...investigators are especially eager to identify Camarena's chief questioner, a man who spoke in the practiced manner of a police interrogator. At one point Camarena was heard answering him, "Si, comandante." Partly on the basis of informants' claims, DEA officials believe the comandante was Sergio Espino Verdin, formerly chief in Guadalajara of a secret police unit run by the Interior Ministry. Espino Verdin, yet another of those indicted last week, was arrested by Mexican police last year and charged with Camarena's murder. But authorities have vetoed the agency's requests for extensive samples of his voice on tape...
Besides accused Trafficker Verdugo Urquidez, two more of those indicted last week are already in U.S. custody for other offenses, and so will stand trial in American courts for their alleged roles in Camarena's murder. Of the remaining six, two are at large, probably in Mexico, and four are in Mexican custody. But under the extradition treaty between Mexico and the U.S., neither side is required to surrender its nationals to the other, and few observers expect Mexico to do so voluntarily. Most U.S. officials would be satisfied if Camarena's death were avenged by displays of rigorous prosecution...