Word: camarena
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Kingpin Caro Quintero, who is reportedly worth $500 million, came under suspicion immediately after Camarena's disappearance. Yet just two days later the federal police comandante in charge of the investigation, Armando Pavon Reyes, allowed the gangster to leave Guadalajara by private plane in the full view of three DEA agents. Records obtained by the DEA indicate that Pavon Reyes made a call from the hangar phone at Guadalajara to the office of Manuel Ibarra, then head of the federal police. Though the U.S. has no record of the conversation, DEA officials suspect that Ibarra was being asked to approve...
Among the nine were Drug Barons Rafael Caro Quintero, 35, and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, 56, reputed leaders of Mexico's largest marijuana smuggling family and the principal targets of Camarena's investigations. Also charged, in what has become a familiar pattern of complicity between drug operators and those charged with stamping out their trade, were three former Mexican police officials. "In what we do for a living we depend on the integrity of our law enforcement counterparts," said DEA Chief John Lawn. "In the case of Kiki Camarena, that mutual trust failed...
Although U.S. officials still view the Bogota government as one of the more cooperative in the narcotics war, Ochoa's release and the Mexican government's continued foot dragging on the Camarena case illustrate the formidable difficulties of the campaign against Latin drug lords. Says DEA Chief Lawn: "Unless Colombia and Mexico can address their problems, there's no way we can deal with the supply of drugs within our own borders...
Despite last week's indictments in the Camarena case, U.S. law enforcement officials believe that many of the culprits have not yet even been touched. These U.S. authorities charge that the Mexican government, by withholding evidence and refusing to share knowledge of the case, has engaged in a cover- up aimed at protecting officials far more highly placed than any so far indicted. "It's like pulling teeth," says a top DEA official. "We're making progress, but it's slow...
...long after the bodies were found, the DEA discovered that Camarena's kidnapers had taped their attempts to interrogate him on drug cases. Mexican federal authorities first denied that the tapes existed, and they have told several different stories about the discovery of the recordings. But after a personal appeal by U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, his Mexican counterpart Sergio Garcia Ramirez handed over copies of some tapes to DEA investigators, who have sought to identify the recorded voices. One of them, they say, matches that of Rene Martin Verdugo Urquidez, a Caro Quintero crony who is currently awaiting trial...