Border Search for Clues Ended : Mexico Arrests Suspect in Kidnaping of U.S. Agent

Mexican police Monday reported the arrests of a suspect and two companions in the kidnaping of U.S. narcotics agent Enrique S. Camarena. The three men were flown to Guadalajara, scene of the abduction, for questioning.

The suspect was identified as Tomas Morlet Borquez, who said he has retired after 22 years of service in Mexico’s Department of Federal Security, a plainclothes police agency. Camarena was seized at gunpoint Feb. 7. There has been no ransom note and no word of his whereabouts.

Meanwhile, it was announced by U.S. Ambassador John Gavin that security searches along the U.S.-Mexican border have ended.

Strained Relations

The arrests, announced in Tijuana, appeared to signal the first break in the case, which has caused a serious strain in U.S.-Mexican relations. However, Mexican police made it clear that no charges have been filed.

Angel Villa Barron, assistant commander of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police in Tijuana, said the three men were brought in “for questioning and more investigation” because of information provided by Francis M. Mullen, director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

In Washington, however, a DEA official said, “We don’t know anything about it.”

Furthermore, U.S. Embassy sources here disclaimed knowledge of Morlet or his two companions, Eduardo Ramirez Ortiz, Morlet’s driver, and Enrique Gonzalez Aguilar, who identified himself as a Mexico City businessman. The three reportedly were arrested Sunday on a road between Tijuana and Mexicali.

2 Arrests Unexplained

Villa Barron said Mexican police had been looking for Morlet, who they had learned was a suspect in the kidnaping. There was no explanation as to why his two companions were also arrested.

The Department of Federal Security, to which Morlet said he once belonged, is both the government’s principal internal police agency and an intelligence-gathering organization with political functions. Morlet told Mexican police he had been the chief of security details for the late Shah of Iran and former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger during their visits here.

In another development Monday, Mexican police disclosed the arrest of Mariciano Belastegotea Valverde, who was identified as the pilot of a private airplane that spirited Rafael Caro Quintero, a reputed drug kingpin wanted in the Camarena kidnaping, to safety. Caro Quintero is variously reported to have flown from Guadalajara to Europe or to have gone into hiding in Mexico.

DEA Director Mullen complained during the weekend that Caro Quintero was able to evade arrest in Guadalajara because he enjoyed the protection of Mexican police agents who allowed him to take a private flight out of the city.

Late Monday evening, Gavin met with Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid at the president’s official residence here to express what U.S. officials described as continuing U.S. displeasure over Mexican handling of the case.

“He is going to point out that there are a lot of people mad in Washington about the whole kidnaping and the less-than-vigorous pursuit of his kidnapers,” an embassy official said before the meeting.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb said the United States is in close contact with senior Mexican officials to urge that they consider “the allegations of possible lower-level official malfeasance” in the Camarena case.

Border Operation Halted

Earlier, Gavin announced upon his return from consultations in Washington that “Operation Intercept,” which disrupted traffic along the U.S.-Mexican border, has been halted.

The controversial operation, which involved searches of thousands of vehicles entering the United States, was ostensibly aimed at looking for clues to Camarena’s disappearance. However, many Mexicans charged that it was a U.S. tactic to pressure Mexico to step up its investigation of the case.

A statement released by the embassy said Gavin attended an intergovernmental task force meeting in Washington on Friday chaired by Langhorne A. Motley, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs.

Gavin, the statement said, pleaded that differences over the Camarena case “should not be allowed to interfere with the (United States’) overall good relations with Mexico.”

The question of Mexico’s diligence in trying to unravel the Camarena kidnaping has become the focus of the differences between the two governments.

Some U.S. officials, principally DEA officials and other law enforcement sources, believe the Mexican Federal Judicial Police, the attorney general’s force, is not placing its best employees on the case or working hard enough to find the abductors.

Mullen’s charge that police had helped a suspected dope trafficker and kidnaping suspect elicited a response from the attorney general’s office that it was awaiting an official communique from Washington before opening an investigation.

Meanwhile, U.S. Embassy sources confirmed that members of the family of a senior DEA agent working in Mexico were hurriedly moved out of the country over the weekend because of concern for their safety.

The family of the agent--his wife and five children--was sent out of Mexico after a newspaper here identified the agent by name and claimed that he had obtained the names of corrupt Mexican police officials protecting the illicit narcotics trade.

The newspaper said he was privy to the same information that made Camarena a target of abduction.

U.S. officials denied the information, however, and said the agent was not working on a corruption investigation but was simply pursuing routine DEA matters.

Times reporter H.G. Reza in Tijuana contributed to this story.