Mexico Judge Orders Trial of 3 in Drug Agent’s Death

A federal magistrate Tuesday night ordered that three Jalisco state policemen be held for trial in the kidnaping and murder of U.S. narcotics agent Enrique S. Camarena.

Four others, including three more Jalisco state judicial police and a former member of the same force, were jailed on charges involving drug possession and trafficking and sale of arms reserved for military use.

In issuing what amount to indictments, Judge Gonzalo Ballesteros Tena said that none of the seven are eligible for bail. Under Mexican law, the accused must be tried within a year unless defense lawyers ask for more time to prepare their case, he said.

The three suspects who were ordered to face trial for participating in the Feb. 7 abduction and killing of Camarena were all members of the same state police unit in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state.

They are Victor Manuel Lopez Razon, 34, the commander of the unit; Gerardo Ramon Torres Lepe, 23, who made, and later recanted, a detailed confession, and Juan Rufo Solorio Oliva, 22.

Torres Lepe’s confession, which he now contends was extracted under duress, said he and four others took part in the kidnaping of Camarena. He identified the four only by first names or nicknames: Rene, El Chino, Sam and El Guero (the blond).

He also said that Lopez Razon was on the payroll of Guadalajara drug chieftains and frequently ordered the policemen in his unit to cooperate with them.

In a statement that he, too, subsequently recanted, Lopez Razon admitted involvement in illicit drug activity, but he denied having any knowledge of the Camarena abduction before it took place.

However, another member of the unit, Jose Guadalupe Munoz Villarreal, claimed in a statement that Lopez Razon bragged after the abduction that his men--Torres Lepe and Solorio Oliva--had carried out the operation.

Munoz Villarreal was among the other four men the judge ordered to trial on lesser charges.

The other three are Benjamin Locheo Salazar, 55, commander of a unit assigned to execute arrest warrants; Raul Lopez Alvarez, 26, another state judicial policeman, and Hector Lopez Malo Nieto, a former policeman who became a bodyguard for a narcotics trafficker.

After the judge rendered his decision, defense attorney Rodolfo Gonzalez said he would file a motion to disqualify Ballesteros Tena for lack of jurisdiction, since the crime occurred in Guadalajara.

(The United States is giving serious consideration to seeking the extradition of the Mexican police officers charged with Camarena’s abduction and slaying, John C. Lawn, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee in Washington. He said afterward, though, that there is “not any great reason for hope” that Mexico would grant extradition.

(An 1897 U.S. treaty with Mexico provides for “discretionary extradition,” leaving the decision to Mexican authorities, Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow reported from Washington. The subject is to be raised Friday when Mexico’s Atty. Gen. Sergio Garcia Ramirez visits U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, an Administration official said.)

In Mexico City, a wild scene ensued when the judge permitted a score of reporters to interview the suspects, who were standing behind a wide, barred window facing the courtroom.

“We’re scapegoats,” they shouted as reporters crowded to get closer. “We’re innocent . . . they beat us unmercifully . . . they squirted water up our noses.’

Lopez Razon told one woman reporter, “They submitted us to electric shocks on parts of our body you can’t even imagine, Miss.”

He and the others claimed that another police commander who died in detention, Gabriel Gonzalez Gonzalez, had been “assassinated.”

Lopez Razon said he heard Gonzalez being killed under torture but did not see it because he was blindfolded at the time. The attorney general’s office announced that Gonzalez died of an acute hemorrhage of the pancreas.

All of the suspects were bruised about the nose and other parts of the face. Mexican authorities have told reporters the bruises are the result of the fight that the men put up when they were arrested.

Asked about charges of torture, Ballesteros Tena said it would be up to defense attorneys to show that punishment was used to extract statements.

The more than 300 pages of statements taken from the suspects and other witnesses portray the Jalisco state judicial police, particularly the unit led by Lopez Razon and Gonzalez, as virtual henchmen of narcotics gangsters in Guadalajara. They contain frequent references to the help Lopez Razon and Gonzalez supplied in protecting the criminals’ homes, parties and marijuana and cocaine shipments.

The statements also name many other state judicial policemen who have not been arrested so far.