Tortured Into Confessing, Caro Quintero Tells Court

Rafael Caro Quintero, a key suspect in the kidnap-murder of a U.S. narcotics agent, said at his arraignment Tuesday that he had been tortured and forced to sign a confession.

The confession, read to Caro Quintero before he addressed the court, says he had bribed dozens of top-level Mexican police officials to let him continue running a major drug trafficking operation.

“The signature is mine, but the statements are false,” Caro Quintero said in his first public appearance since his capture in Costa Rica last week.

He said one method of police torture was the firing of carbonated water up his nostrils.

As is customary at Mexican criminal court proceedings, Caro Quintero was kept behind vars at the arraignment. He appeared tired and unshaven, but he did not display any signs of having been beaten when he was asked to do so by Judge Pedro Elias Soto Lara.

The suspect also told the court that 17-year-old Sara Cossio whom he was alleged to have kidnaped, had gone willingly with him to Costa Rica.

Caro Quintero said that he is 29 and has had no education past the first grade.

The confession states that Enrique S. Camarena, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent, was taken to Caro Quintero’s house after he was kidnaped Feb. 7 within sight of the U.S. Consulate General in Guadalajara.

It said that Caro Quintero greeted the agent and took him into the house, but there was no elaboration. The bodies of Camarena and Alfredo Zavala Avelar, a Mexican pilot who had worked with him and was kidnaped the same day, were found March 5, wrapped in plastic bags, on a ranch 60 miles southeast of Guadalajara, a city regarded as a major drug center in Mexico.

Caro Quintero was questioned throughout the weekend after he was brought to Mexico City late Friday on a government plane from Costa Rica.

The confession says Caro Quintero paid the equivalent of about $265,000 to a top Mexican police official to be able to leave Guadalajara on Feb. 9.

It said the payment went to Armando Pavon Reyes, former commander of the Federal Judicial Police in Guadalajara. Pavon Reyes, who was seen giving Caro Quintero a farewell embrace at the Guadalajara airport, was questioned Monday at Interpol headquarters here.

Caro Quintero’s court appearance Tuesday was concerned only with drug offenses, for which the maximum sentence is 40 years without remission. There is no death sentence in Mexico.

Judge Soto Lara has 72 hours to decide whether there is a case to be tried. Court sources said that a trial could last up to 12 months.

Caro Quintero will also be put at the disposition of a state court in Jalisco, which has issued a warrant for his arrest for the murders of Camarena and Zavala, they added.

Six Jalisco state police agents and a former officer were arrested and charged with the murders last month. In confessions that they later repudiated, claiming duress, two of the policemen admitted that they kidnaped the two men and took them to Caro Quintero’s house in Guadalajara, 335 miles northwest of the capital.