To Testify in Camarena Case : U.S. Arrests Mexican Agent in DEA Murder

A Mexican federal police official has been arrested by U.S. officials as a material witness in the torture-murder of American drug agent Enrique Camarena.

Mario Martinez Herrera, a commander in the Mexican General Directorate of Investigations and National Security (DGISN)--the Mexican equivalent of the FBI--was arrested Monday evening after dining at a Chula Vista restaurant, his appointed attorney Michael Patrick Murray said in San Diego.

Murray said that Martinez is expected to be called Friday to testify before a U.S. grand jury in San Diego investigating the Camarena murder case. Martinez, who speaks no English, is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego. He is scheduled to appear at a detention hearing Thursday at 2 p.m. before U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving.

“I was told by the U.S. attorney that it was in connection with the Enrique Camarena case,” said Murray. Martinez, he said, “doesn’t know anything about it. . . . He had a clean bill of health . . . He’s absolutely clean.”

Asst. U.S. Atty. Warren Reese, who represented federal authorities at Martinez’s arraignment Tuesday, refused to say why he was being held or what agency arrested him.

Camarena, a federal Drug Enforcement Administration official on assignment in Mexico, was kidnaped from in front of the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara on Feb. 7, 1985, and driven to the house of Rafael Caro Quintero, a notorious Mexican drug trafficker currently jailed in a Mexico City prison. There, Camarena was tortured and killed. His body was found in a field in Guadalajara a month later.

Late last year, U.S. authorities obtained eight tape recordings of the interrogation-torture of Camarena, which took place over a period of two days. Federal sources told The Times earlier this year that some of the physical evidence recovered by U.S. investigators at the torture scene included hair samples from persons believed to have been present during the bloody interrogation.

However, Murray said that Martinez knows nothing about Camarena’s killing and agreed to give U.S. authorities exemplars of his blood, hair, voice, fingerprints and palm prints.

According to Murray, Martinez was on vacation, visiting relatives in Tijuana, when he decided to cross into the United States on Monday to shop and later to have dinner at the Black Angus Restaurant in Chula Vista.

The restaurant manager, who asked not to be identified, said that Martinez was arrested at about 6 p.m. in the parking lot. An MCC spokesman said that Martinez was not booked until 1 a.m., about seven hours after his arrest. He is being held as a material witness, the spokesman said.

“It was obvious that something was going on. One of the hostesses told me that some men kept walking by the gentleman’s table, looking at him. I inquired what they were doing and the guy in charge showed me his badge and after that they were extremely cooperative with us,” said the manager.

The manager said the investigators waited until Martinez finished eating and arrested him as he and a woman companion walked toward their car.

Martinez is the second Mexican suspect arrested by U.S. authorities in the Camarena case. Rene Martin Verdugo was abducted on Jan. 24, in San Felipe, Baja California, by six men, including four Baja California State Judicial policeman, who drove him to Mexicali and shoved him through a hole in the border fence into the arms of waiting U.S. Marshals.

Federal sources said that Verdugo’s name is heard on the tapes and is believed to have been present at the torture session. Verdugo, 34, was indicted by a U.S. grand jury on various marijuana smuggling charges and is currently at the MCC awaiting trial.