U.S. Fails to Tie Agent to Camarena’s Torture

U.S. prosecutors acknowledged Friday that physical evidence in the case has failed to tie Mexican police agent Mario Martinez Herrera to the house where an American drug agent was tortured. But they said Martinez will still be prosecuted on perjury charges.

Michael P. Murray, attorney for Martinez, said that James Wilson, a Justice Department attorney from Washington, told the court during a hearing Friday that Wilson had informed him that fingerprints and blood samples provided by Martinez were negative and a hair sample was inconclusive.

The hearing was called to set a trial date for Martinez, who is charged with lying to a federal grand jury after being arrested as a material witness in the torture and killing of federal Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Enrique Camarena.

Camarena was abducted in February, 1985, in Guadalajara, Mexico, and taken to the home of reputed Mexican drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, where he was tortured and eventually killed. His body was discovered a month later in a shallow grave on a ranch outside Guadalajara.

Martinez is a commander in the General Directorate of Investigations and National Security, the Mexican equivalent of the FBI. He was arrested Sept. 15 after dining at a Chula Vista restaurant.

U.S. investigators said in affidavits that a hair sample taken from Martinez has “similar characteristics” to a hair recovered at the torture scene. This prompted Murray to respond:

“I suspect that we could find 20 million other persons of Mexican descent with similar characteristics.”

After his arrest, Martinez, who has maintained his innocence in the killing of Camarena, volunteered to take a three-hour voice test given by an FBI agent. The results of the voice exemplar have not been released, but Martinez volunteered for another voice test this week, Murray said.

Camarena’s killers tape-recorded the two-day torture session and Mexican officials gave U.S. investigators five cassette-tape copies of the torture.

Wilson said at a Sept. 25 hearing that U.S. investigators would testify that “there is physical evidence which places Mr. Martinez at the residence” in Guadalajara where Camarena was tortured.

Martinez has not been charged in Camarena’s killing but was indicted Sept. 20 for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury when he testified that he had never been in Guadalajara or to the house at 881 Lope de Vega, the site of the torture.

Although he told Murray that the blood sample and fingerprints volunteered by Martinez failed to tie him to the scene, Wilson said at the hearing that the government will produce witnesses at Martinez’s perjury trial who will testify that he has been in Guadalajara. One of the witnesses will be an unidentified Mexican informant. The U.S. government has agreed to relocate the informant’s entire family in the United States in exchange for his testimony, Wilson said.

“This is an individual who has a legitimate fear for his personal safety,” Wilson said. “He has family members in Mexico who must be removed to this country prior to his testimony in open court.”

On Friday, Murray tried unsuccessfully to persuade U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving to order Wilson to reveal the informer’s name 10 days before Martinez’s Dec. 16 trial, saying his investigator needed that much time to look into the man’s background. However, Irving granted a prosecution request that the man’s name be made available to the defense two days before the trial.

“I really would like to know the name of this person,” Murray said. “We have a lot of conflicting views of when Martinez was or was not in Guadalajara.”

If the informer and his family are relocated in the United States, it will mark the second time that U.S. officials have acknowledged relocating Mexican witnesses in the Camarena investigation. In February, immigration officials said that the DEA had relocated four Mexican police officers, two other men and their families--a total of 29 people--after the men allegedly received death threats for aiding in the arrest of Rene Martin Verdugo.

Verdugo, who is in federal custody and has been indicted on several marijuana smuggling charges, is also being held as a material witness in the Camarena killing. U.S. prosecutors claim that they have physical evidence that ties Verdugo to the house where Camarena was tortured.

After Martinez’s arrest, U.S. officials said they were convinced that he was one of several men who tortured Camarena. But recently, these same officials have backed off and now answer with a “no comment” when asked if they still believe that Martinez was one of the torturers.