San Diego Trial of Mexican Agent Opens : Accused of Lying to Grand Jury During Camarena Slaying Probe

A wheelchair-bound Mexican attorney Tuesday contradicted a Mexican internal security officer’s protestations that he had never been in the city where U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena was kidnaped and slain last year.

Cesario Garciabueno, paralyzed when an assailant shot him in 1984 for cooperating with U.S. drug investigators, was the government’s lead-off witness in the perjury trial of Mario Martinez Herrera, a commander in the Mexican General Directorate of Investigations and National Security.

Martinez is accused of lying to the U.S. grand jury probing the kidnaping and murder of Camarena in Guadalajara, Mexico, in early 1985. He is the first person to be brought to trial in the United States in connection with the slaying.

Garciabueno, 41, testified in U.S. District Court that he saw Martinez in Guadalajara six times between July and September of 1984. Ironically, he said he last saw the Mexican officer--whose agency has functions equivalent to the FBI and Secret Service--in the lobby of the Fiesta Americana Hotel, where Garciabueno was meeting with Camarena and another DEA agent.

Less than a month later, Garciabueno said, he was shot by an assailant who told him: “You have to die, because you have put the finger on people.” Garciabueno appeared in court amid tight security and said he now lives in the United States.

Martinez, who was arrested in Chula Vista in mid-September, told a federal grand jury that he had never been to Guadalajara. He also testified that he had never been to a funeral in the coastal city, though Garciabueno said Tuesday that his first contact with Martinez was at the funeral of the matriarch of a leading Guadalajara family.

Martinez has not been charged or named as a suspect in the Camarena killing, nor is he accused of having a role in the shooting of Garciabueno.

However, prosecutors said Tuesday that physical evidence would be presented during the perjury trial to show that at some point, Martinez had been inside the Guadalajara house where Camarena was interrogated and tortured. The home was owned by reputed drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, who is in custody in Mexico, charged with Camarena’s murder.

Daniel Fromstein, one of the two Washington, D.C.-based Justice Department attorneys who are prosecuting the case, hinted during his opening statement that at least a little information about the investigation of the murder would surface during the proceedings.

Martinez, a Tijuana native, volunteered voice, hair and blood samples to U.S. investigators after his arrest at a Chula Vista restaurant Sept. 15. He has insisted that he knows nothing about the Camarena slaying, and his attorney has contended that federal agents have mistaken Martinez for another man.