Mexican Officer Guilty of Perjury in Agent Murder

A federal court jury on Monday convicted Mario Martinez Herrera, a Mexican internal security officer, on a charge of lying to the grand jury investigating the kidnaping and murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena.

Martinez, 38, was accused of perjury for denying in grand jury testimony that he had ever been in Guadalajara, the city where Camarena was abducted, tortured and killed last year, allegedly by Mexican drug merchants.

Prosecutors have called Martinez a target of the Camarena grand jury’s investigation, but he has not been charged in the U.S. drug agent’s death. Justice Department attorneys James Wilson and Daniel Fromstein kept their case focused on whether Martinez had lied about having been in Guadalajara at any time.

Martinez, a commander in the Mexican General Directorate of Investigations and National Security, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison when he is sentenced in February by U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving.

He had been offered a plea bargain if he would provide information to federal agencies investigating the Camarena case, but from the moment of his arrest at a Chula Vista restaurant in September, he insisted that he knew nothing about the American agent’s disappearance and death.

Appeal Planned

Defense attorney Michael P. Murray said the verdict would be appealed on the grounds that he was not given a chance to find witnesses and develop evidence countering the testimony of a prosecution witness who placed Martinez in Guadalajara on several occasions in 1984, the year before Camarena’s murder.

Citing security reasons, prosecutors did not give Murray the name of their key witness--Cesario Garciabueno, a Mexican lawyer shot and left paralyzed by assailants angry that he was cooperating with the Drug Enforcement Administration--until two days before Martinez’s trial began last week.

The judge then denied Murray’s request for more time to construct a defense, saying there was “zero chance” witnesses could be persuaded to travel from Mexico to the United States to testify in Martinez’s behalf. Only Martinez and a paid criminologist testified during the brief defense case.

Jurors interviewed Monday said the lack of defense evidence about Martinez’s whereabouts contributed to their finding of guilt. They said they had doubts about Martinez’s veracity but believed Garciabueno’s testimony that he had seen the Mexican lawman in Guadalajara six times between July and September, 1984.

“There was just nothing there to convince us otherwise that he (Garciabueno) hadn’t seen him,” said jury foreman Eugene Walker. “The defense didn’t have anything there.”

The defense contended that Garciabueno confused Martinez with another man.

Martinez’s brother, Saul Martinez, insisted after the verdict was returned that his brother was at his post in Culiacan, Sinaloa, near Mexico’s west coast, during the times Garciabueno placed him in Guadalajara, more than 375 miles south and inland.

Saul Martinez complained that the trial was unfair and that his brother had been prosecuted for political reasons.

“It’s not important who’s guilty here,” he said. “I think this is a political business. They need to pressure the Mexican government, and this is a good way to do it.”

Despite repeated vows of cooperation between Mexican and U.S. officials, the Camarena case has been the cause of considerable friction between the two countries.

American investigators have complained about the slow pace of their Mexican counterparts’ prosecution of key figures in the case who have been jailed in Mexico. Mexican authorities have chafed at allegations that corruption in their country was interfering with the investigation of Camarena’s death.