Reputed Major Mexican Drug Trafficker Is Caught in U.S.

A reputed Mexican drug lord who escaped from a luxurious Tijuana jail suite where he was being held in connection with the murder of a Mexican federal policeman has been arrested in the United States after nearly three years as a fugitive, authorities announced Monday.

Jose Contreras Subias, who is also a suspect in the 1985 murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena, appeared before a federal magistrate Monday in Los Angeles. He was arrested April 1 in Salt Lake City.

Federal prosecutors asked U.S. Magistrate Joseph Reichmann to hold him without bail, presenting evidence of his disappearance in 1980 shortly before trial in Los Angeles on drug trafficking charges.

“The guy basically (forfeited) a $125,000 bond,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Jimmy Gurule, who is prosecuting the Camarena murder case in Los Angeles. “He’s involved as a major, major narcotics trafficker, with an underline on the word major.”

Announcement of the arrest came on the same day that federal officials unsealed a federal grand jury indictment against another Latin drug lord suspected in the Camarena case, Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, whose arrest last week sparked widespread rioting near the U.S. Embassy in Honduras.

Matta Ballesteros, who is suspected of ordering Camarena’s murder, was arrested by U.S. marshals in the Dominican Republic after being whisked out of Honduras the previous day. The Reagan Administration had tried unsuccessfully for nearly two years to get Honduras to extradite Matta.

The new Los Angeles indictment charges Matta with supervising a drug network that smuggled hundreds of kilograms of cocaine into the United States, much of it through a remote Arizona landing strip, and distributed it through a network of safe houses throughout the Los Angeles area.

Matta also faces indictment in San Diego, New York, Arizona and Florida on a variety of narcotics and escape charges, and Justice Department officials said they will decide next week in what jurisdiction he will be tried first.

Contreras Subias is named with five other men in a 1980 indictment alleging a conspiracy to sell about a kilogram of cocaine to an undercover narcotics agent.

He was being held in Tijuana on charges of murdering a Mexican federal police official. His 1985 escape sparked renewed tensions between the United States and Mexico after authorities here blamed Mexican jail officials for helping him flee.

Frequently described by U.S. officials as the right-hand man of notorious Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who already faces indictment in the Camarena case, Contreras Subias disappeared Oct. 25, 1985, after jail officials escorted him to a court appearance from which he never returned.

In the ensuing investigation, jailers reported that Contreras Subias had been living in relative luxury, ensconced in a suite of several rooms dubbed “El Penthouse,” complete with reception area, meeting room, computer office and bedroom.

Court documents filed in the investigation alleged that he had frequently hosted private parties in his cell attended by “party girls” and offering liquor and cocaine as refreshments.