U.S. Vows More Indictments in Camarena Case : Big Mexican Traffickers Expected to Be Charged in Drug Agent’s 1985 Murder

On the fourth anniversary of the brutal slaying of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena in Mexico, federal prosecutors said Tuesday that they will return indictments this year against the men, believed to be powerful Mexican drug lords, responsible for instigating the murder.

Speaking publicly for the first time since a federal court jury convicted three lower-level drug traffickers in the 1985 abduction and murder, Assistant U.S. Atty. Jimmy Gurule said he expects a federal grand jury to return indictments before the end of the year against “the people that were involved in the actual decision-making, who ordered (the murder).”

In an interview before the start of a memorial service commemorating Camarena’s kidnaping in front of the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara on Feb. 7, 1985, Gurule was critical of the new Mexican government’s appointment of an attorney general, Enrique Alvarez del Castillo, who was governor of the state of Jalisco at the time of Camarena’s murder there.

City ‘Owned by Traffickers’

“He was the governor in 1985 when Guadalajara was just a haven for narcotics traffickers, was virtually under siege, and in a sense owned by traffickers,” Gurule said. “This was going on under his watch for all intents and purposes, and to go ahead and appoint him as your head national law enforcement officer, I think, is a slap in the face.”

Gurule, who is prosecuting the case in the United States, was also critical of Mexican authorities’ failure to complete prosecution of Rafael Caro-Quintero, a powerful Guadalajara drug baron, who is believed to be one of those who ordered Camarena’s killing after the narcotics agent led a series of damaging raids on his marijuana plantations.

Caro-Quintero was indicted by a federal grand jury in the United States, but authorities never sought to extradite him after the Mexican government vowed to prosecute him as a Mexican citizen in Mexico City. Caro-Quintero has been jailed since shortly after the murder but has been convicted only on drug charges. A verdict in his murder trial is still pending.

“Needless to say, that’s very disturbing on our part, that while they’re resistant to letting him come here for trial, saying he’s a Mexican national and he’ll be aggressively prosecuted there, the fact remains that nearly four years have gone by and we’re still waiting,” Gurule said of Caro-Quintero.

Three Convicted in U.S.

Convicted in the United States last year in the Camarena murder were former Mexican Police Officer Raul Lopez-Alvarez, Rene Martin Verdugo-Urquidez, a suspected associate of Caro-Quintero, and Jesus Felix-Gutierrez, who supposedly headed Southern California operations for the Caro-Quintero organization.

Defense lawyers said the three were tried as “scapegoats” for powerful drug barons being protected by the Mexican government.

Tuesday’s memorial service was held at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in the Pico-Union District, one of the most heavily drug-impacted neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

About 75 people, including much of the Los Angeles Drug Enforcement Administration force, sang hymns and offered prayers for an agent they called a martyr to the nation’s war on drugs.

“Kiki Camarena was too gentle to live among wolves,” said Charles Lugo, intelligence supervisor for the DEA in Los Angeles.

Father Greg King, pastor of the church, recounted how he had been approached by drug peddlers near the church, even in his cleric’s collar.

“We are here to remember Enrique Camarena, to remember his dedication, to pray that he accepts life eternal, but also to remember that we have a grave problem, that it is a social problem facing not just individuals, not just families, but our nation,” King said.

“It is fitting that tonight when we pray for Enrique Camarena, we pray for one another. We pray for strength that as a people we can stand together against the living death of drugs.”

Reminder to Public

Lynn White, spokeswoman for a public relations firm that coordinated the memorial, said the service was intended to remind the public of the need to pursue Camarena’s killers and halt drug trafficking along the U.S.-Mexican border.

“It is essentially a memorial service in Mr. Camarena’s honor for the dedication to the war on drugs--for what he started, which is yet unfinished,” she said.

The firm has been retained by Michael Mann, creator of the television series “Miami Vice” and “Crime Story,” who is producing a documentary series on the Camarena case based on writer Elaine Shannon’s book “Desperadoes.”