L.A. Man Is ‘Death Squad’ Suspect : Crime: Police allege that a businessman is linked to a series of threats against Catholic priests and Salvadoran refugees in Southern California. He is in jail but has not been formally charged in the case.

A Los Angeles businessman with close ties to the right-wing Republican Nationalist Alliance party in El Salvador has been named by Los Angeles police as a suspect in a series of “death squad” threats against Salvadoran refugees and Catholic priests in Southern California.

The suspect, Carlos Rene Mata, 35, is the owner of Pipil Express, an international overnight delivery firm with more than 80 offices in California, New York, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Although Mata has not been charged in the death-squad case, he is currently being held in Los Angeles County Jail on $500,000 bail after his arraignment Thursday on charges of making a terrorist threat against a former employee of his business and of receiving stolen property.

An affidavit filed in Los Angeles Municipal Court by Detective Steve Spear of the Los Angeles Police Department’s criminal conspiracy section, said “confidential, reliable” sources have also linked Mata to death squads operating in El Salvador.

Spear said Friday that the investigation into Mata’s alleged links to death squads is continuing, although he could not say whether Mata will be charged in the case.

An FBI spokesman refused to comment on the case other than to say that the investigation into the death threats is continuing.

Mata’s attorney, Donald C. Randolph, denied Friday that his client is involved in any death-squad activity. He said Mata is being victimized for his political loyalties and his friendship with Salvadoran officials and members of the governing Arena party.

Although the Bush Administration has staunchly defended the government in El Salvador, Randolph said U.S. agents and Los Angeles police “have personally targeted my client as a political undesirable.”

Mauricio Saravia, Mata’s brother and manager of Pipil Express, agreed. “He has friends who are now in the government of El Salvador,” Saravia said. “That’s part of the problem.”

Human rights groups have blamed right-wing death squads for thousands of political assassinations in El Salvador during this decade.

In 1987, opponents of the Salvadoran government attributed three kidnapings in Los Angeles to alleged right-wing death squads. In the last two years, activists and priests at Los Angeles Catholic churches have received more than 100 threatening letters and phone calls, according to Los Angeles police.

The allegations prompted the FBI to initiate an investigation.

As recently as this month, Father Luis Olivares of Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church in downtown Los Angeles and two local refugee agencies reported receiving death threats in the wake of a military offensive by leftist guerrillas in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.

Once president of the now-defunct Chamber of Commerce of El Salvador in Los Angeles, Mata is now facing a host of charges in federal and state court.

In November, he and a male Salvadoran employee of Pipil Express were ordered to stand trial in Los Angeles Superior Court in the alleged rape of a 24-year-old woman who went to the Pico-Union office of Pipil Express to recover unpaid back wages.

Mata also pleaded guilty last month in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to charges that he used his firm to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States. The conviction came after an extensive investigation into Mata’s activities by Los Angeles police, the FBI, the U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

In the most recent case, Mata was arraigned Thursday on charges that he made a threatening phone call to a former employee who had cooperated with authorities in the alien-smuggling investigation.

According to police and former Pipil Express employees, Mata has been an outspoken supporter of the right-wing Arena party. During El Salvador’s presidential campaign last spring, Pipil Express offices displayed Arena campaign posters and workers handed out calendars bearing the photograph of presidential candidate Alfredo Cristiani.

“He used to talk about the guerrillas and how, when the Arena party came in, they would crush the guerrillas,” said one former employee who asked not to be identified.

So close is Mata to the ruling party in El Salvador, the LAPD’s Spear said, that last June he made travel arrangements for Salvadoran Vice President Jose Francisco Merino and other Arena party officials when they visited Los Angeles.

By then, Los Angeles police had already begun to suspect that Mata’s support for right-wing causes in El Salvador went beyond mere campaigning, Spear said in an interview.

In July, Spear added, Los Angeles police obtained search warrants for Mata’s home in Walnut and Pipil Express’ Vermont Avenue office, hoping to find political literature and propaganda linking Mata to death-squad activity.

Instead, investigators stumbled upon a host of other evidence that Mata may be linked to other crimes.

Besides evidence linking Pipil Express to immigrant smuggling, police found at Mata’s home two Mercedes-Benz automobiles stolen in armed robberies in West Los Angeles and Monterey Park.

Both Mata and another Pipil Express employee pleaded guilty Nov. 14 to the immigrant-smuggling charges. They are scheduled to be sentenced next month in federal court.

A request for denial of bail in the smuggling case filed July 19 by federal prosecutors alleged that Mata also has engaged in criminal activities in El Salvador.

“Mata is an international fugitive,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Brenda K. Sannes said in a sworn affidavit on file in federal court in Los Angeles. “A warrant (for Mata’s arrest) issued from El Salvador is based upon nine felony charges, including a million-dollar fraud scheme and gun trafficking.”

Spear filed his affidavit in an effort to prevent Mata’s bail from being reduced in the case involving the terrorist threat and the stolen cars.

Overriding the objections of prosecutors, Municipal Judge Judith Abrams lowered Mata’s bail Thursday from $1 million to $500,000. Mata faces a preliminary hearing on the charges Dec. 27.

Randolph, Mata’s attorney, said he plans to subpoena the federal agencies listed in the affidavit to force them to substantiate the allegations in it.

“If they have reason to believe something, they should lay it out on the table,” Randolph said. “That’s the way the justice system works.”

But even if Mata is not prosecuted on the death-squad charges, Spear said, the businessman may serve several years in prison if he is found guilty on the various charges pending against him.

Mata and one Pipil Express employee, Edgar Magana, face trial next month in the alleged rape last February of a 24-year-old Salvadoran immigrant.

The former Pipil Express employee testified at a preliminary hearing last month that she had complained to her former boss that he had not paid her all the back wages owed her.

She testified that she was assaulted by Mata and that when she tried to escape she was confronted by about five male employees. One of the five--the only man she could identify--also is charged in the assault.

The woman said she ran to the door, but found it locked, and when she asked one of the older workers for help, he refused.

“He told me . . . ‘I just obey orders,’ ” she said.

The men pushed her into a bathroom, she said, where Mata raped her behind a locked door.