Ex-Official in Mexico Denies Role in Murder : Narcotics: The former high-ranking lawman says he is being charged in revenge for speaking out against the Drug Enforcement Administration and slain agent Enrique Camarena.

Miguel Aldana Ibarra, formerly one of Mexico’s top police officials, on Thursday denied charges that he conspired in the 1985 kidnaping and murder of a U.S. drug agent in Guadalajara.

Aldana insisted that he was being charged in the United States in revenge for his public denunciation of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and of the slain agent, Enrique S. Camarena, after a docudrama on the case that aired on NBC last month.

Aldana has called Camarena a “corrupt drug trafficker” and, though the agent’s body was found and identified, Aldana has asserted that Camarena is still alive.

“I am innocent and I knew they were going to invent charges against me because I know how the DEA acts,” Aldana said. “I knew they would react this way because they weren’t going to like it that I told the truth about their hero. . . . They have nothing else to accuse me of, so they accuse me of killing Camarena.”

Aldana, 44, head of Interpol in Mexico from 1982 until December, 1984, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on Wednesday along with his cousin, Manuel Ibarra Herrera, former director of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police. Four other men also were named in the indictment.

The indictment alleges that Ibarra, Aldana and others “organized and put into operation a scheme to kidnap and murder” Camarena. The agent’s mutilated body was found at a ranch hundreds of miles from Guadalajara a month after his abduction.

On Thursday, U.S. authorities expressed doubts about whether the two former police officials would ever come to trial in Los Angeles for the agent’s murder.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Manuel Medrano, the lead prosecutor in the case, said the Justice Department will ask the State Department to file an extradition request with Mexico.

“To date, they (Mexican officials) have never agreed to such an extradition request” in the Camarena case, Medrano said. He added that earlier requests to extradite three other defendants, all of whom are in custody in Mexico, “have fallen on deaf ears.”

U.S. officials claim Aldana and Ibarra provided protection to some of Mexico’s major drug traffickers, including Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who also have been indicted in the U.S. case. Caro was convicted of the killing in Mexico and is in jail.

“What is remarkable about this indictment is that it shows pervasive corruption among Mexican law enforcement officials in general and high-ranking law enforcement officials in particular,” Medrano said. Mexican officials could not be reached for comment.

One U.S. official, who asked not to be identified, said Aldana was “very important. . . . He was the go-between with Ibarra and the underworld.”

Aldana spoke to reporters in the roof-top garden of his penthouse office suite, surrounded by guards and aides. The walls of his ornate law office were adorned with diplomas--one from Pacific Western University--and portraits of Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Aldana portrayed himself as a man dedicated to academia and humanitarian organizations for the last five years, since he was unceremoniously dismissed as head of Mexico’s office for Interpol, the international police agency. No official explanation was ever given for his firing.

The indictments, Aldana said, were based on “bad information” that the DEA obtained from drug traffickers and gave to U.S. prosecutors. Aldana said he would not willingly travel to the United States to face trial and did not expect to be extradited.

“I believe in my government, my country and my fellow lawyers,” he said.

Aldana said he could not have been involved in the Camarena killing because he was out of the country at the time of the murder, attending a police course in Israel, and already had been given leave from Interpol. The indictment, however, alleges that the plotting of the murder began in October, 1984, when Aldana was still on the job.

During 28 years in law enforcement, Aldana said, he maintained a close relationship with the FBI “and never had any problems. . . . My attack is only against the corrupt DEA police here in Mexico. I know because I worked with them.”

The NBC series on the Camarena case aired on cable television in Mexico and provoked outrage across the political spectrum. Critics said it portrayed all Americans as good and all Mexicans as corrupt. Many called for the DEA to withdraw from Mexico.

Aldana made his first public statements against Camarena on the radio shortly after the show. He said he felt the show smeared the image of Mexico, but he did not agree that all DEA agents should leave the country. “Only the corrupt ones,” he said.

Ibarra could not be reached for comment.

Thus far, 19 people have been indicted in the Camarena case. Three were convicted in Los Angeles in 1988 and sentenced to long prison terms. Three other men are scheduled to go on trial later this month. One defendant is in prison in the United States on other charges and is scheduled to be brought to Los Angeles to stand trial.

In addition, two men have been convicted in the Camarena case in Mexico, while two defendants are jailed in Mexico on other charges.

Eight men indicted in Camarena’s murder, including Aldana, Ibarra and a Mexican doctor, are “at liberty in Mexico,” according to prosecutor Medrano.

Under Mexican law, those indicted could be extradited only “under extraordinary circumstances,” an act that would require the approval of Mexico’s president, according to David Runkel, chief spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department in Washington.

Runkel said no consideration is being given to pursuing the suspects in Mexico or elsewhere, even though the Justice Department declared last year that it has the authority to apprehend fugitives in a foreign country without that government’s permission.

Within the last two years, U.S. officials have asked the Mexican government to extradite Caro and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, two Mexican drug kingpins who are accused of being among the planners of Camarena’s kidnap and murder.

Mexican officials say they do not extradite Mexicans to face trial in other countries if there is a case against them in Mexico.

Caro and Fonseca were convicted in Mexico on charges stemming from the Camarena killing and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

Marjorie Miller reported from Mexico City. Henry Weinstein reported from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow in Washington also contributed to this story.