Mexico Arrests Ex-Official Indicted in Camarena Case

A former director of Interpol in Mexico, indicted by a U.S. grand jury last month in the torture-murder of an American drug agent, has been arrested on drug charges by police here, officials in the Mexican attorney general’s office said Thursday.

Miguel Aldana Ibarra was arrested Wednesday afternoon outside a restaurant, according to Arturo Antelmo, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office.

Agents later raided Aldana’s house in Cuernavaca, 51 miles southeast of Mexico City, and confiscated 2.2 pounds of pure cocaine, six automatic rifles and several rounds of ammunition, Antelmo said.

He said that Aldana was picked up on a warrant for his involvement in a huge operation to smuggle marijuana into the United States five years ago. In 1985, Mexican federal agents raided a ranch in the northern state of Chihuahua and confiscated 9,000 tons of marijuana, reportedly the largest drug bust in Mexican history. The ranch was owned by Mexican drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero.

Last year, Caro was convicted in Mexico of the Guadalajara murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena and was sentenced to a long prison term.

Mexican officials said that Aldana’s arrest was unrelated to his indictment last month by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on charges that he participated in the 1985 kidnaping, torture and murder of Camarena.

One day after he was indicted, Aldana held a press conference at his law office here and proclaimed his innocence of any involvement with Camarena’s murder. The indictment alleges that he participated in the murder “to maintain and further the purposes of a Guadalajara narcotics cartel that was engaged in the trafficking of substantial quantities of marijuana and cocaine.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Manuel Medrano, the lead prosecutor on the Camarena case in Los Angeles, said Thursday that Mexican officials had not informed him of Aldana’s arrest. Medrano and other U.S. officials had sought unsuccessfully to have several Mexican citizens extradited to the United States for trial on charges stemming from the Camarena case.

Mexico has a general policy of refusing to extradite its citizens to the United States, and Antelmo said his government had no intention of extraditing Aldana.