U.S. Will Appeal Ruling in Camarena Case That Would Free Doctor

The Justice Department said Friday that it will appeal a federal judge’s ruling that the United States return a Mexican doctor to his homeland because his kidnaping, orchestrated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, violated an extradition treaty with Mexico.

The April abduction of Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain of Guadalajara, who is a suspect in the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, strained relations between the United States and Mexico.

Assistant U.S. Atty. William F. Fahey said the government will ask the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for an expedited appeal of the decision issued Aug. 10 by U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie. The judge had given prosecutors one week to decide if they wanted to appeal.

On Friday, the judge ordered a bail hearing in one week for Alvarez, who prosecutors allege administered drugs to revive Camarena so he could be further interrogated by narcotics traffickers who were torturing him at a Guadalajara house in February, 1985.

Camarena was snatched off a Guadalajara street and his mutilated body was found a month later at a ranch 65 miles away.

The Mexican government formally protested Alvarez’s kidnaping to the U.S. State Department. Mexico’s attorney general has issued arrest warrants for Antonio Garate Bustamante, the Los Angeles-based DEA operative who orchestrated the kidnaping, and Hector Berrellez, the Los Angeles DEA agent who heads the Camarena investigation and was Garate’s supervisor.

It is expected that the Justice Department will oppose any bail for Alvarez on the grounds that he could flee to Mexico to avoid trial.

The doctor also faces charges in Mexico stemming from the Camarena murder. Those charges were lodged in June, about two months after Alvarez’s kidnaping.

On Friday, Alvarez’s attorney, Robert K. Steinberg, told Rafeedie that two of his client’s relatives were in court and were willing to put up their property to guarantee his bail.

Steinberg maintained that it would be unfair to keep Alvarez in jail during the appeal, which quite possibly could go to the Supreme Court, meaning a two-year process at best.

“That certainly is cruel and unusual punishment for this man, which you have made a ruling on, to languish in a prison,” Steinberg said.

In papers filed Friday, Fahey asserted that the government had a reasonable probability of success on appeal. He contended that Rafeedie “committed several clear errors of law” in his ruling.

Fahey’s motion also asserted that Rafeedie’s unprecedented decision created “uncertain ramifications for extraterritorial law enforcement and for United States foreign policy vis-a-vis Mexico and other nations.”