Trial of Honduran Drug Kingpin Matta Opens

A Honduran drug kingpin was described by federal prosecutors Friday as a major link between Mexican drug traffickers and South America’s cocaine cartels.

Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, 45, was “one of the large-scale suppliers of cocaine from South America to the United States,” U.S. Justice Department prosecutor Kevin Connolly told a federal jury in Los Angeles during opening arguments in Matta’s trial.

Matta--recently convicted in connection with the kidnaping and torture-murder of a U.S. drug agent killed by Mexican drug lords and who was found guilty of drug-related charges at another earlier trial--is charged with one count of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States in 1984 through a drug cartel based in Guadalajara. He is also charged with 14 other drug trafficking counts involving possession of cocaine for sales from 1983 to 1985.

Defense attorney Martin Stoler said jurors will hear testimony that Matta “is falsely accused.”