Plea Made to Retain Suspect in DEA Case : Murder: A doctor charged with aiding in the torture of agent Enrique Camarena was kidnaped in Mexico and brought to the U.S. A judge in August ordered his return.

A Justice Department lawyer asked a federal appeals court Thursday to reverse an order that the U.S. government return to Mexico a suspect in the 1985 murder of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena.

The suspect, a doctor accused of aiding in the torture of Camarena at the home of a Guadalajara drug baron, was abducted from Mexico last April at the behest of DEA agents so that he could stand trial here. The action sparked a major international incident between the United States and Mexico.

Last August, U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie stunned the government when he ruled that the DEA, by orchestrating Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain’s kidnaping, had violated an extradition treaty with Mexico and infringed on the country’s sovereignty. He stayed his order that Alvarez be returned to his native land while the government’s appeal is pending.

During oral arguments Thursday, Justice Department lawyer Andrew McBride contended that Rafeedie ignored more than 100 years of precedent ruling that an illegal arrest in a foreign country is no bar to bringing a defendant to trial in the United States.

“The Supreme Court has stated again and again that an illegal arrest cannot grant a defendant blanket immunity from prosecution,” McBride said. “All the United States wants to do is to be able to marshal evidence against this defendant in a fair trial.”

But an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing Alvarez said that if Rafeedie’s decision were overturned it would allow the United States to violate international law and circumvent this country’s obligations under its 1980 extradition treaty with Mexico. ACLU lawyer Paul Hoffman said that the Alvarez case was distinguishable from the precedents McBride cited because the Mexican government vigorously protested the abduction through formal channels.

Several human rights organizations have filed friend-of-the court briefs urging that Rafeedie’s decision be upheld.

Alvarez, a Guadalajara gynecologist, was indicted by a federal grand jury on five felony charges in January, 1990. He was charged with administering drugs to Camarena so that he could be revived and further tortured in February, 1985, after the agent was snatched off a Guadalajara street by narcotics traffickers and some of their Mexican law enforcement allies.

Last April, some current and former members of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police kidnaped Alvarez from his office, flew him to El Paso and turned him over to DEA agents.

The kidnaping was orchestrated by DEA operative Antonio Garate Bustamante, a former Mexican policeman and a former adviser to Mexican drug kingpin Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo. He was supervised by DEA agent Hector Berrellez, head of the Los Angeles DEA task force investigating Camarena’s murder.

McBride asserted repeatedly that Rafeedie’s decision was incorrect because the extradition treaty was not the United States’ only way of taking custody of a Mexican suspect. He said nothing in the extradition treaty barred the United States from using other means of “self-help.”

But Hoffman countered that such an interpretation was absurd and would make the treaty meaningless. He stressed that the United States had not attempted to use formal diplomatic channels to have Alvarez extradited. After the kidnaping, formal charges were filed against Alvarez in Mexico by the Mexican government.

The Mexican government also has requested that Berrellez and another DEA agent, William Waters, be extradited to Mexico to stand trial on kidnaping charges. Justice Department officials have said they will not comply.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judges--Alfred Goodwin, Mary Schroeder and Samuel King--did not say when they would rule. Schroeder noted that the 9th Circuit already has a similar case involving Rene Verdugo Urquidez, who was convicted of involvement in Camarena’s murder at a 1988 Los Angeles trial.

Verdugo was pushed through a fence at the Mexican-U.S. border by Mexican police and arrested on the U.S. side by DEA agents. His lawyers contend that he, too, was illegally arrested.

Seven people have been convicted in Los Angeles in Camarena’s murder nearly two dozen have been convicted in Mexico.