Fundamental Violation of Law

In their zeal to apprehend the drug traffickers who murdered U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena in 1985, federal officials have erred on the side of dubious legality: Suspects have been kidnaped in Mexico and brought to the United States for trial. Now a federal appeals court has in effect rebuked the Justice Department for that.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Mexican citizen convicted of involvement in the Camarena murder, Rene Martin Verdugo, is entitled to a hearing on whether U.S. agents orchestrated his abduction from Mexico in 1986.

Verdugo, a drug smuggler who lived in Mexicali and was linked to Camarena’s killers, was abducted by armed men in Baja California. He was blindfolded and driven to the border, where he was handed through the fence to U.S. marshals who had a warrant for his arrest.

The Mexican government filed a formal protest over the incident as well as the subsequent, even more controversial, kidnaping of Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, a Guadalajara physician allegedly present when Camarena was tortured.

U.S. law allows the trying of suspects brought to court after being kidnaped. But the 9th Circuit made an important distinction in the Verdugo case.

The United States has an extradition treaty with Mexico, and Verdugo’s abduction was “a flagrant treaty violation because it wholly circumvents the extradition process, and with it the commitment of the United States to follow the rule of law in its international relations.”

The ruling is surely frustrating to the prosecutors who want to nail every thug involved in Camarena’s death, but it’s sound. If such practices are allowed, where does the United States draw the line? What is to keep a foreign government--even extremist regimes like those of Iraq or Libya--from kidnaping U.S. citizens for trial?

The Justice Department should not appeal this case to the Supreme Court. It should return Verdugo to Mexican authorities and then formally request his extradition.

Any satisfaction that Camarena’s former colleagues might derive from well-deserved vengeance on his killers is not worth undermining a fundamentally important principle of international law.