2 Suspects in Camarena Case Ordered to Stand Trial : Crime: A major obstacle was lifted when the Supreme Court ruled that U.S. kidnaping of a suspect in Mexico did not violate extradition treaty.

After years of legal and diplomatic maneuvering, two suspects in the 1985 torture and murder of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena were ordered Monday to stand trial in August.

U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie set Aug. 25 as a trial date for Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain and Ruben Zuno Arce, although prosecutors expressed doubts that the trial will begin by that date. Rafeedie said he would like to try the two men together, but attorneys for the men are expected to seek separate trials.

A major obstacle blocking Alvarez’s trial was removed last week when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the kidnaping of Alvarez, a Guadalajara gynecologist accused of administering drugs to revive Camarena while he was being interrogated and tortured by Mexican drug lords and their allies. The kidnaping, the court found in a controversial decision, did not violate the extradition treaty between the United States and Mexico.

Alvarez and Zuno were in court Monday and listened impassively as the judge announced his plans to proceed with the case. Both men have been in custody for more than two years, and Monday’s action cleared the way for another high-profile trial in a case that has drawn attention at the highest levels of the American and Mexican governments.

In a related case, the Supreme Court on Monday set aside a ruling that found Rene Verdugo Urquidez, who was convicted of murder in the Camarena case, had been unlawfully seized from Mexico. Verdugo was sentenced to 240 years for his role in the murder of Camarena and DEA pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar, but had appealed on the grounds that he was illegally kidnaped in Mexico and handed over to American authorities.

In light of its ruling in the Alvarez case, the Supreme Court rejected Verdugo’s appeal and directed a lower court to review that case again.

Meanwhile, in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Rafeedie told lawyers that he wanted to move ahead with plans to try Zuno and Alvarez.

Zuno, a brother-in-law of former Mexican President Luis Echeverria Alvarez, was convicted of conspiracy in connection with Camarena’s murder, but Rafeedie overruled the jury’s verdict because of statements made by the prosecutor in the case. That decision was upheld on appeal, and Zuno won a new trial.

The doctor, on the other hand, has never been tried on the charges against him. He has spent 27 months in jail. During that time, his lawyers argued that he should be returned to Mexico because he was illegally kidnaped and brought to the United States.

DEA agents were outraged by the deaths of their colleagues and paid $50,000 to Mexican police to have Alvarez abducted. He was seized at his Guadalajara office in April, 1990, and was flown to El Paso, where drug agents met his plane and arrested him.

Rafeedie, and later the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that the kidnaping violated the American government’s extradition treaty with Mexico. But in its ruling last week, the Supreme Court ruled by a 6-3 vote that the extradition treaty between the United States and Mexico does not specifically prohibit kidnapings.

Despite that ruling, American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Paul L. Hoffman, who represents Alvarez, said Monday that he will return to the 9th Circuit and ask it to declare the kidnaping a violation of international law.