Two Crimes Were Committed : The torture was horrible and wrong; but so was the kidnaping

Many current and former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents are stunned and angry that a judge has freed a suspect in the murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena. But should they be so surprised? From the beginning something was very wrong with the case against Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain.

The Guadalajara gynecologist is one of several suspects in the murder of Camarena, abducted in that city by Mexican drug lords in February, 1985, and methodically tortured to death. It was a heinous crime, and it prompted an understandably furious DEA and other Justice Department agencies to pull out all the stops in an effort to bring their colleague’s killers to justice. In the process they broke Mexican laws, ran roughshod over international treaties, soured U.S.-Mexican relations and set a precedent that may come back to haunt the United States.

Federal prosecutors believe that Alvarez Machain administered drugs that kept Camarena conscious while he was being interrogated by his captors. But rather than present their evidence to Mexican authorities, who have tried and convicted several suspects in the Camarena case, the DEA had Mexican bounty hunters kidnap the doctor in 1990 and bring him to this country for trial. The “snatching” caused an international outcry that grew louder earlier this year when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled--wrongly, in our view--that the kidnaping did not violate Mexico’s extradition treaty with this country.

That unfortunate ruling allowed the government to finally put Alvarez Machain on trial after two years of legal and diplomatic wrangling. But after hearing the prosecution last week, U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie ruled Monday that the case was so weak that it didn’t merit consideration by a jury.

Tuesday the doctor was returned to Mexico, but even that process was tainted bya tactless government effort to hold him on a charge that he was in this country illegally--as if he had not been forcibly brought to the United States.

All in all, the DEA and other federal agencies that handled Alvarez Machain did not look good. It appears that the Justice Department got carried away by an excess of zeal in the Camarena case.