Document Places 2nd Doctor at Camarena Murder Site : Trial: Motion for a mistrial in the case against a Mexican businessman is denied. New material also offers a different motivation for agent’s death.

Lawyers for Mexican businessman Ruben Zuno Arce, who is accused of helping plan the 1985 kidnaping of an American drug agent, requested a mistrial Wednesday because, they said, government documents that surfaced on the final day of the proceeding contained material that might have helped their case.

The motion was denied by U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie, but he added that the new information was “very disturbing.” Under sharp questioning from the judge, prosecutors acknowledged that an unnamed informant told the FBI in September that a man named Fidel Kosonoy--and also known as Dr. Gonzalez--was at the house where DEA agent Enrique Camarena was tortured and killed in 1985.

The informant--who is identified as a former Mexican police officer--told the FBI that he had interrogated sources who claimed that Kosonoy kept Camarena alive during his interrogation. That was the same allegation the government had made against Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, a Guadalajara gynecologist whom Rafeedie acquitted Monday.

The FBI report is dated Sept. 9, 1992, but the information that the guilty party may have been another physician was not disclosed to the judge until hours before Rafeedie dismissed the charges against Alvarez Machain. Defense lawyers did not receive the documents until Wednesday, when Rafeedie ordered prosecutors to turn them over.

“These are the accusations you brought against Dr. Alvarez,” Rafeedie said to prosecutors. “It seems to me that any government agent with the case going to trial would know this should be disclosed (to the defense).”

Prosecutors responded that they first learned of the report late last Thursday, and filed it with the court on Monday, the next court day in the case.

The informant’s statements during the Sept. 9 interview and an earlier interrogation by DEA agents contain several questionable allegations. The informant, for instance, told the FBI that Camarena was buried alive, while forensic evidence indicates that he was killed by a blow to the head. Also, in the earlier statement, the informant says Camarena’s body was buried at a ranch owned by Juan Leano, while in the later account he claims it was buried on property owned by Emilio Caro-Quintero.

Still, the documents’ contents and the manner in which they were disclosed raised howls of protest from defense lawyers. Prosecutors said both Kosonoy and the FBI informant are in federal custody, and Zuno’s lawyers say they should have been allowed to interview them before resting their case yesterday.

The document, also raises an extraordinary but vehemently disputed allegation about the reason for Camarena’s Feb. 7, 1985, abduction. American authorities have always maintained that Camarena was kidnaped in retaliation for drug raids that the DEA conducted in late 1984 and early 1985, but in the interview with the FBI, the Mexican source suggests another possibility.

“DEA agent Camarena was abducted because of his romantic relationship with Sara Cossio, paramour of (drug kingpin) Rafael Caro-Quintero,” the unnamed source told the FBI.

There has been no other evidence to support the allegation that such an affair existed. That account would not explain why, when Camarena was abducted, his pilot, Alfredo Zavala, also was kidnaped and killed.

But if the allegation of an affair were corroborated, it would seriously undermine the government’s case against Zuno--which is based largely on his attendance at meetings where the kidnaping was discussed by drug traffickers and high-ranking Mexican government officials.

“They allege that Ruben Zuno attended all these meetings,” said James Blancarte, one of Zuno’s lawyers. “If these allegations are correct, Zuno could not have been at the meetings because they would not have taken place.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, whose lawyers represented Alvarez on issues related to his 1990 abduction at the behest of the DEA, reacted furiously to the latest disclosures, saying that they “indicate the existence of an incredible cover-up.”

While not commenting on the contents of the reports, the organization denounced the government’s handling of the material.

“The fact that the government had this information and did not bring it to the attention of the court or the defense suggests scandalous misconduct by the U.S. Department of Justice, intended to railroad an innocent man to a life prison term,” the ACLU said in a statement.

Prosecutors, however, said they had serious doubts about the information, in part because the source said he had elicited it by torturing suspects in the case.

“It’s utterly unreliable,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Manuel A. Medrano said.

Medrano and Assistant U.S. Atty. John L. Carlton said they had first learned of the FBI report when they were contacted by the Justice Department in Washington. Both prosecutors said that contact was their first inkling that such a document existed and that they then turned it over at the first opportunity.

But Rafeedie reminded prosecutors that the FBI interviewed the informant more than three months ago.

The judge suggested that authorities may not have acted correctly in handling the information, calling that “an ugly thought that runs through the court’s mind.”

Edward Medvene, Zuno’s lead attorney, formally moved for a mistrial on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct. Although he did not raise questions about the alleged affair between Camarena and Caro’s girlfriend, he argued that if the other doctor had been at the house, as the FBI informant claimed, that doctor might be able to rebut prosecutors’ contention that Zuno was there.

“They’ve got a witness under their control who I believe would say that Mr. Zuno was not at the house,” Medvene said. “They’re holding out a witness.”

Though the new documents could form the basis for an appeal, the case first must be considered by the jury that has been hearing evidence for three weeks.

In his closing argument, prosecutor Medrano told jurors that Zuno was part of a drug cartel whose influence reached to the highest levels of the Mexican government in the mid-1980s.

Medrano reminded jurors that two prosecution witnesses testified that Zuno was present during meetings where the Camarena abduction allegedly was planned. Those meetings, the witnesses said, also were attended by leaders of the Guadalajara drug cartel and high-ranking officials of the Mexican government, including the defense minister, the interior minister and the governor of the state of Jalisco.

Leaders of the cartel, stung by losses that Camarena and the DEA had inflicted, met on at least four or five occasions to plot the revenge kidnaping, and “Mr. Zuno was part and parcel of this cartel,” Medrano said.

Medvene did not challenge the prosecution’s claims that Mexican authorities were compromised or that the cartel had acquired enormous money and power. He did dispute, however, the allegation that Zuno was a member of the group and that he had planned Camarena’s abduction.

In particular, he attacked the two government witnesses who placed Zuno at four planning meetings. Those witnesses, Jorge Godoy and Rene Lopez Romero, both have criminal records and admitted to having worked as bodyguards for drug kingpin Ernesto Fonseca.

In addition, Lopez was involved at least peripherally in the 1984 torture and murder of four American Jehovah’s Witnesses in Guadalajara.

“On a massive scale, these people have been involved in the worst atrocities,” Medvene said. “They have no conscience. They have no ethics.”

In his final remarks, Medrano acknowledged that some of the informants had criminal histories, but he reminded jurors that “for plots hatched in hell, you do not have angels for witnesses.”