Two Indicted in Killing of Crusading Anti-Drug Editor : Narcotics: Prosecutors link last year’s slaying of the Spanish newspaper journalist in New York to Colombia’s Cali cocaine cartel.

Fourteen months after a crusading anti-drug editor was killed in a New York restaurant, two men were indicted Monday for the slaying, which prosecutors said was ordered by leaders of Colombia’s Cali cocaine cartel.

Investigators said the assassination brought to the streets of Queens the brutal code of the Colombian drug lords, who suffer few second thoughts about killing journalists in their own country.

Police charged Alejandro Wilson Majia Velez, 19, with firing two 9-millimeter bullets into the head of Manuel de Dios Unanue, a former editor of the Spanish-language New York newspaper El Diario-La Prensa. Velez was arrested outside a rooming house in Miami on Saturday.

Also indicted was John Mena, 24, already in custody, who prosecutors said commanded the contract killing.

De Dios, 49, who was murdered as he sat in the Meson Asturias Restaurant in Queens, was the only journalist to be slain in the United States last year. At the time of his death on March 11, 1992, he was publishing two small community magazines.

Mary Jo White, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said De Dios was slain because the drug lords were angered about articles he had written and photographs he had published of top narcotics traffickers and their street level dealers in Queens.

“The order for this murder came from the highest levels of the Cali cartel in Colombia,” White said at a Brooklyn news conference. “We know any murder is a heinous crime. But when the victim is murdered because he reported on the truth, we are all victims here.”

“We believe he was killed because of his vigorous reporting on the Colombian cartels and on the Cali cartel in particular,” she said.

“This case cried out for justice,” said Mayor David N. Dinkins, who attended the news conference with a host of law enforcement officials, including Queens Dist. Atty. Richard A. Brown and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.

“These indictments will serve as a reminder--those who would seek to silence our society’s crusaders, to murder the illuminators of our society’s dark places and to undermine one of our fundamental national rights should know we will never rest in pursuing them,” the mayor said.

Brown said that law enforcement officials gave De Dios’ slaying the same attention as the killing of a police officer.

A task force of homicide detectives, U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency investigators and New York State Police conducted the search for De Dios’ killers.

“The same tactics repeatedly used by Colombian cocaine traffickers in South America to silence their critics were used here and that is something we will not tolerate,” Brown said.

White noted that while only two indictments were announced, “there are others in custody involved in this crime . . . the investigation is being continued up and down the chain.”

White said the initial price for the hit on De Dios was $20,000 but when others took their cut, the gunman received far less. Some reports put the price as low as $1,500. White would say only that it was “some very small proportion” of the initial sum.

The U.S. attorney said that Mena was arrested last June 19 on separate charges in connection with a cocaine ring, and has been in jail ever since.

The indictment against Mena charged him with commanding, procuring and causing the killing of De Dios. If convicted, he faces a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison and a maximum term of life.

Velez, who was charged with being the gunman, faces life imprisonment if found guilty.

In a statement, the Committee to Protect Journalists said De Dios was one of 49 journalists killed worldwide last year.

“These charges send a message that very much needed to be sent: Journalists cannot be killed or abused in this country with impunity,” said James C. Goodale, the committee’s chairman, in a letters to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and Kelly.

” . . . Journalists get killed, kidnaped or attacked just about anywhere. They don’t get murdered often in the United States, but when they do,” the letter added, “it is vital for the government to respond aggressively so that both journalists and citizens feel free to exchange information and express their views without fear.”