Hunt for Alleged Drug Lord Intensifies Before Clinton Visit

Jose de Jesus Partida Villanueva had reason to believe that the “guerrillas had arrived” Tuesday. Dozens of masked gunmen jumped over the fence of his mansion at 8:40 a.m. They burst through the front door, threw him, his wife and daughter on the floor and blindfolded them.

It wasn’t until after they had scoured the broadcast executive’s home for more than an hour that they told him they were cops--members of a federal task force hunting Amado Carrillo Fuentes, whom U.S. and Mexican drug enforcement agencies have identified as Mexico’s most powerful drug lord.

Officials from Mexico’s attorney general’s office later apologized to Partida. But sources said the timing and zeal of the raid on Partida’s home showed the intensity of the Mexican government’s pursuit of Carrillo just two weeks before President Clinton is to visit here.

Topping the agenda of Clinton’s May 5-7 visit will be ways to improve the U.S.-Mexican war on drug cartels and their booming trade, which U.S. officials say supplies up to 75% of illicit cocaine in the United States.

U.S. officials say Carrillo’s arrest before Clinton’s state visit would be a triumph that would help ease the sting caused by the seemingly unending disclosures here of official corruption and ineffective law enforcement.

But officials’ lack of success in their raid this week demonstrated the elusiveness of Carrillo, known here as “Lord of the Skies” for his allegedly sophisticated use of air routes to smuggle tons of South American cocaine through Mexico and across the southern U.S. border.

Carrillo is under indictment for trafficking in Miami and Dallas and is considered by the Drug Enforcement Administration to be the most powerful of Mexico’s alleged drug cartel chiefs. He also faces drug charges in Mexico.

The attorney general’s office here defended the assault at the Partida house and insisted that agents had reason to believe that the home “was used as a residence by members of the criminal organization headed by Amado Carrillo and particularly by his son.”

Mexico’s secretive federal prosecutors even took the extraordinary step this week of releasing evidence to support their allegations: It included a receipt for a $255,000 armored Mercedes-Benz that Carrillo’s 20-year-old son had purchased and a receipt for a life insurance policy. Carrillo’s son listed Partida’s address as his residence in both documents.

After the raid, Partida told reporters that he had no idea why the younger Carrillo used his address.

Partida--who has been officially invited to file a claim for damages he may have suffered in the raid and said in an interview that he will do that--told journalists that he bought his home in November 1994 without inquiring about its previous owners.

The attorney general’s office, which is in charge of Mexico’s counter-narcotics efforts, said it made no attempt to determine the home’s current ownership before the raid “to prevent information leaks that would alert the criminals.”

But prosecutors insisted that they are closing in on Carrillo and have tightened their dragnet after more than half a dozen attempts in recent months failed to nab him elsewhere.

“From the various raids that have been conducted in different parts of the Mexican republic, we have obtained evidence and proof of the existence of other residences and people related to this narcotics trafficker,” the attorney general’s office said in a communique justifying this week’s raid. “The federal attorney general reiterates that these actions are part of the intensive effort being made to confront impunity at all levels.”

But Partida is skeptical: “If they’re looking for a drug trafficker, they should look for him where he lives now. They should have investigated this before they raided my house.”