Camarena Case Perjury Allegation Derided

Federal prosecutors Friday dismissed as “shameful” the allegations by a key witness that officials induced him to falsely implicate suspects in the 1983 kidnapping and murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena in Mexico.

The allegations were contained in a motion filed in October by Ruben Zuno Arce, who was seeking to overturn his conviction. In documents filed Friday, the government made its first formal response, contending that the witness’ recantation and other new evidence are not worthy of belief.

Zuno, the brother-in-law of a former Mexican president, contended that he had been wrongly convicted on false testimony by government informants. The Times reported in October that its own examination raised questions about the informants’ testimony that drug traffickers, corrupt police and some top Mexican officials repeatedly discussed kidnapping Camarena and were present in Guadalajara, Mexico, while the Drug Enforcement Administration agent was being tortured to death.

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U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie in Los Angeles will decide whether Zuno and other convicted defendants will get a new trial.

“Not only did Zuno participate in a series of meetings before Camarena’s abduction to discuss the kidnapping of a DEA agent, he participated in a meeting--on the night of Feb. 7, 1985, while Camarena was being held and tortured at that location,” says a government exhibit filed Friday.

Zuno attorney Edward Medvene could not be reached for comment.

Zuno and two other murder defendants were convicted at a 1990 trial, after a government witness contended that he had seen all three attend meetings in late 1984 and early 1985 to plot Camarena’s kidnapping. That witness was Hector Cervantes Santos, a former Mexican state police officer who became the security guard at the home of a drug cartel member.

Zuno won a new trial but was convicted again in 1992. At the second trial, the government did not use Cervantes. Instead, the prosecution built its case on the testimony of two new witnesses--other former policemen-turned-drug-cartel-bodyguards who said they too had seen Zuno planning the kidnapping.

Last summer, Cervantes came forward and said his testimony at the 1990 trial was a lie. He said prosecutor Manuel Medrano and DEA agent Hector Berrellez gave him a script and told him to implicate Zuno. Cervantes said that in return he was promised hundreds of thousands of dollars and that he and his family would be moved to the United States and protected here.

Cervantes passed a polygraph test arranged by defense attorneys. A former chief of the DEA, Terrence Burke, told The Times that he interviewed Cervantes at length and concluded that his allegations of having lied should be treated seriously and appeared credible.

But in its motion, the government contends that Cervantes’ recantation is a lie. The motion says that Medrano and Berrellez have distinguished careers and that “there is no reasonable explanation” for why they would have tried to entice Cervantes to commit perjury. “To do so, Manuel Medrano and Hector Berrellez would not only have to be foolish, but evil,” the motion states. “To contend that they are is shameful.”

The motion includes affidavits from Medrano and Berrellez denying the allegations point by point. Another affidavit from prosecutor John Carlton says he never witnessed any impropriety as Medrano’s partner.

The government response also disputes Zuno’s contention that witnesses in his 1992 retrial testified falsely.

The witnesses testified that one meeting to plot the kidnapping occurred at a first-floor suite in a Guadalajara hotel, where about 30 people gathered. Zuno contends that the hotel has no such suite, a detail confirmed in a visit there by The Times last summer.

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But prosecutors say that officials could have crowded into a room or that perhaps a larger suite existed in 1984.

Zuno in his motion challenged the veracity of a witness who recounted being flown to an army air base in Mexico City and seeing drug dealers withdraw a large sum of American money from a bank in 1984. But the government contends that the new evidence does not disprove the witness’ accounts.

Several Mexican and American officials, including former ambassadors, have expressed doubts about testimony that Manuel Bartlett Diaz, who held the second-highest post in the Mexican government, plotted the kidnapping and was present at the house where Camarena was tortured.

But prosecutors were not persuaded by two declarations filed by Bartlett’s former staff members, detailing his meetings on the day of the murder: “Declarations such as these must be considered in the context of this case, which is replete with evidence of high-level corruption and involvement in drug trafficking, and obstruction of the investigation into Agent Camarena’s disappearance.”

Zuno contended that prosecutors withheld critical evidence, such as that witnesses were secretly promised lump sum benefits to be paid after the trials. The government motion says that after the trials Washington officials recommended such lump sum payments as a way to terminate financial support to witnesses.

Zuno had contended also that the government hid aid to a witness arrested just before the Camarena trial on suspicion of spousal abuse. The abuse charges were later dismissed.