MEXICO FREED DRUG SUSPECT, OFFICIAL SAYS RELEASE ORDERED DESPITE WARRANT

MEXICO CITY—Mexican police recently captured the man believed to be the
country's most notorious drug money launderer, detained and interrogated
him for three weeks, then set him free despite a federal warrant for his
arrest, according to Mexican sources.

The alleged money launderer, Humberto Garcia Abrego, brother of jailed Gulf
cartel kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego, had been the subject of an intense
manhunt since February 1997, when he allegedly paid three federal judges
almost $1 million in bribes to be freed from prison. He was never
questioned about the alleged payoffs during his recent incarceration,
according to an official familiar with his interrogation.

Samuel Gonzalez Ruiz, chief of the Mexican attorney general's Organized
Crime Unit at the time of the incident, denied in an interview that
Humberto Garcia Abrego was detained and released: "It's absolutely false,
it never took place."

But the other Mexican official backed up his account with a copy of a
document from the Organized Crime Unit written over Gonzalez's name
ordering Garcia Abrego's "immediate and absolute freedom." Gonzalez, who
denied writing the order, resigned Jan. 1 as head of the unit, reportedly
under the pressure of superiors' dissatisfaction with his handling of
several major cases.

The Mexican source said Garcia Abrego was arrested Oct. 18 in the quaint
colonial town of San Miguel de Allende, about three hours north of Mexico
City, while police were trailing other drug suspects. He was questioned
under extraordinary secrecy at a safe house in the city of Queretaro near
San Miguel de Allende and released on Nov. 9 after giving investigators
detailed information about money laundering in the resort town of Cancun,
the source said.

The disclosure of Garcia Abrego's detention and release comes when Mexico's
attempts to crack down on drug trafficking and corruption within its police
and legal systems are under close national and international scrutiny.
President Clinton arrives in Mexico Sunday for a 24-hour visit just a week
before he is required under U.S. law to determine whether Mexico should be
certified as an ally in combating drug trafficking.

Numerous reforms designed to strengthen the rule of law have been enacted
during President Ernesto Zedillo's administration. But Garcia Abrego's
release despite the pending arrest warrant for drug money laundering, the
alleged failure to question him about the circumstances of his previous
incarceration and the secrecy surrounding the incident underscores the
challenge Mexico faces in abolishing entrenched practices that permit drug
kingpins to operate with impunity.

As it happens, Garcia Abrego's lengthy confinement without being charged
also violated a law prohibiting the jailing of suspects without charges for
more than 72 hours.

"He was held illegally," said the Mexican official. "As soon as 72 hours
expired, we committed a crime called kidnapping."

The document relating to Garcia Abrego's release and obtained by The
Washington Post is a copy of the unsigned and undated duplicate of the
original order, according to the Mexican official.

Although one of the most frequently cited criminal justice reforms in
recent years was the enactment of a law allowing Mexican prosecutors to
engage in plea bargaining with suspects who cooperate in criminal
investigations, it is unclear why that new authority was not used in the
case of Garcia Abrego, who was simply freed from custody after turning over
valuable information.

The Mexican official said Garcia Abrego's capture occurred last Oct. 18
when federal police officers who were following two drug dealers in a car
in Queretaro lost the subjects, and a short time later began following an
identical car. When that car arrived in San Miguel de Allende, superiors
radioed an order to the officers to arrest the occupants and bring them to
police headquarters in Queretaro, about an hour away.

After the officers returned, the officer in charge was stunned to see that
instead of the two drug dealers, his men had Humberto Garcia Abrego in tow,
the source said.

Garcia Abrego is best known as the brother of Juan Garcia Abrego, the head
of the Gulf cartel, who was considered Mexico's most powerful drug kingpin
in the early 1990s. Juan Garcia Abrego, who had a $20 billion a year
business shipping about a third of all the cocaine consumed in the United
States, was tried and convicted in Houston in 1996 and sentenced to 11 life
terms in prison.

Humberto Garcia Abrego also is renowned for the murky circumstances
surrounding his release from prison in late February 1997. In that case,
the Mexican government withheld news of his freedom until after Clinton
approved the annual certification of Mexico, even though the order for
Garcia Abrego's release had been granted days earlier.

Washington protested the incident for what "appeared to be unusual
circumstances related to corruption," a U.S. official said. The Mexican
government never provided "a satisfactory answer" for what happened, he said.

Later that year, The Washington Post reported that Mexican law enforcement
authorities had obtained information that Garcia Abrego, who had served
just 17 months of a five-year sentence for money laundering, allegedly had
paid $1 million to three federal magistrates and a lawyer to have the
conviction annulled. In an interview, one of the magistrates denied being
bribed and said that prosecutors had botched the case.

After his release, Mexican officials issued a warrant for his arrest on new
money laundering charges.

A senior official in the Mexican attorney general's office said Mexican
authorities never pursued the investigation of the alleged payoffs, and the
source familiar with Garcia Abrego's interrogation said he was never
questioned about the alleged bribes when he was picked up four months ago.

Mario Melgar Adalid, chairman of the disciplinary committee of the Federal
Judiciary Council -- a relatively new panel set up to investigate
allegations of judicial corruption -- said his committee was aware of the
bribery allegations in connection with Garcia Abrego's release, but never
investigated them. Allegations of judicial corruption are widespread in
Mexico. There are numerous cases in which Mexican and U.S. police say
judges accepted bribes to drop charges or release drug traffickers, but few
judges have ever been prosecuted or disciplined. Judges frequently argue
that Mexican prosecutors present sloppy cases with insufficient evidence.

The official familiar with Garcia Abrego's recent detention said that he
was interrogated for about three weeks and provided important information
about money laundering in Cancun by the Juarez cartel, which is now one of
Mexico's top drug mafias. Partly as a result of the information he gave,
according to the official familiar with the investigation, Mexican police
launched an operation in Cancun, the country's most profitable tourist
resort, last November and December and seized four hotels, two restaurants,
nine offices, a warehouse and four yachts, in addition to numerous other
properties in Mexico City and the northern state of Tamaulipas. The seized
property was valued at about $200 million, according to the attorney
general's office.

The source said Garcia Abrego also gave investigators information about
alleged drug money laundering by Raul Salinas de Gortari, the older brother
of former president Carlos Salinas. Raul Salinas was recently found guilty
of murder and sentenced to 50 years in prison in connection with the 1994
death of a top politician.

There have been numerous unsubstantiated reports of meetings between Raul
Salinas and Juan Garcia Abrego during the 1988-94 Salinas administration.
Last year, Swiss authorities seized more than $100 million in bank accounts
traced to Raul Salinas, saying it was drug proceeds he had collected for
acting as the chief protector of drug traffickers during his brother's
presidency. Salinas has said the money was obtained from legitimate
business deals.