SYSTEM FOILS PROSECUTION IN MEXICO CASE

Bribes, dishonest judges have kept keep alleged drug kingpin free

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- For nearly a decade, the U.S. government has tried
to prosecute a Mexican multimillionaire accused of running a cartel that
smuggled tons of cocaine into California.

When U.S. drug agents raided his warehouses in Sylomar, near Los Angeles,
they made what remains the largest single drug bust in history. The agents
thought it was an open and shut case against suspect Rafael Muñoz Talavera.
After all, traffickers arrested after the seizure identified Muñoz as their
leader.

But after two trials, one conviction, and what U.S. prosecutors call
overwhelming evidence, Muñoz is free and, authorities say, trying to seize
control of a major part of the Mexican drug trade. An examination of the
investigation, based on interviews with law enforcement officials, judges
who tried Muñoz, and documents, dramatizes the legal crisis threatening
Mexico.

In the first trial, the police and prosecutors, later accused of accepting
bribes, steered a watered-down package of evidence to a friendly judge. A
second trial, bolstered by evidence from the United States, ended in a
conviction. But a Mexican appeals court freed Muñoz, ruling that he had
been illegally tried twice for the same crime.

Ready to try again

``We knew he was going to walk from the date of his arrest,'' said a U.S.
official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Today, with Muñoz back in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso,
Texas, U.S. prosecutors are working to assemble yet another case against him.

Muñoz did not respond to requests to discuss his legal fight. But in
December, in a newspaper advertisement, he denied any involvement in drug
trafficking and described himself as a ``simple, hard-working man.''

The lawyer who defended Muñoz in his seven-year legal battle, Sergio Roldan
Ramos, was killed in Ciudad Juarez last October. Roldan's partners and
other lawyers who have worked for Muñoz did not respond to interview requests.

Although Mexico's economy is opening up and opposition political parties
are finding a voice, criminal syndicates cast a widening shadow. The
justice system is riddled with graft and incompetence and shielded from
accountability.

Mexico's people hold every element involved in disrepute -- from the police
and prosecutors to judges and jailers. In a 1996 U.N. survey about
confidence in the judicial system, 80 percent of Mexicans responded they
had ``little'' or ``none,'' the worst showing of any Latin American country.

``We have a justice system immersed in the routine violation of every basic
principle,'' said Eduardo Lopez Betancourt, a law professor at the national
university. ``Prosecutors rig evidence and judges sell verdicts according
to the highest bidder, without delay, favoring every kind of criminal from
drug traffickers to car thieves.''

At the same time, the U.S. government has never successfully extradited a
major Mexican drug dealer.

Four years ago, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo replaced the entire
Supreme Court and established a Judicial Council to attack corruption. But
the council is timid. Mario Melgar, a member, said that of 1,538 complaints
filed against federal judges, only eight were forwarded to prosecutors. Not
one judge was punished for accepting payments from traffickers, he said.

Dishonest judges

Graft is considered rampant. In the Muñoz case, only the police and a
prosecutor were accused. But many judges are also suspect. In testimony
last month, the U.S. General Accounting Office told a committee that a
special Mexican police unit fighting organized crime trusts only one of
Mexico's 500 federal judges and magistrates to authorize wiretaps without
tipping off suspects.

Judges allow thousands to avoid arrest. For instance, the police commander
who led the arrest of Muñoz was later charged with taking bribes. He was
never arrested. He simply bought an amparo, or writ, from the court barring
his detention -- a sort of ``Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card.''

In the case of Muñoz's second 30-month trial, Mexico's attorney general's
office was in such disorder that 10 successive federal attorneys were
assigned to it but few stayed long enough to read the stacks of documents.

Until late 1989, Muñoz, 45, was known in Juarez as a sober, even taciturn
restaurateur. U.S. agents say he was not known as a major trafficker.

Then drug agents received a tip about suspicious comings and goings at a
warehouse in the Los Angeles suburb of Sylmar. With a search warrant, they
sliced off a $5 padlock and discovered 36 wooden pallets stacked with boxes
of cocaine. The hoard, weighing 21.4 tons, was the size of two school buses.

Ledger books showed billions of dollars of cocaine -- hundreds of tons --
had passed through the warehouse. The seizure caused what a cable from the
American embassy in Mexico called ``an earthquake'' that redefined
Washington's understanding of the drug war.

Not only was it clear that the Mexican smugglers had become significant
players, but a dozen traffickers arrested at Sylmar identified Muñoz as
their leader.

The clamor for Muñoz's detention was intense and, five weeks later,
Mexico's Federal Police arrested him in a Ciudad Juarez hotel with several
rifles and handguns. Police said they seized a small bag of cocaine during
a raid on one of his houses. He was initially arraigned on drug possession
and weapons violations which were broadened to include drug trafficking.
Mexican prosecutors said he faced 60 years in jail.

But the circumstances of his arrest aroused suspicion. Authorities had
announced his arrest in advance, inviting reporters. The hotel manager
said the room in which Muñoz was arrested had been rented not by Muñoz, but
by police.

``This was one of those deals that appeared to be prearranged,'' said a
Texas lawyer involved in related proceedings.

`Deliberate farce'

Later, two Mexican officials involved in the arrest and trial were accused
in U.S. court testimony of receiving huge bribes from Muñoz's drug
organization.

Two years later, Elias Ramirez Ruiz, the Federal Police commander in the
jurisdiction, was charged with narcotics smuggling and racketeering. He
obtained an amparo from a judge, however, and eluded arrest. He did not
respond to interview requests.

Recently, a Mexican official who participated directly in the first
prosecution of Muñoz described it as a deliberate farce.

``The idea was not to present strong evidence,'' the official said. ``It
was arranged ahead of time. They orchestrated a trial in Mexico so that
Muñoz Talavera couldn't be extradited to the United States.''

The U.S. Justice Department refused to discuss the proceedings.

Muñoz was acquitted of all charges in January 1991.

A year later, a grand jury in El Paso indicted Muñoz on trafficking and
money laundering charges. U.S. authorities later requested his extradition.
Mexican police, acting on a DEA tip, re-arrested him in 1992 in Tijuana.

Instead of delivering Muñoz to U.S. authorities, however, Mexico mounted a
new, three-year trial, again on Sylmar-related charges.

But it was a waste of time. Although the second judge found Muñoz guilty in
1995 and sentenced him to 24 years in jail, an appellate tribunal
overturned the conviction, ruling that Muñoz had already been tried on the
same charges.

Freed, Muñoz returned to Ciudad Juarez. Another trafficker, Amado Carrillo
Fuentes, had taken control of the local cartel. For a time, Muñoz seemed to
quietly administer his restaurant. But when Carrillo died last year, Muñoz
moved into action, officials from both countries said.

Francisco Barrio Terrazas, the governor of Chihuahua, said in an interview
that Muñoz forged an alliance with exceptionally violent traffickers from
Tijuana, hoping to seize control of the Ciudad Juarez drug trade. Months of
killings followed.

Thomas L. Kennedy, the DEA's special agent in charge in El Paso, recently
told an Austin television station, KTBC: ``It's liable to end up in a
crescendo of violence, a real blood bath, before somebody backs down.''