Man who implicated suspects in the murder of DEA agent later claimed he had
been pressured by federal prosecutors. But now he contends he was coerced
to make those charges, court papers say.

CAMARENA CASE WITNESS RECANTS ALLEGATIONS, U.S. SAYS

A government witness who claimed that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles
pressured him to falsely implicate suspects in the 1985 kidnapping and
murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena has recanted his allegations
against the prosecutors, the U.S. attorney's office said in a document
filed in federal court Thursday. In a videotaped interview with the Drug
Enforcement Administration officials in Guadalajara last month, the witness
reportedly said he was plied with money to lie about the prosecutors and
was later beaten and held captive in Mexico to ensure his cooperation.

The witness, Hector Cervantes Santos, also said he was forced to repeat his
account of prosecutorial misconduct in an interview with a Times reporter
and was coached on how to beat a polygraph examination, the U.S. attorney's
office said.

Cervantes' claim of prosecutorial misconduct is at the heart of a motion
for a new trial being sought by Ruben Zuno Arce, now serving a life term
for Camarena's torture-murder in Mexico. Reached for comment, Zuno's
lawyer, Edward Medvene, said, "From everything I know, these most recent
statements of Cervantes are false."

Chief Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard E. Drooyan said Cervantes came to the
DEA office in Guadalajara voluntarily Jan. 18 and, during a videotaped
interview of more than an hour, disavowed statements he had made to the
defense. The government plans to play the tape during a hearing before U.S.
District Judge Edward Rafeedie on March 2 to consider Zuno's motion.

The government summary of the taped interview said Cervantes alleged that
he was coerced to lie about the prosecution by agents of Zuno and Manuel
Bartlett Diaz, currently governor of Puebla state. Bartlett, once the
second-highest Mexican official, was identified by Cervantes during the
trial as being present in a drug lord's home where Camarena was tortured.
Bartlett was not charged but has been trying to clear his name. Bartlett's
attorney said Thursday that Cervantes' latest recantation shows that he
lacks credibility.

Zuno, the brother-in-law of former Mexican President Luis Echeverria, was
convicted in a Los Angeles federal court trial in 1990 after Cervantes
placed him and two other defendants at meetings held by Mexican drug
dealers to plot Camarena's abduction. Cervantes worked at that time as a
security guard at a drug cartel member's home. Zuno's conviction was
overturned on appeal, but he was convicted again in 1992 without Cervantes
being called as a witness. Instead, the government relied on the testimony
of two other drug cartel security guards.

Last summer, after he was rejected for entry into the federal witness
protection program and after quarreling with the DEA over financial
support, Cervantes surfaced as a witness for the defense.

The Times undertook its own examination of the Camarena case, interviewing
Cervantes and scores of witnesses in the United States and in Mexico. The
paper reported last October that new evidence raised questions about the
integrity of the DEA investigation and the testimony of prosecution
witnesses.

In their summary of Cervantes' recent interview with the DEA, federal
prosecutors gave this account: Cervantes said that after his falling out
with the DEA last year, he met in Los Angeles with representatives of Zuno
and Bartlett who told him he had been betrayed by the drug agency. He said
they also gave him $6,000 or $7,000. He said he was put up at a downtown
Los Angeles hotel for about two weeks and "met with a polygraph examiner
for five days, eight to 10 hours a day." He said the representatives of
Zuno and Bartlett told him they would "make sure that . . . [the polygraph]
comes out fine." He said they also instructed him to "close his mind into a
blank" while taking the test and he would pass. Cervantes did submit to a
polygraph test administered by a reputable examiner at the behest of
Bartlett's American lawyer--and reports said he passed.

In July, Cervantes said, he was taken to Tijuana and was met by Alberto
Espinoza, "a representative of Bartlett" who escorted him to Puebla for a
meeting with Bartlett in the state Capitol. "Bartlett said he wanted
Cervantes to speak to the press, and Cervantes said he did not want to do
that," the government document said.

"Bartlett then told him that they were going to 'soften him up.' "
Cervantes told the DEA he was taken to a room in the Capitol basement,
blindfolded, stripped, doused with cold water and beaten over several days.
He said he was taken to another location where the beatings continued until
he became ill and "agreed to do whatever he was told."

After being freed and returned to his family, the document said, Cervantes
met for an interview with a Times reporter and "as instructed, he falsely
told the reporter that he had been coached to lie in the earlier trial."

In October, the government document said, Cervantes was ordered by
Bartlett's agent to fly to Mexico City with his family--and when he
arrived, he was taken into custody and ordered to sign some papers that he
never read. Afterward, he said, he and his family were taken to a military
base and he was beaten and held incommunicado until mid-December, when he
bribed his way out and returned to Guadalajara, hiding until he showed up
at the DEA office there last month.

After reviewing the government's declaration Thursday, Los Angeles attorney
Michael J. Lightfoot, who represents Bartlett, said that "the conduct
attributed to Gov. Bartlett, his attorneys and his agents is ludicrous.
Gov. Bartlett has never met Cervantes.

"Only recently, Cervantes has given us documents which he says are in a
government representative's handwriting, scripting his false testimony in
the 1990 trial. At a minimum, this information confirms the incredibility
of this witness and is particularly troubling because there are several
individuals who are presently serving life sentences on the basis of his
testimony."

Copyright Los Angeles Times