International Herald Tribune August 14 1997
contact: iht@iht.com

A U.S. Casualty of Mexican Drug War
Sentenced to 10 Years, U.S. Yoga Teacher Says Conviction Was a Setup

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Service

MEXICO CITYDavid Carmos is serving a 10year sentence
in a Mexican prison on a felony drug conviction ordered by a judge he
never met, in a trial he never attended and with evidence that may
have been falsified.

Confronting a legal system far different than anything he had
ever experienced, the U.S. citizen turned to the one institution he
believed would help him: the U.S. Embassy. But this is an era when the
U.S. and Mexican governments are trying to show their zeal in fighting
drug traffickers.

"From everything we can see, he was railroaded " said a U.S.
representative Joe Moakicy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has
pursued the case of the onetime Boston University instructor convicted
of possessing the illegal drug me th amp h e ta min e . Mexican
human rights officials charged that Mr. Carmos, 55, an author of
nutrition books and a yoga instructor who, according to U.S.
documents had never had a runin with the law until he was arrested
transiting through a Mexico City airport nearly five years ago, has
become a victim of the two nations' crusade against drugs.

"His human rights were violated " said the Reverend David
Fernandez a Jesuit priest who heads the Miguel Agustin Pro Human
Rights Center and is familiar with the Mexican legal system. "And I've
been absolutely astounded at the lack of help he's received from the
embassy."

A U.S. Embassy official who agreed to be interviewed on the
condition on anonymity, said, '"Mr. Carmos was not treated worse
than a Mexican citizen would be treated for the same crime," although
he added that, "it's possible" that Mr. Carmos's rights were violated
under Mexican law. Concerning the embassy's response, the official
added "We've done everything humanly possible for him."

While the State Department discourages its embassies from
interfering in a foreign nation's legal system, they are allowed to
pressure foreign governments when the rights of U.S. citizens are being
abused. But despite the fact that U.S. government documents cited
serious irregularities in Mr. Carmos's case, embassy records show that
officials there made only one complaint to the Mexican government on
his behalf in the last five years: that he did not receive adequate
services of an interpreter during the appeals process.

The Mexican attorney general's office declined several requests
to be interviewed about Mr. Carmos's case. Previously, officials there
have told reporters they stand by their investigation and conviction of
Mr. Carmos.

Mr. Carmos's ordeal with the Mexican authorities and the U.S.
government, at least as he tells it, is the stuff of a traveler's worst
nightmare.

In October 1992, he traveled to Brazil for a week of
missionary work as a bishop at large for the San Diego branch of a
Christian group, the Essenes, which sees itself as a modernday
incarnation of the sect credited with writing the ancient Dead Sea
Scrolls. On his way home to California, while changing planes in
Mexico City, Mr. Carmos was detained by customs officials who said
they had found plastic bags containing a suspicious powder inside a
container of DuraCarba carbohydrate drink mix in powder formand
in three other cans.

Mr. Carmos said that he was carrying the drink mix, but that
he had never seen the three other cans until Mexican customs agents
showed them to him several hours after his arrest.

The authorities accused Mr. Carmos, who said he understood
no Spanish, of carrying seven pounds of a substance that can be used to
make a chemical precursor of the drugs amphetamine or
metharnphetamine .

Mr. Carmos said he did not even learn about his trial until
nearly a month after it ended in January 1993. X In the middle of it,
Mexican officials changed the charges against him from carrying a
chemical component of an illegal drug to carrying the drug
methamphetamine itself. Mexican prosecutors said in court documents
that they made the alteration based on better laboratory tests.

But four experts in the United States and Mexico concluded
that the tests either had been fabricated or were based on analyses of a
substance different from the one for which he was charged according to
documents submitted to the court The experts also found that eight
laboratory tests submitted as separate examinations were eight
photocopies of the same test result.

A chemist for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency noted other
irregularities. In an internal U.S. Embassy memorandum dated April 8,
1994, the consul general's office told the public affairs office: "Upon
review of the sentencing documents, it does seem extremely odd that
Carmos, who was detained and charged on the basis of a suspicious
powder, would have been charged with possession of a substance that
only exists in liquid form."

Mr. Carmos said he believes that the Mexican authorities
pursued his case because of pressure from the United States to toughen
its prosecution of dtug offenders . And Mr. Moakley, the congressman,
said he believes the U.S. Embassy failed to aid Mr. Caxmos because
"they don't want to embarrass Mexico."