MEXICO CITY, July 23 (Reuter) A top Mexican justice official on Wednesday
issued a stern warning to drug traffickers that they could face extradition
to the United States if they bribe judges to set them free in Mexico.

``Let this be a message to drug traffickers,'' deputy attorney general
Alfonso Navarrete Prida told Reuters.

``If they prefer to corrupt the justice system in Mexico, then they should
decide where they want to face trial. Because they are going to pay for their
sins somewhere.''

Extradition has always been a touchy issue in Mexico, a transshipment point
for the bulk of Colombian cocaine consumed in the United States.

Navarrete stressed that extradition requests would be considered only after
any pending charges in Mexican courts had been resolved.

One such suspect, Jaime Gonzalez Gutierrez, known as El Jaimillo, was
acquitted of all drugs charges last week by a judge outside Mexico City.

Despite the ruling, Gonzalez remained in jail while officials began
extradition proceedings to send him to the United States, where he also faces
cocaine charges.

``Once all the cases against them in the Mexican justice system are
exhausted, (and) if there are petititions from other countries to try these
men for the crimes they have committed, Mexico will honour its international
commitments,'' he said.

Federal prosecutors under Navarrete have suffered a string of setbacks in
highprofile narcotics cases this year, some of which he blamed on Mexican
judges who he said are under investigation on suspicion of corruption.

One of Mexico's top accused drug lords, Hector ``The Blond'' Palma Salazar,
has won five of nine cases against him in Mexican courts following his arrest
in 1995 after his plane crashed near the western city of Guadalajara.

In two cases, Palma, head of the socalled Sinaloa Cartel, was let off
cocaine charges because judges believed his defence that the crimes were
committed by a brother with almost the same name who had never before been
heard of, Navarrete said.

Another drug sentence against Palma was recently cut from six to 2.5 years.
Since June he has been cleared of two counts of mass murder.

Navarrete painted a bleak picture of the courts system, saying some judges
were protected by their senior colleagues.

Mexico's highest judicial authority below the Supreme Court must suspend
judges before they can face penal action, but he said it was ``very
unreceptive.''

Part of the problem, he said, were due to the brutal methods used by the
traffickers. Witnesses are threatened with death if they testify, and the
druglords rarely show their faces, making it hard to link them directly to
crimes. ``They are accused of drug trafficking and murder but not of being
fools,'' he said. REUTER

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