Mexico Overturns Drug Lord Sentence

By ANITA SNOW

MEXICO CITY (AP) In a move that could strain U.S.Mexico relations ahead of
a visit by President Clinton, a tribunal has overturned the sentence of a
drug lord convicted of killing U.S. federal agent Enrique Camarena 12 years
ago.

Rafael Caro Quintero was convicted in the highly publicized death of
Camarena, now considered a drugwar martyr among fellow drug agents.

The Mexican Attorney General's Office said Friday there was no danger Caro
Quintero would be freed because he already is serving time for another
conviction. The 40year sentence in the Camarena death was overturned on a
technicality, and another one could conceivably be imposed after more court
proceedings.

In the unlikely event that Caro Quintero is released from all his Mexican
sentences, there is a longstanding, provisional request on file in Mexico for
his arrest and extradition to the United States, according to a U.S. Justice
Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.S. officials in Mexico City and Washington had no comment.

But the tribunal's decision was expected to raise tension in the days leading
to Clinton's visit here May 57, when the president hopes to address disputes
about drug enforcement and immigration policy.

News of the legal maneuver angered Camarena's former fellow agents, who still
affectionately refer to him as ``Kiki.''

``Kiki's killing symbolized corruption at its worst in Mexico,'' said Phil
Jordan, a retired DEA special agent in Dallas and former director of the El
Paso Intelligence Center.

``We know why Kiki was taken from us because the government was working in
complicity with the godfathers of the drug trade,'' he said. ``To even
reconsider Caro Quintero's sentence is sickening and an insult of major
proportions.''

U.S.Mexico relations had plunged to one of their alltime lows after
Camarena's Feb. 7, 1985, kidnapping in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco
state and a major drug trafficking center. His body and that of his Mexican
pilot, both showing signs of torture, were found a month later.

American officials accused Mexican counterparts of letting Camarena's killers
get away. Caro Quintero was eventually hunted down in Costa Rica.

At one point, U.S. Customs agents virtually blocked the U.S. border with
Mexico, slowing traffic to a standstill while screening all incoming
Mexicans.

Camarena has since been lionized by fellow U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration agents. A drug intelligence center in Texas has been named
after him.

Caro Quintero, once one of Mexico's most powerful drug barons, was sentenced
in 1989 for complicity in the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of
Camarena.

A federal panel of magistrates in Jalisco on Thursday struck that sentence
down after defense lawyers said their client had been denied the right to
crossexamine codefendants.

New court proceedings will be held in the case while Caro Quintero remains at
the highsecurity Almoloya prison outside Mexico City, prosecutors said.

Caro Quintero already is serving a 34year sentence on a conviction stemming
from a raid in central Mexico that netted up to five tons of marijuana and
cost Caro Quintero and his colleagues an estimated $8 billion in lost sales.

A former Sinaloa cartel boss, Caro Quintero is said to have pioneered the
first links between Colombian cocaine cartels and the Mexican smugglers who
transport the cocaine into the United States.