DRUG KINGPIN TIED TO DEATH OF REPORTER

LIMA, Peru - Fifteen years ago, Tampa Tribune reporter Todd Smith was
brutally beaten and executed after he ventured into Peru's jungle to
investigate links between Shining Path guerrillas and the cocaine trade.

At the time, Peru's Interior Ministry said that Smith, 28, had been captured
by the Maoist rebels and possibly sold to drug traffickers for $30,000. That
was the bounty then offered for anyone suspected of being a U.S. drug
enforcement agent.

A secret counterterrorism court in April 1993 sentenced Shining Path
guerrilla Jose Manrique to 30 years in prison for taking part in Smith's
murder.

A U.S. Embassy official confirmed that Manrique, the only person ever tried
and convicted for the crime, received an early release, the details of which
were sketchy.

Now, the transcript of that secret trial has emerged, including a police
intelligence report which identifies Fernando Zevallos - allegedly Peru's
most notorious reputed cocaine trafficker - as one of the masterminds behind
Smith's killing, The Associated Press has learned.

The complete court file was obtained by the Lima-based Institute for Press
and Society, an internationally funded press freedom organization. The
institute's general manager allowed an AP reporter to read the document but
declined to provide a copy.

Terry Parham, director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Lima
office, would not comment on Zevallos' alleged link to Smith's murder.

However, Parham told AP: ``Fernando Zevallos is the Al Capone of Peru, and
I'll stand by that statement.''

According to one of several detailed intelligence reports in the transcript,
the guerrillas who tortured and strangled Smith worked for Zevallos and
Arnulfo and Moises Zamora, two brothers involved in the drug trade.

The three allegedly wanted Smith killed because they believed he had
discovered information about upcoming shipments of nearly 3 tons of
semi-processed cocaine from the Peruvian jungle town of Uchiza to Colombia.

Peru's leading daily El Comercio on Sunday cited an excerpt of one of the
intelligence reports saying Zevallos called a meeting of his fellow cocaine
traffickers and guerrillas.

`Liquidate The Gringo'

The report said that he ``made the plan and coordinated all those designated
to liquidate the gringo.''

But Peruvian investigators told the AP that other confidential informants
identified Arnulfo as the one who gave the order to kill Smith at a meeting
with his brother, Zevallos, and two guerrillas.

Zevallos could not be reached for comment.

But his Miami lawyer, David B. Rothman, told the AP: ``For well over a
decade, anonymous, misleading, coerced and paid-for allegations of criminal
conduct have been made against Fernando Zevallos. Judges, prosecutors,
Peruvian and U.S. financial experts, a renowned polygraph examiner and most
recently an internationally recognized investigative agency have proven the
allegations false.''

Details contained in the 2 1/2- inch thick court transcript about Zevallos'
alleged involvement in Smith's death are almost identical to a Peruvian law
enforcement summary of testimony from a confidential witness obtained by AP
several months ago.

Smith, who aspired to be a foreign correspondent, was in Peru for a working
vacation.

His body was found beaten and strangled Nov. 21, 1989, on the outskirts of
Uchiza, 245 miles northeast of Lima.

A note found on his body indicated the killers believed that he was a U.S.
drug enforcement agent.

Zevallos, the subject of more than 30 DEA investigations, has faced charges
in Peru of contract murder, cocaine trafficking and money laundering. But he
has never been convicted of a crime or formally accused in connection with
Smith's murder.

The DEA maintains Zevallos, 47, has avoided prison through bribes, threats
and manipulation of Peru's weak judicial system.

The Bush administration added Zevallos to Washington's international ``drug
kingpin'' list in June, freezing his U.S. assets and prohibiting U.S.
citizens from engaging in any transactions with him or any of his
businesses.

The move precipitated the collapse of his airline, Aero Continente, which in
12 years had grown to dominate Peru's domestic aviation market, allegedly
bankrolled by cocaine profits.

The secret trial transcript showed that the key prosecution witness against
Manrique was a paid U.S. informant, Reynaldo Beltran, who was introduced
into the case by the U.S. Embassy.

Zevallos says he is the victim of character assassination by convicted drug
dealers turned prison informers, corrupt police, overzealous U.S. drug
agents and business rivals.

Beltran identified Manrique as one of the guerrillas who took him prisoner
along with Smith after they had seen them speaking to each other in Uchiza's
main square.

He said he escaped after the guerrillas untied his hands, intending to use
the rope to strangle Smith.

He did not mention cocaine traffickers in his testimony.

In their 1993 verdict, the judges, whose identities reportedly were
concealed by one-way mirrored glass and voice-distortion units during the
six-week trial, took into account the intelligence reports as a possible
motive for the killing.

According to DEA documents obtained by the AP, Zevallos owned a jungle air
charter company, Tausa. He spent the latter 1980s using Uchiza as his base
of operations to fly frequent shipments of semi-processed cocaine to
Colombia on his fleet of Cessna and Mitsubishi planes.

Zevallos and Arnulfo Zamora went on trial with 10 co-defendants in Lima
earlier this year for their alleged roles in Peru's largest drug bust of the
past decade - the 1995 seizure of 3.3 tons of cocaine destined for
Guadalajara, Mexico.

Zevallos, who faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted, is free on his
own recognizance.

Arnulfo Zamora died last week in prison of stomach cancer, a Peruvian law
enforcement official said on condition of anonymity.

Moises Zamora was murdered in 1999, a second law enforcement official said,
also on condition of anonymity.

Embassy Warned Against Trip

Smith went unaccompanied to Uchiza against the advice of U.S. Embassy
officials.

He interviewed members of a local agricultural cooperative, who took him to
see the area's vast hills covered with coca plants - the raw material for
cocaine.

The day before he planned to leave the area, he was told it was unsafe to
check into a hotel, so he spent the night in a local municipal office. The
next day he went to the airstrip outside Uchiza and was last seen talking to
Carlos Arevela, a Tausa ticket agent, the intelligence report said.

Four heavily armed men emerged from the jungle. One grabbed Smith by the
neck, shoved a gun into his side, and forced him into a truck.

For the next several days, Smith was moved by the guerrillas from a hotel
owned by one of the Zamora brothers to two nearby locations in the jungle,
the report said.

Two years ago, Peruvian and U.S. authorities caught a second suspect, Ewell
Guerrero, the Shining Path rebel who allegedly garroted Smith, slowly
twisting a nylon rope around his throat with a stick.

Guerrero recently was released on grounds that he had been held in custody
too long without trial after his case was transferred from Lima in June to a
court in the jungle town of Tarapoto.