NARCOTICS SUSPECT ACCUSING U.S. OF MALICIOUS PROSECUTION

Reputed drug lord Fabio Ochoa-Vasquez will try to put the U.S. government
on trial this week in a Miami courtroom.

Ochoa, an alleged former leader of the Medellin cartel, asserts that the
United States is vindictively prosecuting him because he refused to pay a
$30 million bribe to an audacious Drug Enforcement Administration informant.

By his own admission, the informant, Miami Beach fashion photographer
Baruch Jairo Vega, enticed more than 100 drug traffickers to surrender to
U.S. authorities.

But in March 2000, the FBI charged Vega and an associate with obstruction
of justice and money laundering for cooking up "phony cooperation deals"
for the drug barons in exchange for multimillion dollar fees. Prosecutors
dropped the charges against Vega and the associate, without explanation, in
2001. But the taint remains.

Two Miami DEA agents who supervised Vega's activities have been relegated
to desk jobs for the past two years awaiting the outcome of an internal
investigation.

And now Ochoa's attorney, Roy Black, is asking a federal magistrate to
dismiss a cocaine-trafficking conspiracy indictment against Ochoa due to
"outrageous governmental misconduct."

In more than 600 pages of legal arguments and backup documents, Black says
that Vega sold the cooperation packages with the tacit approval of U.S.
prosecutors and agents, and with the assistance of Miami defense attorneys.
Prosecutors, he said, used sealed plea deals and secret dockets to conceal
the scheme.

The entire effort, Black said, was bolstered by right-wing paramilitary
leader Carlos Castano, who threatened to kill any traffickers who did not
buy into Vega's "program."

If U.S. Magistrate William C. Turnoff refuses to dismiss the case, Black is
asking to suppress any evidence from witnesses who "purchased" their
cooperation deals with Vega.

Federal prosecutors Edward Ryan and Richard Gregorie say Black's argument
is a smoke screen.

"Although the government does not sanction such unsupervised tactics,
[Ochoa] is wrong that such informants or federal agents themselves are
under an obligation of fair-dealing where fugitive criminal defendants are
concerned," Ryan said.

Nothing Vega did to encourage anyone to surrender had any bearing on the
information at the core of the Operation Millennium indictment, the
prosecutors said.

The DEA agents and prosecutors who assembled the Operation Millennium
indictment didn't even know Vega, Ryan said. Ochoa is the biggest name but
is a relatively minor figure in the 43-defendant case that dismantled a
loose-knit consortium of drug traffickers accused of being responsible for
importing upward of 30 tons of cocaine and heroin a month from Colombia.

In late 1999 and early 2000, Vega regularly flew on chartered jets to
Panama -- often accompanied by DEA agents, local police officers, criminal
defense lawyers and even some fashion models -- to meet Colombian drug
traffickers and their family members.

Vega told the visiting drug lords that he had the clout to bribe Justice
Department officials, set up phony cooperation agreements and arrange for
the traffickers to "not serve a single day in jail" in exchange for huge
sums of money.

Prosecutors Ryan and Gregorie say this was nothing more than lies concocted
by Vega, playing to Colombian criminals accustomed to buying justice from
law enforcement and the judiciary.

Vega sometimes took along another cooperating drug lord, Carlos Julio
Correa, to vouch for him.

Figures such as Correa rarely qualify for bond. But Correa maintained a
posh Aventura condo and traveled the world on legitimate U.S. travel
documents issued under several aliases. Correa disappeared in 2001 and is
presumed murdered.

Even if the prosecutors persuade the magistrate to reject Black's argument,
the government has left many unanswered questions.

No one in the U.S. attorney's office, DEA or the FBI has ever explained why
the public-corruption case against Vega and his associate, Roman Suarez
Lopez, was dropped.

Even though the FBI initially said Vega and Suarez acted alone, some
Colombian officials are convinced they could not have conned the drug
barons without the backing of U.S. authorities.

The Vega affair still hangs over DEA Special Agents David Tinsley and Larry
Castillo, who have been on light desk duty for more than two years pending
the outcome of an internal investigation.

"I still can't talk about it," said Thomas Raffanello, who inherited the
controversy when he became special agent in charge of the Miami DEA office
last year.

"But I think a lot of people are going to be surprised when the whole story
finally comes out."