2nd Camarena Figure Guilty of Kidnaping : Trial: But the defendant, like one before him, is acquitted of murder in the slaying of a U.S. drug agent.

A Los Angeles federal court jury Monday convicted a former Mexican state policeman on kidnaping charges in the 1985 slaying of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena, but acquitted him of murder.

The six-man, six-woman panel found Juan Jose Bernabe Ramirez, 31, guilty of three of the six counts against him. He was convicted of committing a violent crime in aid of racketeering, aiding and abetting the 1985 kidnaping of Camarena, and being an accessory after the fact in the agent’s kidnaping and murder by helping a Mexican drug lord escape from that country two days after the abduction.

Bernabe could be sentenced to life in prison on each of the first two convictions and up to 10 years in prison on the third.

The jury acquitted Bernabe of three charges: the murder of Camarena, conspiracy to kidnap the agent, and aiding and abetting the kidnaping and murder of Camarena’s pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar.

The verdicts were announced on the 11th day of deliberations, and followed the jury’s first verdicts, issued Thursday, in which the panel convicted Honduran drug kingpin Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, 45, of conspiring to kidnap, torture and murder Camarena and on two other charges. But, like Bernabe, Matta was acquitted of murder.

After reading the verdicts against Bernabe on Monday, U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie, at the request of defense lawyers, orally polled the jurors, and all confirmed that they had voted unanimously on each count.

Rafeedie then instructed the panel to resume deliberations on the fate of the two remaining defendants, Ruben Zuno Arce and Javier Vasquez Velasco.

Camarena was abducted off a Guadalajara street on Feb. 7, 1985, by members of a drug cartel and some of their corrupt Mexican law enforcement allies. His body and that of his pilot were found on a ranch outside Guadalajara a month later.

Bernabe was first arrested, with about 30 other people, in April, 1985, in Puerto Vallarta by Mexican authorities investigating the Drug Enforcement Administration agent’s murder.

However, Bernabe was released after he and his boss, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, a major Mexican drug kingpin, convinced Mexican authorities that Bernabe was merely a servant of Fonseca and had no involvement in the case.

In fact, Bernabe had served as one of Fonseca’s bodyguards. Last year, Fonseca was convicted in Mexico of involvement in the Camarena murder and received a long prison sentence.

After his release, Bernabe worked in the private security guard business until he was arrested by DEA agents in Los Angeles a year ago, after he was lured to the city by a former Mexican law enforcement official turned DEA informant, Federico Castel del Oro, who was Bernabe’s employer. The purported reason for the trip had been to obtain equipment for Castel del Oro’s security company.

While in Los Angeles, Bernabe admitted on secretly made videotapes and audiotapes that he had been present at the Guadalajara house where Camarena was tortured and murdered. He also boasted to undercover DEA agents, posing as drug dealers, that he helped drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero escape from Mexico through the Guadalajara Airport on Feb. 9, 1985.

The tapes were played for the jury last month. In one video, Bernabe expressed his admiration for Fonseca and Caro, who also was convicted in Mexico last year of involvement in Camarena’s murder and sentenced to a long prison term after his arrest April 4, 1985, in Costa Rica.

Bernabe was particularly animated in one tape as he described how he and several other heavily armed men held off Mexican police and DEA agents at Guadalajara Airport and helped Caro escape.

Earlier in the trial, DEA agent Salvador Leyva testified that Bernabe had pointed an AK-47 rifle at him during the airport incident. Leyva said he had “dreamt” about Bernabe for some time afterward and, as he identified him in court, said he would never forget the defendant’s eyes.

Leyva graphically described the airport showdown, noting that he was armed only with a .38-caliber pistol, while Caro’s men carried assault rifles.

In particular, Leyva expressed his disgust at seeing Armando Pavon Reyes, the chief Mexican law enforcement official in charge of the Camarena investigation, put his arm around Caro at the airport after conferring on the telephone with one of his superiors.

Pavon, a first commander with Mexico’s Federal Judicial Police, told his men to lower their guns and to allow the drug lord to depart. Caro boarded a private jet with a woman and his bodyguards, and as it taxied away, the drug lord leaned out the door, defiantly held up a machine gun and ridiculed the Mexican police and DEA agents by “toasting” them with a glass of champagne and shouting:

“Next time, bring better weapons, my children!”

Pavon was later fired and convicted and sentenced to prison for taking a $270,000 bribe from Caro for his help in the escape.

Bernabe was the only defendant in the Camarena murder trial who testified. He denied having been at the house where Camarena was tortured, or having been at the airport when Caro escaped.

Defense lawyers Mary Kelly and Michael Meza attempted to persuade the jury that their client had fabricated a story about his involvement in the kidnaping and Caro’s escape in an attempt to persuade a DEA agent, posing as a drug dealer, that he had valuable information in the case. The lawyers said he hoped to garner $25,000 for himself and Castel del Oro in return.

The defense also maintained that Bernabe made some of the statements after being plied with several beers by undercover DEA agents who met with the defendant at a West Covina restaurant.

There also was heated debate during the trial over precisely what Bernabe had said during some of the taped conversations, because, at certain points, people were talking at the same time. Many hours were spent reviewing a point on one of the tapes where it was unclear whether Bernabe had said he was inside the house where Camarena was tortured, or merely outside the house waiting for Fonseca to emerge from a meeting with Caro.

An enhanced version of the tape indicated that Bernabe had said he was not inside the house.

After the verdicts were read Monday and the jury had left the courtroom, Rafeedie ordered lawyers in the case not to comment until all the verdicts are in.

On Thursday, Matta’s lawyers had criticized the jury’s verdicts, saying that it was inconsistent to acquit their client of murder and convict him of the other charges.

Neither of the remaining defendants, Zuno or Vasquez, is specifically accused of Camarena’s murder.

In 1988, in the first Los Angeles trial in the Camarena case, Raul Lopez Alvarez and Rene Verdugo Urquidez were convicted of Camarena’s murder and sentenced to life in prison by Rafeedie.