Top Mexican Officials Tied to Drug Cartel, Court Told : Camarena case: Attorneys for two defendants do not dispute contention of government link to traffickers. But they insist that their clients had no part in killing of the DEA agent.

High-ranking Mexican government officials were involved in drug trafficking and thwarted the 1985 investigation into the kidnaping and murder of an American drug agent in Guadalajara, prosecutors and witnesses said in court Wednesday.

“The cartel’s influence reached to virtually the highest levels,” Assistant U.S. Atty. John L. Carlton told jurors on the first day in the trial of two men charged in connection with that killing. Top officials “consistently attempted to delay and hamper the Drug Enforcement (Administration) in Mexico,” he added.

A spokeswoman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington said officials would have no comment. But the opening shots of the trial once again highlighted the tension that this case has long created between the United States and Mexico. Since DEA Agent Enrique Camarena disappeared Feb. 7, 1985, drug agents have often complained that Mexican authorities have not pursued the case vigorously. The Mexican government has angrily protested the 1990 abduction of one of the suspects at the behest of the DEA.

Many defendants charged in connection with the kidnaping and murder of Camarena have been found guilty in previous trials. In this case, defendants Ruben Zuno Arce and Humberto Alvarez Machain face life in prison if convicted on all counts. Prosecutors say Zuno, whose brother-in-law is former Mexican President Luis Echeverria, helped plan the kidnaping. They accuse Alvarez, a Guadalajara gynecologist, of administering drugs to Camarena in order to keep him alive so that he could be tortured further by his captors.

Zuno was convicted in 1990 in connection with the Camarena slaying, but that conviction was overturned when a judge ruled that prosecutors had improperly characterized testimony during their closing arguments. Alvarez, the suspect who was kidnaped at the behest of the American government, has for years fought legal battles relating to that abduction, but has never gone to trial on the criminal charges.

In their opening statements, lawyers for the two defendants acknowledged that the drug cartel may have existed and enjoyed high-level protection, but they vehemently denied that their clients were part of it or played any role in the murder.

Carlton delivered a methodical, 45-minute opening statement that laid the groundwork for the prosecution’s contention that the cartels were extraordinarily influential and that they ordered the murder of Camarena because the DEA had damaged their drug empires with a series of raids in 1984 and 1985.

The prosecutor detailed efforts Mexican officials had taken to facilitate that country’s vicious drug cartels, naming the former minister of defense and the head of the federal police force as two who were in league with traffickers.

Later, DEA Agent Salvador Leyva testified about an incident that has angered American officials for years. As DEA agents searched frantically for their missing colleague in February, 1985, they received word that suspected drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero was preparing to flee from the Guadalajara airport.

But Mexican authorities dawdled, Leyva said, forcing the DEA to rent cars for the trip to the airport and stopping for gas along the way. Leyva said he was even asked to pick up the tab for the gas.

The group finally arrived at the airport, but rather than stop Caro, the top police official at the scene spoke privately with him, placed a phone call and then, after embracing him, let Caro go. As the plane taxied away, Leyva said, Caro stood in the doorway, holding an AK-47 in one arm and a champagne glass in the other. According to Leyva, he toasted the police and DEA agents, and yelled: “My children, next time bring better weapons!”

In their statements, defense lawyers did not dispute the existence of the drug cartel or its government connections. But they urged jurors to focus instead on the charges against Alvarez and Zuno.

“There is no question, ladies and gentleman, that Enrique Camarena was kidnaped, tortured and killed,” said Medvene, who called that crime appalling. “The issue in this case is: Did Ruben Zuno Arce have any part in planning that kidnaping?”

Alan Rubin, who represents Alvarez, made similar comments. The prosecution’s description of the cartel and its decision to murder Camarena “may indeed be true,” Rubin said, “but it has absolutely nothing to do with judging the guilt or innocence of Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain.”

Both defense lawyers also told jurors that the U.S. government’s payments to many of its witnesses made their testimony unreliable.

Those payments--which The Times disclosed last month had reached at least $2.7 million--have come under fire from many legal experts, and Medvene said they created an incentive for witnesses “to give testimony that (is) untruthful.”

Rubin was blunter: “Our government is out of control,” he said.

Prosecutors objected to that statement, and U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie sustained their objection.

Prosecutors Wednesday began presenting their witnesses, calling two DEA agents and one former agent to the stand. All three discussed incidents in which they believed that Mexican authorities had acted improperly in drug cases, but none linked Zuno or Alvarez to the drug cartel.

Prosecutors are expected to try to show that Alvarez acted as a house doctor to the cartel.

“He tended the traffickers’ injuries,” Carlton said in court. “He revitalized people who partied too much.”

Carlton also said fingerprints prove that Alvarez was inside the house where Camarena and a Mexican DEA informant, Alfred Zavala Avelar, were tortured.

After he was abducted in Guadalajara on April 2, 1990, Alvarez was brought to El Paso and turned over to DEA agents there. He told those agents that he had been to the house where Camarena and Zavala were being held, but he did not say that he had administered drugs to the agent.

Rubin told jurors that the statement was made under duress, and added that even after the stress of being kidnaped and transported forcibly to the United States, Alvarez did not admit to participating in the torture or murder.

In their case against Zuno, prosecutors indicated that they plan to call witnesses who will say that Zuno was at several meetings where the Camarena kidnaping was planned.

“He actively participated in those meetings,” Carlton said.

But Medvene told jurors that they should treat the testimony of those witnesses skeptically. One, Hector Cervantes Santos, has received at least $178,000 for information, expenses and security related to the Camarena case, according to government documents obtained by The Times.

Two other witnesses who may testify against Zuno were implicated in the 1984 torture and slaying of four U.S. Jehovah’s Witnesses in Guadalajara, and Medvene also urged jurors to consider that when weighing their credibility. The government’s deals with those men reflect its overzealous desire to bring Camarena’s killers to justice, Medvene said.

“Sometimes,” he added, “you try too hard to avenge.”

Zuno at one time owned the home where the torture of Camarena and his DEA pilot took place, and that fact is expected to be the subject of much discussion during the trial. Although Zuno did not own the home when the murder took place, prosecutors have suggested that he passed it to Caro, the drug kingpin who escaped apprehension at the Guadalajara airport two days after Camarena was kidnaped.

Zuno’s lawyers say the house was sold and that the buyer, whom Zuno had never met, then turned it over to Caro.