Pubdate: Sun, 16 Jul 2000
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191
Fax: (619) 293-1440
Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX
Author: Robert J. Caldwell,  Caldwell is editor of the Insight section.
Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n964/a06.html

The Cartel

END LEGAL SANCTUARY FOR DRUG KINGPINS

Among the most divisive drug-war frictions between the United States and 
Mexico is this grating fact: no major Mexican drug trafficker has ever been 
extradited to stand trial in the United States.

Until that happens, Washington's annual certification that Mexico "has 
cooperated fully with the United States" in combating the international 
narcotics trade cannot possibly ring true.

This explains the heightened focus on the case of Everardo Arturo Paez 
Martinez. A painstakingly detailed, six-count indictment of Paez by a 
federal grand jury in San Diego alleges that this scion of a wealthy 
Tijuana family is also a major drug trafficker and a principal lieutenant 
in the murderous Tijuana drug cartel known as the Arellano Felix Organization.

The 33-year old Paez's career as a rapidly rising star in the Arellanos' 
criminal constellation was cut short on Nov. 8, 1997, when he was arrested 
by Mexican police at a fashionable Japanese restaurant in Tijuana. The 
ostensible cause of the arrest was a firearms violation but federal 
prosecutors believe that U.S. pressure on Mexican authorities helped prompt 
Paez's apprehension.

U.S. federal prosecutors, long eager to seek Paez's extradition, promptly 
unsealed their formerly secret six-count indictment of him. It charged Paez 
with conspiring to distribute more than a ton of cocaine that he allegedly 
arranged to have smuggled into the United States from 1988 through 1996.

U.S. authorities say privately that Paez supervised the smuggling of 
something in excess of 20 tons of cocaine into the United States.

In the nearly three years since Paez's arrest, the legal battle over his 
extradition to the United States has plodded through the Mexican courts. 
The government of Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo is formally pursuing 
extradition. Paez's high-priced lawyers are resisting at every turn. They 
argue that extradition would violate the Mexican constitution. The case is 
currently before the Mexican supreme court. Paez, meanwhile, is waiting all 
this out in the maximum security Almoloya prison outside Mexico City.

Gonzalo P. Curiel, assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego and chief of the 
narcotics enforcement section, describes the Paez case as "obviously 
important and precedent setting."

A former senior Justice Department official, speaking on background, sees 
the Paez case as "the centerpiece of the idea of actually having a key drug 
lord who is purely a Mexican citizen extradited to the United States."

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mary Lee Warren, the Justice Department's 
top narcotics enforcement official, explained in congressional testimony 
earlier this year just how difficult and frustrating this is proving.

It isn't that Mexico adamantly refuses any extraditions to the United 
States, as it did historically prior to signing a U.S.-Mexico extradition 
treaty in 1970. Quite the contrary. The Mexican government now formally 
acknowledges the validity of extradition and pledges to honor its treaty 
obligations. Despite the treaty, however, only a handful of fugitives were 
returned to the United States prior to 1995.

But since 1995, the Zedillo administration has turned over to U.S. 
authorities 56 individuals wanted for crimes committed in the United 
States. These included, Warren noted, for the first time in history several 
Mexican nationals. In return, the United States extradited to Mexico 82 
fugitives, including 12 U.S. citizens wanted for crimes in Mexico, from 
1995 through the end of 1999.

So, the principle and precedent of extradition are established, as they 
certainly should be for two countries that share a 2,000-mile border and a 
plague of cross-border crime.

But this reciprocal progress doesn't yet include what an effective effort 
against the drug trade so desperately requires. Mexican drug kingpins who 
commit crimes in the United States fear no legal penalty so much as falling 
into U.S. custody. They know that tough drug laws and a criminal justice 
system they cannot buy, corrupt or intimidate mean almost certain 
conviction followed by long sentences in American prisons.

Unlike Mexican custody for some among the favored and wealthy, the U.S. 
Federal Bureau of Prisons' facilities can't be turned into virtual 
condominiums complete with big-screen televisions, cell phones, unlimited 
visitation and weekend girlfriends. Nor do U.S. prisons offer the arranged 
back-door exit or extended French leave sometimes available in Latin America.

Just ask Manuel Noriega, Panama's former dictator and drug trafficker, now 
serving a 30-year sentence in federal prison. Or Carlos Lehder Rivas, the 
Colombian cocaine mogul, doing life plus 135 years without parole in a 
federal penitentiary.

But if the extradition precedent is set, its practice for significant drug 
traffickers is obviously not. Warren, who declined an interview request, 
provided case studies in extradition frustration during her sworn testimony 
Feb. 29 before the House subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy and 
human resources.

"It has not escaped anyone's attention that Mexico has still not extradited 
a major criminal of Mexican nationality falling into this (drug) category, 
such as accused methamphetamine kingpins Jesus and Luis Amezcua and Tijuana 
cartel lieutenant Arturo `Kitti' Paez Martinez. We at the Department of 
Justice find this fact very disappointing," Warren said.

Warren then noted that two Mexican drug fugitives, Oscar Malherbe and Jaime 
Gonzalez Castro, evaded extradition last year because Mexican appellate 
courts ruled that Mexico's penal code requires Mexican nationals accused of 
crimes in other countries to be tried exclusively in Mexico. Should that 
ruling stand, the mere fact of Mexican citizenship would be sufficient to 
bar most extraditions.

It is this potentially ruinous ruling and its specific applicability to the 
Paez case that Mexico's attorney general is challenging before the Mexican 
supreme court.

And then there are the pettifogging legal technicalities seized on by some 
Mexican judges to frustrate abundantly warranted extradition requests. 
Consider this example cited by Warren in her testimony:

"Florentino Blanco Meza, whose extradition we sought for his involvement 
with the Arellano Felix Organization, was released in Mexico on the grounds 
that the (Mexican government) had not explained its reasons for finding the 
case `exceptional' enough to warrant the extradition of a Mexican national; 
and had not sufficiently reviewed the U.S. extradition package to correct 
such perceived technical flaws as the absence of a translation of the State 
Department's authentication and the inclusion of the U.S. statute of 
limitations in our prosecutor's affidavit rather than as a separate 
certified document."

Or this additional example:

"In another case, that of Jaime Ladino Avila, an Amezcua brother lieutenant 
whom we were seeking to face methamphetamine trafficking charges, the 
fugitive was also released earlier this year. The court in this case found 
that the potential imposition of a life sentence . . . would violate the 
Mexican constitution and Mexican extradition law."

As Warren then noted, if other Mexican courts "find the Ladino judge's 
reasoning persuasive, we will face enormous and perhaps insurmountable 
difficulties in securing the extradition from Mexico of the full range of 
serious criminals, whether they be major traffickers or murderers."

The case against Arturo "Kitti" Paez, meticulously assembled over several 
years, is rightly described by U.S. law enforcement sources as 
overwhelming. Even a cursory reading of the 28-page indictment shows that 
U.S. prosecutors have an abundance of evidence, including firsthand, 
eyewitness testimony of Paez's intimate, continuous involvement in 
large-scale drug trafficking during an eight-year period.

Moreover, putting Paez in U.S. custody could yield a potential mother lode 
of useful prosecutorial information on the Arellano Felix Organization. 
Presumably, it could significantly strengthen the current U.S. indictments 
of alleged cartel principals Benjamin and Ramon Arellano Felix and of 
Ismael "El Mayel" Higuera Guerrero. Should a Paez in U.S. custody decide to 
cooperate, federal prosecutors also could expect to obtain dramatic 
revelations on the extent of the AFO's drug-money corruption of Mexican 
government and law enforcement.

Indeed, a successful extradition of Paez could begin a process that might 
ultimately wreck the Tijuana cartel altogether.

Conversely, if this case cannot survive scrutiny in Mexico, what 
drug-trafficking extradition case could? And without extradition, the 
U.S.-Mexico effort against the Arellano Felix Organization and the drug 
trade that so damages both countries would be dealt a grievous blow, indeed.

Caldwell is editor of the Insight section. He can be reached via e-mail at  ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D