Pubdate: Thu, 28 Feb 2013
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Rory Carroll
Page: A1

US PROSECUTORS QUIT 'WAR ON DRUGS' TO DEFEND TRAFFICKERS

Los Angeles - US prosecutors and other senior officials who 
spearheaded the "war" against drug cartels have quit their jobs to 
defend Colombian cocaine traffickers, saying their clients are not 
bad people and that United States drug policy is wrong.

Senior former assistant US attorneys and Drug Enforcement 
Administration agents are turning years of experience in 
investigating, indicting and extraditing narcos to the advantage of 
the alleged traffickers they now represent.

"I'm not embarrassed about the fact that I changed sides," said 
Robert Feitel, a Washington-based attorney who used to pursue 
traffickers and money launderers at the US department of justice. 
"And I'm not shy about saying that no one knows better how a 
prosecutor thinks. That's what people get when they come to me. There 
are lots of hidden things to know about these cases."

The fence-jumpers include Bonnie Klapper, who was feted for taking 
down the Norte del Valle cartel, Leo Arreguin, who headed the DEA's 
office in Bogota, and  reportedly  former members of the Immigration 
and Customs Enforcement Agency, ICE. They work in separate legal 
practices with their own clients, not as a group.

In interviews with the Guardian, Feitel and Klapper spoke of 
recognising the humanity of their clients and called for alternatives 
to a four-decade-old "war on drugs", which has cost billions of 
dollars and led to the incarceration of thousands of people.

Feitel called for cocaine and cannabis to be legalised and complained 
that extradited drug suspects were treated worse than Guantanamo Bay 
detainees. "I don't think I could ever be a prosecutor again. The 
human drama that I see on this side is sometimes more than I can bear."

The sight of high-profile former US officials visiting clients in 
Colombian and US jails has astonished observers in Colombia  which 
has long followed Washington's lead on drugs  but has passed largely 
unnoticed in the US.

Last December Arreguin, who was director of the DEA in Colombia from 
1998 to 2003, tried to visit the alleged drug lord Diego Perez, alias 
Diego Rastrojo, at his Colombian jail in Giron, Santander, but was 
turned away because he lacked permission, local media reported. 
Rastrojo, a former leftwing guerrilla, is accused of commanding 800 
hitmen and smuggling tonnes of cocaine.

Contacted at his home in Virginia, Arreguin declined to be 
interviewed: "I have nothing to say."

Feitel, who worked closely with the department of justice's Narcotic 
and Dangerous Drugs Section until retiring from public service in 
2009, said he grew frustrated with official bungling in drug-related 
cases. "I realised I no longer wanted to be part of this process. It 
was time to go. After 22 years, enough."

He became a defence lawyer, started learning Spanish and uses his 
expertise to represent about two dozen Colombian clients from a 
DC-based office. "It's hard to defend a Colombian on drugs 
trafficking if you don't understand the predicate of how drugs 
trafficking currently works in Colombia."

With Colombia's justice system geared towards extradition, suspects 
face intense pressure to trade information for a deal with US 
authorities before others who have been arrested do the same. "You 
can try to head off your problem by trying to hire a US lawyer and 
get ahead of the curve so to speak."

Traffickers' lawyers usually trade reduced sentences for information 
but Feitel said he liked to fight cases if justified on merit. 
"Otherwise I'm just like everyone else. But I'm not because I was a 
prosecutor for so long."

He occasionally teams up with his wife, a defence attorney, and 
another colleague at a different firm. "We are fighters for our 
clients, we don't just say to the government, OK, you can have it 
your way. I'm not in it for the theory, I'm in it to win."

Often government cases, when analysed, proved weak, he said. "My job 
is to try to maximise the ability of my clients to co-operate, if 
that's what they want. And if they want to fight, then my job is to 
fight every single step once they come to the United States."

He fought "tooth and nail" for Ramiro Anturi, a Colombian prosecutor 
accused of leaking information to traffickers. Anturi received an 
unexpectedly light sentence  55 months despite the DEA trumpeting the 
case as evidence it would "not tolerate any acts that put our agents' 
lives in jeopardy".

Feitel said he was shaken by the "trauma" of suspects who were 
extradited to the US speaking no English, with no visits from 
relatives denied visas. "They have no one to hug them. There is a lot 
of human anguish that I had not previously seen. I've had clients 
whose parents have died while they've been in jail. It's a pretty 
terrible fate to be extradited. While it might be defensible to do it 
to the leaders I don't think it's defensible to do it to the rank and 
file traffickers in Colombia. I find it really troubling."

He said the US system punished traffickers not according to their 
importance but the quantity of drugs, meaning a truck driver nabbed 
with a big consignment could face a longer stretch than a capo caught 
with a lesser amount. The practice of squeezing information and 
sending traffickers back to Colombia after their sentence, Feitel 
said, left them vulnerable to revenge. "Sooner or later someone is 
going to get killed and that will deter others from talking."

He said most of his clients had no history of violence but that even 
those implicated in kidnapping and murder were entitled to a defence. 
"I don't represent people I don't like. So I like all my clients." 
The former prosecutor said he had some regrets about his previous 
career. "I try to grow with what I do. I think I would change certain 
things that I did."

Former colleagues respected him for his honesty even though now they 
were on opposite sides, he said. "When we disagree, we do it like 
professionals. Agents are pretty savvy, they know when there are 
weaknesses in their case."

As an assistant US attorney Bonnie Klapper, working from New York, 
earned a high profile in helping to dismantle the Norte del Valle 
cartel, a role publicised in the books The Takedown, by Jeffrey 
Robinson, and El Cartel de los Sapos, by Andres Lopez Lopez, a 
bestseller in Colombia which was turned into a telenovela and a film.

Klapper retired from public service last February after 26 years and 
went into private practice in New York and Miami. Two months later 
Colombian media reported her visiting La Picota jail in Bogota to see 
Andres Arroyave, alias Maquina, a 25-yearold alleged drug lord 
accused of killing a lawyer and a DEA informant, among others, in 
revenge for his father's murder. He has a reported $100m fortune.

In an email interview Kappler said she stopped being an assistant US 
attorney because of long commutes, threats to her life and meddling 
supervisors. "I don't see that I have moved from one side of the 
fence to the other. As an AUSA, I never felt it was my job to obtain 
the harshest sentence; I always felt that my mission was to see that 
justice was done. I feel the same about my role now. The system only 
works when there are hard-working, honest people with integrity on 
both the government and the defence side."

Former colleagues supported her switch, she said. "In fact, those 
with whom I worked previously are happy to see me on the other side, 
as they know they can trust me and I will capably represent my clients."

Unlike Feitel, Klapper said her new role had not really changed her 
perspective. "As a prosecutor, while I did prosecute a number of very 
bad, violent individuals, the vast majority ... were good people who 
made bad choices."

For the people she once pursued, and those she now defended, 
trafficking was a family business and route out of poverty, she said. 
"I have always felt that it was unfair of our government to place all 
of the onus on Colombians or Mexicans or Central Americans when the 
demand for the drugs comes from our own country."

Klapper called for "more innovative solutions" to replace the drug 
war's "endless cycle of arrests, prosecutions and convictions, where 
there is always someone waiting in the wings to take the place of the 
last individual convicted".

Feitel was emphatic in calling the drug war a failure, saying decades 
of effort, billions of dollars and countless lives had made no 
appreciable difference to the quantity of drugs on US streets. He 
urged federal authorities to legalise and regulate cannabis and 
cocaine. "And I say that even though it would be bad for my business."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom