Pubdate: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 International Herald Tribune August 14 1997 contact: A U.S. Casualty of Mexican Drug War Sentenced to 10 Years, U.S. Yoga Teacher Says Conviction Was a Setup By Molly Moore Washington Post Service MEXICO CITYDavid Carmos is serving a 10year sentence in a Mexican prison on a felony drug conviction ordered by a judge he never met, in a trial he never attended and with evidence that may have been falsified. Confronting a legal system far different than anything he had ever experienced, the U.S. citizen turned to the one institution he believed would help him: the U.S. Embassy. But this is an era when the U.S. and Mexican governments are trying to show their zeal in fighting drug traffickers. "From everything we can see, he was railroaded " said a U.S. representative Joe Moakicy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has pursued the case of the onetime Boston University instructor convicted of possessing the illegal drug me th amp h e ta min e . Mexican human rights officials charged that Mr. Carmos, 55, an author of nutrition books and a yoga instructor who, according to U.S. documents had never had a runin with the law until he was arrested transiting through a Mexico City airport nearly five years ago, has become a victim of the two nations' crusade against drugs. "His human rights were violated " said the Reverend David Fernandez a Jesuit priest who heads the Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center and is familiar with the Mexican legal system. "And I've been absolutely astounded at the lack of help he's received from the embassy." A U.S. Embassy official who agreed to be interviewed on the condition on anonymity, said, '"Mr. Carmos was not treated worse than a Mexican citizen would be treated for the same crime," although he added that, "it's possible" that Mr. Carmos's rights were violated under Mexican law. Concerning the embassy's response, the official added "We've done everything humanly possible for him." While the State Department discourages its embassies from interfering in a foreign nation's legal system, they are allowed to pressure foreign governments when the rights of U.S. citizens are being abused. But despite the fact that U.S. government documents cited serious irregularities in Mr. Carmos's case, embassy records show that officials there made only one complaint to the Mexican government on his behalf in the last five years: that he did not receive adequate services of an interpreter during the appeals process. The Mexican attorney general's office declined several requests to be interviewed about Mr. Carmos's case. Previously, officials there have told reporters they stand by their investigation and conviction of Mr. Carmos. Mr. Carmos's ordeal with the Mexican authorities and the U.S. government, at least as he tells it, is the stuff of a traveler's worst nightmare. In October 1992, he traveled to Brazil for a week of missionary work as a bishop at large for the San Diego branch of a Christian group, the Essenes, which sees itself as a modernday incarnation of the sect credited with writing the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls. On his way home to California, while changing planes in Mexico City, Mr. Carmos was detained by customs officials who said they had found plastic bags containing a suspicious powder inside a container of DuraCarba carbohydrate drink mix in powder formand in three other cans. Mr. Carmos said that he was carrying the drink mix, but that he had never seen the three other cans until Mexican customs agents showed them to him several hours after his arrest. The authorities accused Mr. Carmos, who said he understood no Spanish, of carrying seven pounds of a substance that can be used to make a chemical precursor of the drugs amphetamine or metharnphetamine . Mr. Carmos said he did not even learn about his trial until nearly a month after it ended in January 1993. X In the middle of it, Mexican officials changed the charges against him from carrying a chemical component of an illegal drug to carrying the drug methamphetamine itself. Mexican prosecutors said in court documents that they made the alteration based on better laboratory tests. But four experts in the United States and Mexico concluded that the tests either had been fabricated or were based on analyses of a substance different from the one for which he was charged according to documents submitted to the court The experts also found that eight laboratory tests submitted as separate examinations were eight photocopies of the same test result. A chemist for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency noted other irregularities. In an internal U.S. Embassy memorandum dated April 8, 1994, the consul general's office told the public affairs office: "Upon review of the sentencing documents, it does seem extremely odd that Carmos, who was detained and charged on the basis of a suspicious powder, would have been charged with possession of a substance that only exists in liquid form." Mr. Carmos said he believes that the Mexican authorities pursued his case because of pressure from the United States to toughen its prosecution of dtug offenders . And Mr. Moakley, the congressman, said he believes the U.S. Embassy failed to aid Mr. Caxmos because "they don't want to embarrass Mexico."