Source: Reuters
Pubdate: Wed, 19 Aug 1998
Author: Jim Loney

NEW TRIAL DENIED FOR MEXICAN IN DRUG AGENT MURDER

LOS ANGELES, (Reuters) - A federal judge has refused to grant a new trial
to a Mexican man convicted in the 1985 torture and murder of a U.S. drug
agent in Mexico, court papers showed Wednesday.

Ruben Zuno-Arce had asked a judge to overturn his conviction in the killing
of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena on the
grounds that a key witness has since recanted parts of his testimony.

But U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie rejected the request in a written
ruling issued last Friday, having found that the witness, a government
informant named Hector Cervantes, testified truthfully.

Zunr complicity in the Camarena murder came after two trials. Rafeedie
overturned Zuno-Arce's original conviction because a prosecutor made
improper remarks during his closing argument.

Camarena was kidnapped from a Guadalajara street as he left his office to
meet his wife for lunch. His tortured body was found with another man's
several days later, straining relations between Mexico and the United States.

Those relations were further tested when prosecutors played a graphic
audiotape of Camarena being tortured during the trials of Zuno-Arce and
other defendants -- some of them leaders of Mexico's violent cocaine cartels.

Officials in the Mexican government were angered when Dr. Humberto
Alvarez-Machain -- accused of helping torture Camarena before his murder --
was kidnapped from Mexico and brought to Los Angeles to stand trial.

A jury eventually acquitted Alvarez-Machain in front of Rafeedie, who
ordered him released from custody for his return to Mexico.

More than 20 people were convicted in connection with the murder, some in
Mexico, some in the United States.

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Checked-by: Mike Gogulski