After Decades, The Case Of Former DEA Agent, 'Kiki' Camarena In The United States, Reopens

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

Documents to which MILENIO had access reveal that the case will return to a judge despite the fact that in 1988 he was sentenced to spend 249 years for torture that lasted 36 hours, and then murdering the DEA agent.

The case of the murder of the former agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena, was reactivated in a U.S. court where the trial of one of his torturers will be held again: he is the former judicial policeman of Jalisco, Raúl López Álvarez.

Documents to which MILENIO had access reveal that the case will return to a judge despite the fact that in 1988 he was sentenced to 249 years for torturing that lasted 36 hours, and then murdering together with drug traffickers Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca, the DEA agent who infiltrated the Guadalajara cartel.

According to the defense, the government recently acknowledged that irregularities were committed in its judicial process, where even staff from U.S. agencies lied in their statements. In addition, López Álvarez now demands that his sentence be corrected and 70 years be deducted, which would leave him 179 years behind bars.

Raúl López Álvarez was just 28 years old when he was sentenced in a court in Los Angeles, California and his statements were relevant to the Camarena case since it was he, who assured that Rafael Caro Quintero "lost himself in the moment" and went above and beyond in his torturing of the former agent.

Another scene that he narrated and allows us to reconstruct the hours in which Camarena was tortured, was that Ernesto 'Don Neto' Fonseca was so enraged that he even slapped drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero.

However, months later López Alvarez retracted his statements and said he was innocent: and the main evidence was confessions recorded on video that he made to Abel Reynoso, an undercover agent of the DEA.

The defense argued that these statements were lies that López Álvarez had invented to convince the agents, to impress them. The authorities described this new version as unbelievable and he was sentenced to spend everything that remained of his life in prison.

Since March of this year, the defense of the ex-policeman and after 33 years in prison filed an appeal with the Prosecutor's Office of the Central District of California to return to the same court where his case was sentenced.

Through documents entered between March and May, his defense assured that recently the United States government has declassified information about the trials related to the 'Kiki' Camarena case, where through an internal review, serious errors were discovered in the words of witnesses who testified against Raúl López Álvarez.

One of them is the statement given by the former agent, Michael Malone, of the hair and fibers unit of the FBI Laboratory, one of the key witnesses to sentence those involved in the Camarena case, who apparently made unacceptable reports and false testimonies among other irregularities.

Another irregularity that the Mexican's defense accused is that after his sentence in 1988 and after they verified that there was not enough evidence to support them, Lopez Alvarez had two charges related to Camarena's kidnapping withdrawn.

However, for reasons unknown so far, the court did not correct and notified the U.S. prison authorities about the new sentence.

A document entered in March 2006 and that this newspaper reviewed, reveals that the two charges related to kidnapping would have subtracted 70 years in prison, (60 for one and 10 for the second) as well as the reimbursement of 100 dollars.

Currently López Alvarez managed to get his case returned to a judge of first instance to reactivate his case and whether it is amended, what he considers his defense were errors during the trial and subsequent years, or it remains the same and that López Álvarez continues behind bars in what remains of his life.

On February 7, 1985, DEA special agent Enrique Camarena and pilot Alfredo Zavala disappeared in broad daylight in Guadalajara. A month later, their bodies were found near Zamora, Michoacán, Mexico. They were tortured and killed.

Milenio