WASHINGTON — When Mario Ruiz Massieu, Mexico's No. 2 lawman, arrived at New Jersey's Newark International Airport en route to Madrid on a windy winter day in 1995, a surprise awaited him. A man accustomed to taking others into custody, he was seized by federal agents with $44,000 in unreported U.S. currency in his briefcase.
That was the beginning of what so far is a two-year trek through a legal maze for Ruiz Massieu--a trek termed "Kafkaesque" by one judge--that is still not over for the former deputy attorney general.
Although he has not been convicted of any crime, Ruiz Massieu has been held in U.S. custody for 28 months, most recently under house arrest in New Jersey, while officials of two countries try to clarify his status. During that period, no fewer than four federal judges have issued separate rulings against efforts by U.S. authorities to extradite him to Mexico, where he is wanted for prosecution on drug-related charges.
The judges have declared there is insufficient evidence by U.S. standards to support the Mexican charges that Ruiz Massieu, 46, was corrupted by drug traffickers or that he embezzled $200,000 that his office seized from drug dealers. Mexican prosecutors also claim that not only did he flee with the drug traffickers' bribes and profits but that he also obstructed an inquiry into the 1994 assassination of his brother, Jose Francisco, an official of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, to protect people close to former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
The Clinton administration, out of a determination to cooperate with Mexican law enforcement authorities, refuses to stop trying to send Ruiz Massieu back home. Thus he remains cooped up in a rented house in a Newark suburb, wearing an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor his movements, forbidden to leave the premises.
The administration's only legal victory to date has come in a civil proceeding. In March, a jury in Houston upheld the U.S. government's seizure of $9 million that Ruiz Massieu controlled in a Texas bank account. Jurors accepted testimony by U.S. law enforcement officials that most of the money originated from Mexican drug traffickers and that Ruiz Massieu fled Mexico to enjoy this illicit wealth.
The jury dismissed Ruiz Massieu's claim that the bank deposits came from his family's fortune, as well as from generous bonuses paid him by his superiors in the Salinas administration.
