Enrique Camarena

Top Mexican government officials met with drug traffickers to plan the kidnaping and murder of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena, a key prosecution witness testified Tuesday in the trial of two men charged with the crime. The witness, Jorge Godoy, told jurors of parties at which traffickers smoked crack cocaine and mingled with high-ranking officials, and he offered detailed descriptions of four meetings in which he said the Camarena abduction was discussed.

A prosecution witness in the trial of two men charged in connection with the 1985 murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena admitted Monday that he had previously lied under oath but angrily denied that he is cooperating with the government in this case because of its payments to him. "I abandoned more than half a million dollars in property in Mexico so that I could get $130,000?" the witness, Lawrence Victor Harrison, asked sarcastically of a defense lawyer. "I don't see the profit."

In two hours of riveting testimony, a former communications specialist Friday recounted his years at the side of one of Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins and linked the leaders of the Guadalajara narcotics cartel to two defendants charged in connection with the 1985 murder of an American drug agent. Lawrence Victor Harrison, 48, said he saw defendants Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain and Ruben Zuno Arce in the company of his boss, Ernesto Fonseca, on several occasions.

Fingerprints belonging to Guadalajara gynecologist Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain were found on plastic bags at the home where Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Enrique Camarena was tortured in 1985, an FBI fingerprint expert testified Thursday. "I identified Mr. Machain's prints on several of the plastic bags," said Carl E. Collins Jr., an FBI fingerprint specialist.

High-ranking Mexican government officials were involved in drug trafficking and thwarted the 1985 investigation into the kidnaping and murder of an American drug agent in Guadalajara, prosecutors and witnesses said in court Wednesday. "The cartel's influence reached to virtually the highest levels," Assistant U.S. Atty. John L. Carlton told jurors on the first day in the trial of two men charged in connection with that killing.

U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie on Monday rejected an eleventh-hour attempt to have charges dismissed against one of two Mexican nationals charged in the 1985 torture and murder of an American drug agent, clearing the way for jurors to begin hearing the case later this week.

The federal government has paid more than $2.7 million to witnesses--including some with serious criminal histories--in its case against two Mexican nationals charged with participating in the 1985 torture-murder of U.S. drug Agent Enrique Camarena, according to documents obtained by The Times. The documents, produced by the government for an upcoming trial, indicate that some informants have received hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A former associate of Ruben Zuno Arce, charged in connection with the 1985 kidnaping and murder of an American drug agent, has accused prosecutors and Drug Enforcement Administration officials of offering him bribes to falsely implicate Zuno and threatening him with harm if he refused. Federal prosecutors on Tuesday adamantly denied the charges, which grow out of the emotionally charged case of the 1985 torture-murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena.

A Mexican national charged in the 1985 torture-murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena will stand trial a second time this fall, a federal judge said. Ruben Zuno Arce, a brother-in-law of former Mexican President Luis Echeverria Alvarez, will be tried Oct. 20 for his alleged role in Camarena's kidnaping and slaying, U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie ruled Thursday. Zuno was convicted in 1990 of racketeering, kidnaping and conspiracy in Camarena's slaying.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday reversed two convictions of a former Mexican police officer serving a prison sentence for his role in the 1985 torture-murder of DEA Agent Enrique Camarena and his pilot, Alfredo Zavala. In a lengthy opinion, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Raul Lopez-Alvarez was properly convicted on four counts of kidnaping and murdering Camarena.