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Last week Colombian officials moved to repair the damage. Justice Minister Enrique Low Murtra announced that arrest warrants had been issued not only for Ochoa but also for four other leading members of the notorious Medellin Cartel, which supplies 75% of the cocaine consumed in the U.S. Once detained, Low vowed, all five would be extradited to the U.S. to stand trial on drug- related charges. Low also fired two top officials of La Picota.
Although U.S. officials still view the Bogota government as one of the more cooperative in the narcotics war, Ochoa's release and the Mexican government's continued foot dragging on the Camarena case illustrate the formidable difficulties of the campaign against Latin drug lords. Says DEA Chief Lawn: "Unless Colombia and Mexico can address their problems, there's no way we can deal with the supply of drugs within our own borders."
Despite last week's indictments in the Camarena case, U.S. law enforcement officials believe that many of the culprits have not yet even been touched. These U.S. authorities charge that the Mexican government, by withholding evidence and refusing to share knowledge of the case, has engaged in a cover- up aimed at protecting officials far more highly placed than any so far indicted. "It's like pulling teeth," says a top DEA official. "We're making progress, but it's slow."
Kingpin Caro Quintero, who is reportedly worth $500 million, came under suspicion immediately after Camarena's disappearance. Yet just two days later the federal police comandante in charge of the investigation, Armando Pavon Reyes, allowed the gangster to leave Guadalajara by private plane in the full view of three DEA agents. Records obtained by the DEA indicate that Pavon Reyes made a call from the hangar phone at Guadalajara to the office of Manuel Ibarra, then head of the federal police. Though the U.S. has no record of the conversation, DEA officials suspect that Ibarra was being asked to approve Caro Quintero's departure. Pavon Reyes, one of the officials indicted last week as an accessory, was convicted by Mexico in 1986 of taking a $261,000 bribe for turning Caro Quintero loose; he was released last May. Ibarra has never been charged with a crime but resigned amid scandal in 1985.
DEA officials are far from satisfied with Mexico's subsequent handling of the case. The bodies of the agent and his pilot were discovered by a peasant near the village of La Angostura in the neighboring state of Michoacan late on March 5. Both were so decomposed that DEA agents who saw the bodies the next day were unable to recognize them; not until March 8 did a pathologist confirm their identities. Without benefit of forensic assistance, however, the Mexican Attorney General's office announced the discovery of the missing men's bodies, identifying them by name, early on March 6. Moreover, dirt found on the bodies did not match local soil, which suggested that they had been buried somewhere else earlier. Mexican investigators have never provided a convincing account of how or why the remains were moved.