Mexican Will to Fight Drug Gangs Is Being Tested by Extradition Case

MEXICO CITY —  It was all over in 24 hours.

Luis Amezcua was checking out a used Chrysler Shadow in Guadalajara when Mexican anti-drug agents pounced. The next morning, police swooped down on his brother, Jesus, as he consulted a Cuban Santeria guru in Mexico City.

The arrests of the Amezcuas were hailed as Mexico’s biggest anti-drug victory in years, a crushing blow to the alleged godfathers of the booming U.S. market for methamphetamine, or speed.

Nine months later, the Amezcua case has turned into a dance with defeat for the Mexican government. The brothers have been cleared of charges in Mexico and remain in custody only because of a U.S. request to try them in San Diego. Whether they will ever face a California judge is unclear. Mexican authorities have agreed to extradite them, but the brothers’ lawyer has appealed, and Mexican judges in the past have upheld challenges in similar cases.

The Amezcua case has emerged as a key issue in President Clinton’s annual evaluation, which is expected today, of foreign nations’ cooperation in fighting drugs. If Mexico fails the evaluation, it could face economic sanctions.

With methamphetamine abuse wreaking havoc from the Inland Empire to Iowa, many U.S. legislators view the Amezcuas’ fate as a test of Mexico’s will to fight drug gangs.

“We consider it one of our highest cases,” said John Russell, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman. “We consider them the meth kings of this hemisphere.”

Lawyer Says Brothers Did Construction Jobs

According to their lawyer, Jesus and Luis Amezcua were young Mexicans of modest means who moved to Southern California, doing construction and other odd jobs, before returning to the Mexican city of Colima several years ago to become ranchers.

“My clients have the economic capacity of any working citizen,” said the lawyer, Everardo Rojas, who insists that they are innocent.

In public documents and interviews, however, U.S. law enforcement officials paint a far more chilling picture. They say the Amezcuas took advantage of their U.S. stay to set up a cocaine ring in the late 1980s, one of many run by low-level Mexican trafficking groups.

Then, according to the officials, came the brainstorm that catapulted the brothers to fame.

Methamphetamine Push Alleged

The officials say the Amezcuas turned to methamphetamine, a highly addictive and inexpensive synthetic drug that was catching on in the western United States. Previously, illegal supplies of the drug had been made mainly by U.S. motorcycle gangs for their own use. But by 1990, officials say, even those gangs were buying Mexican-produced methamphetamine.

“That’s what set [the Amezcuas] apart. They were able to find a market in methamphetamine and were able to maintain that market,” said a U.S. official, one of several who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They figured, ‘Hey, there’s no competition. We’re not going to get in anybody’s way.’ ”

The brothers started off hawking one-pound parcels in Los Angeles and San Diego, officials say. As the drug’s popularity took off, their operations mushroomed, according to the officials.

They crafted a sophisticated international network for receiving ephedrine, the base ingredient of methamphetamine, officials say. While keeping a low profile, the brothers allegedly bought the chemical in Germany, China and India and sent it to other traffickers or to secret methamphetamine “super labs” in Mexico and the United States.

By 1996, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had seized more than 5 tons of ephedrine that it traced to the Amezcuas. And the brothers’ names seemed to be turning up all over. Authorities identified methamphetamine traffickers linked to them in Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Iowa, Arkansas, North Carolina and California--which had become the U.S. capital of methamphetamine production.

“They were the forerunners of the meth trade,” one U.S. official said. Even as other traffickers joined in, he said, the Amezcuas remained the moguls of meth.

Four-Year Inquiry Leads to Brothers

A four-year investigation finally led authorities to the brothers. In June, a Mexican anti-drug unit working with U.S. assistance tracked down Luis Amezcua in the central Mexican city of Guadalajara and nabbed him as he examined a used car, according to Mexican officials.

Meanwhile, agents were also tailing Jesus in Mexico City, arresting him at a hotel after he returned from a market that sells voodoo items.

Mexican and U.S. anti-drug agents were jubilant.

“It’s the first important case in Mexico where we applied a system of intelligence that allowed us to dismember a [drug] organization,” said a senior Mexican official who requested anonymity.

The authorities’ enthusiasm was short-lived. A Mexican judge threw out an organized-crime charge against the brothers, ruling that there was insufficient evidence. A money-laundering charge was dropped because the statute of limitations had expired.

That left only the San Diego drug-trafficking indictment, a federal charge that could result in life sentences.

U.S. officials consider extradition a powerful weapon against drug traffickers, a way to ensure that they can’t bribe their way out of punishment in countries with weaker legal systems.

“There will be no furnished suite at the Marion, Ill., federal penitentiary,” one official said.

A Policy Against Extradition in Mexico

However, extradition is a minefield in Mexico, where nationalist passions run strong--especially when it comes to turning over citizens to the United States. The Mexican government only started extraditing its nationals in 1996.

“We firmly believe these extraditions are absolutely important,” said Eduardo Ibarrola, a deputy Mexican attorney general. However, he noted that Mexican policy for decades had barred sending nationals to face foreign courts.

“A lot of judges and magistrates are still thinking that way,” he said.

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Ministry quietly approved the extradition of Jesus Amezcua, 33, in December and gave the green light for the extradition of Luis Amezcua, 35, on Feb. 18. They were the first alleged Mexican cartel leaders whom the government agreed to extradite.

The Amezcuas stand a good chance of winning their appeal. In two other high-profile cases, Mexican federal judges recently ruled that national law prohibited sending two alleged Mexican mid-level traffickers to face U.S. charges. The government had argued that it could do so under a clause allowing extradition in exceptional cases.

“We are entering a very new situation,” said a senior Mexican official who requested anonymity. “We have cases of people with enormous amounts of money. They can hire very good lawyers.”

Other officials doubt that Mexico’s pattern of denying extraditions is an issue of legal talent. Speaking privately, they express fear that judges are being bribed or intimidated by the possibility of a Colombian-style assassination campaign against magistrates who grant extradition.

Mexican prosecutors are now gearing up for a fight, hoping to take the Amezcua case to the nation’s Supreme Court to set a precedent on extradition.

They are determined that the Amezcuas not walk free. If judges don’t allow the extradition, they say, the brothers will be tried under a law allowing Mexicans to face prosecution at home for crimes committed abroad.

“There is no impunity,” declared Ibarrola, the deputy attorney general.

Rojas, the Amezcuas’ lawyer, insists that U.S. drug evidence will not be admissible in a Mexican court. No major trafficker has been convicted yet under the law permitting trial for foreign crimes.

Arrests Appear to Have Hurt the Drug Trade

Already, authorities have come unnervingly close to seeing the Amezcuas leave jail. In December, Rojas urged a judge to release Luis Amezcua, arguing that the U.S. government had failed to send the required paperwork backing up its extradition request.

Ibarrola raced to the courtroom with documents defending the extradition request. Accompanying him were four trucks carrying rifle-toting police.

After two tense hours, the judge ruled that the extradition request was in order.

“Luis was at the door” but didn’t leave jail, Rojas said.

While lawyers wrangle over the Amezcuas, the methamphetamine trade continues to thrive.

Seizures of methamphetamine labs in California soared from about 750 a year in the early 1990s to 1,650 in 1997, the most recent figure available, according to the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.

“It’s still going up,” said bureau spokesman Mike Van Winkle.

The drug, which prompts violent behavior, has left a trail of destruction. In one case, Van Winkle said, a California man high on methamphetamine killed his wife, insisting that she was having an affair with a space alien.

“It creates paranoia,” Van Winkle said.

Law enforcement officials maintain that the arrests of the Amezcuas appear to have hurt the trade.

Mexican officials say they have smashed the cartel. U.S. officials are not so sure, but they note increasing seizures of amphetamines rather than the more harmful methamphetamine, indicating that the flow of precursor chemicals needed to manufacture the latter has been disrupted.

“We’ve seen hopeful signs they [traffickers] are not able to get ephedrine in bulk amounts like before,” one U.S. official said.

Sheridan reported from Mexico City and Ellingwood from San Diego. Times staff writer Esther Schrader in Washington contributed to this report.