“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat
The trial that took place 34 years ago for the murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Kiki Camarena will have to be reopened after a federal judge determined that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) presented false evidence that affected the process, which would imply a new gathering of evidence and witnesses.
MILENIO obtained a judicial document dated March 23, 2023, which reveals that federal judge John A. Kronstadt ordered to reopen the trial for the murder of the anti-drug agency agent, after one of the last two people sentenced for the crime -Raúl López Álvarez, former judicial police officer of Guadalajara, the city where Camarena was tortured and murdered-, demonstrated that his trial was not conducted in accordance with the law, due to a series of irregularities committed by FBI technical personnel.
The federal judge emphasized that even though the charges have been quashed, López Álvarez will not be able to obtain bail and will have to conduct this new trial from a prison cell. And he affirmed that the process must begin within 180 days after the publication of this sentence.
The sentences handed down in the United States against the defendants for the murder of Kiki Camarena, committed on February 9, 1985, were based on evidence that is now known to be flawed, presented by an unscrupulous, inaccurate and corrupt FBI agent, Michael Malone, then head of the FBI’s Hair and Fiber Laboratory Unit.
A few days ago, Ken Salazar, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, invited Manuel Bartlett to attend a working meeting in the U.S., a matter that generated controversy due to the fact that for years it has been said that the former Secretary of the Interior and current director of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) could be prosecuted in that country for his alleged participation in the murder of Kiki Camarena.