The US justice department has begun to hand over audio recordings of the 1985 torture and killing of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena to a Mexican kingpin’s legal defense team, according to a court document filed on Friday.
Rafael Caro Quintero, one of the founders of the Mexican Guadalajara cartel, is facing federal prosecution in the eastern district of New York for alleged drug trafficking. Caro Quintero is accused of having participated in Camarena’s torture and murder in 1985 in Mexico.
Camarena was a 37-year-old DEA agent based in Mexico in the 1980s, who, along with his pilot, was kidnapped, tortured, interrogated and killed by organized crime figures. His torture and murder marked a significant shift in the US government’s war on drugs, leading to an aggressive push by the US to wipe out the Guadalajara cartel. After top leaders of the organization were caught and arrested, like Caro Quintero, remnants of the group created the Sinaloa cartel, which remains active to this day.
The tapes have never been made public before but transcripts of some of the interrogation audio were revealed in a 1988 federal court case. There has long been controversy over the tapes and their content. News organizations and the former DEA agent who investigated Camarena’s murder speculate some of the tapes may include audio of a former CIA officer allegedly participating in Camarena’s interrogation.
Camarena was kidnapped on 7 Feb 1985, as he left the US consulate in Guadalajara to meet for lunch with his wife. He was abducted and taken to a home, where he was tortured and interrogated by corrupt officials and drug traffickers. His body and that of his pilot, Alfredo Zavala-Avelar, were found weeks later.
Officials speculated that Camarena was killed by the Guadalajara cartel in retaliation for the discovery and destruction of a massive marijuana ranch owned by Caro Quintero. In the years that followed his assassination, the DEA’s sweeping operation to track down Camarena’s killers, named “Operation Leyenda”, indicted at least 22 people.
Caro Quintero and the other two leaders of the cartel, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, were caught by Mexican officials and imprisoned. Earlier this year, Fonseca Carrillo, was freed after completing his sentence. He and Felix Gallardo remain in Mexico.
In 2013, Caro Quintero was freed from prison by the Mexican government, infuriating the Obama administration and leading to a renewed manhunt after the US requested his re-arrest. Caro Quintero was captured again in 2022 and taken to a maximum security prison in Mexico.
In February, after the Trump administration took office, the Mexican government expelled a number of high-profile cartel leaders to the US, including Caro Quintero. During his first arraignment hearing in February, over 100 DEA agents were present at the courthouse in Brooklyn. At the end of the arraignment hearing, in a symbolic moment, Camarena’s handcuffs were placed on Caro Quintero.
“This moment is extremely personal for the men and women of DEA who believe Caro Quintero is responsible for the brutal torture and murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena,” DEA acting administrator Derek Maltz said at the time. “It is also a victory for the Camarena family. Today sends a message to every cartel leader, every trafficker, every criminal poisoning our communities: You will be held accountable. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far you run, justice will find you.”
The US-Mexico extradition treaty prohibits the US from seeking the death penalty. But since Caro Quintero was expelled and not extradited, the US may still pursue the federal death penalty against him.
During a court hearing last week, prosecutors said the death penalty question had not yet been resolved and that negotiations and discussions with Caro Quintero’s defense team were ongoing. During that hearing, prosecutors first announced their intention to hand over the Camarena tapes, adding that they were highly sensitive.
It is unclear how many tapes are in the justice department’s hands and what exactly they contain.
Longtime drug war reporter Bill Conroy pointed out in a post on X after last week’s hearing that Berrellez once told him: “We got tapes [of Camarena’s torture] from the CIA. How did they get those tapes? And my sources indicated there were five tapes, but we [DEA] only got three from the CIA.”
During the course of “Operation Leyenda,” the DEA’s operation to track down Camarena’s killers, the lead agent in the case, Hector Berrellez, flipped a number of former corrupt Mexican officials working for the cartel, who became informants and cooperating witnesses. Throughout the course of the investigation, Berrellez discovered that a CIA officer may have participated in Camarena’s interrogation.
In 2013, explosive reporting from the Mexican news magazine Proceso, based on testimony from three US agents, including Berrellez, and some of the former Mexican officers, alleged that a CIA officer was involved in Camarena’s killing. The reports claimed that Camarena was beginning to discover that the CIA was collaborating with the Guadalajara cartel to train Nicaraguan Contras during the Iran-Contra scandal. Those allegations were repeated in an Amazon Prime documentary series titled The Last Narc, which featured Berrellez, other US officials and three former Mexican federal cops and cartel members.
The CIA and the former officer in question, Felix Rodriguez, have vehemently denied their involvement in the Camarena case.
Along with the Camarena interrogation tapes, the US Justice Department is also handing over discovery regarding the documents and photos related to a 1981 murder and photographs of seized firearms related to the case.
Additionally, they handed over documents and photographs related to “multiple 1985 murders”. It is unclear what murders the justice department is referring to, but in 1985, before Camarena’s murder, two Americans were brutally killed by Caro Quintero and his men after being reportedly mistaken for undercover US agents at a restaurant in Guadalajara.