Witness Says Drug Smuggler Ran Ring While Working For Police
MCALLEN, Texas (AP) – While serving as a Mexican police commander, Carlos Landin Martinez was running a large-scale drug smuggling operation in Reynosa for the Gulf Cartel, a witness testified Tuesday.
Francisco Camacho Barajas, 29, of Mexico City, told jurors in U.S. federal court that he worked for at least two men who smuggled cocaine for Landin Martinez and who identified the 52-year-old as their boss.
“They told me many times who was the boss,” Camacho said through an interpreter. “It was Carlos Landin, El Puma.” Camacho’s testimony came in the second day of the prosecution’s case against the cartel’s accused second-in-command.
Landin Martinez, who was in charge of the Tamaulipas state police, faces 10 counts of drug smuggling, conspiracy and money laundering in connection with the organization’s purported activities from 2005 to 2007.
Landin Martinez’s attorney’s questioned Camacho’s reasons for testifying, The Monitor in McAllen reported in its online editions Tuesday.
Camacho, who is serving a 10-year sentence on drug charges, said he could receive a reduced prison term under a plea deal discussed with authorities.
“I came here because I am rehabilitated – to tell the truth, to tell my story,” he said. “If in doing so I can help myself, well … ”
Attorney Oscar R. Alvarez also challenged Camacho on his past drug use and his lack of direct personal knowledge of Landin Martinez’s alleged involvement in narcotics trafficking.
Prosecutors say Landin Martinez collected “pisos,” or tolls, that the cartel collected from smaller drug gangs crossing through its turf. Reynosa is across the Rio Grande from Hidalgo, a border city a few miles south of McAllen.
Landin Martinez was arrested in July when a Drug Enforcement Administration agent spotted him buying a watermelon at a supermarket in Texas.
Landin Martinez and 13 co-defendants face multiple counts of conspiracy, narcotics smuggling and money laundering in a federal indictment issued in May 2007.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
