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 News from Around the Americas | February 2007 
Mexican Drug Kingpin Pleads Innocent to US Charges
 Jeff Franks - Reuters
| | Osiel Cardenas-Guillen, 39, the accused Mexican drug kingpin extradited to the United States last month, leaves the federal courthouse in Houston after pleading not guilty Friday, Feb. 9, 2007, to charges connected to running a cartel that at its height smuggled four to six tons of cocaine per month into the country. (AP/Pat Sullivan) |
A Mexican drug kingpin extradited to Texas last month pleaded innocent on Friday to charges he led a cartel that shipped cocaine and marijuana into the United States.
Osiel Cardenas, wearing a green jail uniform and his hands shackled to a chain around his waist, said in Spanish "No culpable," or not guilty, when asked by U.S. Magistrate Stephen Smith through a translator how he pleaded to the federal charges.
The stocky, balding Cardenas stood before Smith in a courtroom ringed by heavily armed U.S. marshals.
He is said to be the head of the powerful Gulf cartel based in northeastern Mexico and was extradited to the United States on January 19 for trial on multiple charges of drug trafficking and assaulting and threatening U.S. drug agents.
His lawyer, Mike Ramsey, waived the right to a bail hearing for Cardenas, who had been jailed in Mexico since 2003 on drug charges before the Mexican government sent him to the United States.
He was suspected of continuing to run his drug empire from jail.
Smith set an April 2 trial date for Cardenas, but Ramsey told reporters after the hearing he would file a motion to delay it to give him time to prepare. The trial, expected to last three or four weeks, will be held in the southern Texas city of Brownsville or in Houston, Ramsey said.
He declined to comment on the case, but said Cardenas was "in good spirits."
Ramsey, one of Houston's best-known defense attorneys, represented Enron Corp. founder Ken Lay in his trial last year when he was convicted of corporate fraud charges. Lay died of heart failure before he could be sentenced.
Ramsey also was lawyer for Juan Garcia Abrego, who led the Gulf cartel before he was convicted of drug trafficking in a 1996 trial in Houston after extradition from Mexico and is currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.
Mexico extradited 14 other accused drug traffickers on January 19, including three who were top figures in other drug cartels and are awaiting trial in California.
U.S. officials considered Cardenas the prize catch because his cartel is infamous for violence and shipping large quantities of illegal drugs.
At his capture in Matamoros, Mexico, in 2003, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration called him "one of the most wanted, feared and violent drug traffickers in the world" and said his cartel had shipped "thousands of kilograms of drugs" into the United States.
U.S. officials praised the extraditions as a sign of improved cooperation from Mexico in the long-running U.S. war on drugs.
They coincided with a campaign by Mexican President Felipe Calderon to crack down on drug empires by sending troops and elite police units into confront them. |
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