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 News from Around the Americas | February 2008 
Reputed Leader of Drug Cartel Wants Trial Delayed
 Dane Schiller - Houston Chronicle
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| | Osiel Cardenas | | |
A man considered one of the biggest catches in the U.S. fight against Mexican drug cartels is again asking a federal judge to postpone his Houston trial, this time until February 2009.
Reputed Gulf Cartel boss Osiel Cardenas has been held in Texas since January 2007, when Mexican federal agents wearing paramilitary uniforms and black masks handed him over to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Details of the high-security handoff are available to the public after video, apparently recorded by a Mexican agent, was posted on YouTube, the video-sharing Web site.
He is accused of smuggling up to 6 tons of cocaine a month across the Texas-Mexico border and also threatening to kill an FBI agent and a DEA agent during a standoff in the Mexican border city of Matamoros.
Cardenas' trial is set for May, but his lawyers want to put it off as they are overwhelmed by reviewing an ever-increasing cache of thousands of investigative documents and secretly made recordings.
They also said they need more time to translate everything either from English to Spanish or Spanish to English, according to a request before U.S. District Judge Hilda Tagle.
Materials include intelligence gathered by the U.S. and Mexican governments.
"The (material) now includes over 14,000 scanned items," according to a document filed by Houston defense attorney Michael Ramsey. "Many of these items are compact discs — the individual disks contain hundreds of conversations."
Federal prosecutors are required to share the information so Cardenas can prepare a defense.
They said they won't oppose his request for more time.
Although U.S. authorities decline to discuss how Cardenas was handed over to the DEA, video posted on the Web offers a front-row view.
Chained at the wrists, waist and ankles, a stern-faced Cardenas, 40, is shuffled aboard a Mexican government helicopter and later transferred to a plane that flew him to Houston to complete his extradition.
During the video, Cardenas is asked his name, where he was born, and why he was held in a maximum-security prison in Mexico. "Organized crime, crimes against health and other things," Cardenas responds in Spanish.
Also on the plane was Hector "El Guero" Palma, a former leader of a rival gang in a long and bloody turf battle with the Gulf Cartel.
Bruce Bagley, who studies drug trafficking for the University of Miami, said regardless of how hard Cardenas' attorneys work, it is likely he'll spend the rest of his life in prison.
Gulf Cartel boss Juan Garcia Abrego was convicted in Houston and sentenced to multiple life sentences.
"It's very hard to take on the government," Bagley said, noting the resources as well as years preparing a case. "The government has been following Osiel Cardenas, and everybody and his brother has ratted, squealed and turned on him."
dane.schiller(at)chron.com |
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