BERMAN SAYS MAN MURDERED : MEXICO GETS REQUEST TO REOPEN JAIL CASE.

Byline: Keith Stone Daily News Staff Writer

Rep. Howard L. Berman says he is sure that Mario Amado was murdered while on vacation in Mexico, but three appellate judges there say he might have hanged himself in a jail cell.

On Wednesday, Berman, D-Mission Hills, demanded that Attorney General of Baja California reopen the case and renew the search for whoever murdered the 29-year-old North Hollywood man.

The judges two weeks ago set free a Mexican police officer after overturning his conviction for the 1992 murder.

``If this man is not the killer,'' Berman wrote, ``he should have been set free, and if he is not, then the people responsible remain at large.''

``The failure of the judicial system to prosecute this case is inexcusable,'' Berman said.

A spokesman for Baja California Attorney General Jose Luis Anya Bautista said Wednesday that before reopening the investigation, prosecutors must determine whether Amado had been murdered.

``There is no assurance there was a crime committed,'' said Guillermo Uribe, district attorney assistant to the state attorney. ``We need to check to see if there are enough elements to reopen the case.''

The ruling brings Amado's family and Berman back to where they began in 1992, when police reported that the Valley man had hanged himself after being arrested for being drunk and disorderly. With help from Berman and two pathologists, Amado's brother convinced Mexican prosecutors to treat the death as a murder.

That Mexican authorities now believe the death was a suicide leaves Joe Amado fuming.

``It shows their true colors - that they really are corrupted,'' said Amado's brother, Joe Amado. ``I know better; there is just too much evidence.''

Berman, a member of the House International Relations Committee, also insists that Amado was murdered.

``The conclusion of the original investigation that Mario Amado committed suicide was an obvious smoke screen, designed to protect the murderer or murderers,'' Berman wrote in his letter. ``An autopsy performed in the United States presented irrefutable proof that Mario died at the hands of another.''

According to the appellate judges' written ruling, other Mexican doctors could not determine whether a murder or suicide had occurred.

``It is not possible to determine cause of death (suicide or homicide) because at the time of the death, no criminology investigation was performed,'' the panel wrote.

Inmates testified that Amado resisted officers and demanded to make a telephone call, the ruling shows. One officer then beat Amado in his cell, but he was not the man convicted of murder, according to the report.