MEXICAN JAIL FREES DRUG LORD'S BROTHER : RELEASE CALLED `INEXPLICABLE'.

Byline: Steve Fainaru The Boston Globe

As the Clinton administration was debating whether to certify that Mexico is fully cooperating in the drug war, a cocaine-baron suspect escaped from the headquarters of the federal narcotics agency here, the attorney general's office said Saturday.

The government waited until several hours after the Clinton administration announced Mexico's certification to announce that Humberto Garcia Abrego, the brother of one of the country's most notorious drug traffickers, had ``inexplicably'' been allowed to walk out of the offices of the National Institute to Combat Drugs while authorities were preparing new charges against him.

Garcia Abrego had been taken to the drug agency by federal agents in an unannounced pre-dawn operation Wednesday. The drug-lord suspect was detained as he left a Mexico City prison, shortly after a judge in his home state had released him, citing a lack of ``probable cause'' to continue holding him on money-laundering charges.

Garcia Abrego, reputedly a top money launderer for the once-powerful Gulf Cartel, reportedly fled in a black Mercedes-Benz sedan and was being sought. Two drug agency officials assigned to the case were being held ``to determine the crimes that could have occurred through their actions,'' the attorney general's office said in a statement released close to late Friday.

It was unclear whether U.S. officials had been informed of Garcia Abrego's escape, which apparently occurred Wednesday or Thursday, before Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced Friday that Mexico had been certified.

In his radio address Saturday, President Clinton defended the certification, which brought a torrent of criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, he said, ``is fighting a tough, uphill battle against the drug cartels which corrupt Mexico's law enforcement agencies. But President Zedillo has taken brave action.''

However, critics said the certification sent the wrong message. On Feb. 18, Mexican authorities arrested anti-narcotics chief Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo and charged him with accepting bribes to protect the country's leading drug trafficker.

``First of all, Mexico clearly does not deserve to be certified under the standard,'' House Speaker Newt Gingrich told a gathering in his home state of Georgia. ``This is a mistake factually. Second, the certification process needs to be rethought because it's too clumsy and it doesn't reflect reality.''

North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, ``Certifying that Mexico is cooperating with the United States in the war on drugs is, in a word, a fraud.''

Garcia Abrego is the younger brother of Juan Garcia Abrego, the former Gulf Cartel leader who was arrested last year, deported to the United States and recently sentenced to 11 life terms without parole. At its height, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the cartel reportedly handled one-third of all cocaine entering the United States, with earnings of $20 billion annually.

Latest episode

The escape was the latest stunning episode in a saga that began Tuesday, when a judge from the 2nd Circuit Tribunal of Tamaulipas granted an ``amparo,'' a Mexican form of judicial review similar to a writ of habeas corpus, releasing Garcia Abrego from the maximum-security area of the Reclusorio Norte prison on the northern edge of the capital.

Garcia Abrego had been at Reclusorio Norte for about 14 months, according to current and former inmates. Inmates who had visited him said he lived alongside other leading traffickers in a luxurious six-cell abode equipped with cellular phones, cable television, a kitchen and a stereo, with access to a wood-lined sauna built into the cellblock.

Federal agents descended on Reclusorio Norte as Garcia Abrego was to be released around midnight Tuesday. As he walked out of the prison, he was immediately taken into custody, loaded into a van and driven to the federal drug agency headquarters in Mexico City, where local media reported that he was locked in a basement cell and subjected to ``intense interrogation.''

The attorney general's office said in a statement Saturday that Garcia Abrego had been detained in relation to a separate investigation into charges of money laundering and criminal association. The statement said that if sufficient evidence had been found within 48 hours, the investigation would have been turned over to a judge to file formal charges.

``The attorney general of the republic violated neither individual guarantees nor any constitutional mandate by bringing Mr. Humberto Garcia Abrego to the National Institute to Combat Drugs, in order to yield his declaration,'' the statement said.

Instead, however, Garcia Abrego apparently walked out the door. ``Inexplicably, the official in charge of the investigation told his superiors that Humberto Garcia Abrego `had gone from the National Institute to Combat Drugs' before the investigation was completed,'' the attorney general's office said.

Officials being held

Two drug agency officials assigned to the case, Jose Felix Name Rodriguez and Luis Rodriguez Rivera, were being held, according to authorities. The two men had been assigned to take Garcia Abrego's statement, gather further evidence in the investigation, then present the case to a judge in an attempt to bring further charges against him.

The ``irregularities'' surrounding their actions involved not completing the necessary procedures in the period of 48 hours that are required to ``bring new charges against Garcia Abrego,'' said the attorney general's office, which oversees the drug agency.

Authorities described the statements of the two men as ``totally inconsistent and lacking in truthfulness.''

It was unclear whether more than the two men may have been involved. The attorney general's office said it was unable to confirm a report in the Mexico City daily El Universal that as many as 20 of their subordinates also were being held, and that Garcia Abrego also had been assisted by members of the Mexican military.

Garcia Abrego's escape appeared to happen at roughly the same time that Mexican authorities captured Oscar Malherbe de Leon, the former No. 2 man of the Gulf Cartel behind Juan Garcia Abrego. Malherbe, according to authorities, was arrested Wednesday in Mexico City after coming to the capital to visit a hospitalized friend.

Narcotics specialists said Malherbe had been significantly weakened and had turned over most of the Gulf Cartel drug operation to Armado Carrillo Fuentes, the leader of the so-called Juarez cartel who succeeded Abrego as Mexico's most powerful trafficker.

CAPTION(S):

Photo: House Speaker Newt Gingrich criticizes the Clinton administra tion's decision to certify Mexico as a full ally in fighting narcotics trafficking as he met with a group of women officeholders in Roswell, Ga.

Associated Press