Juan Matta-Ballesteros

Juan Ramón Matta-Ballesteros, AKA Ramón Matta, AKA Juan Ramón Matta del Pozo, AKA Juan Ramón Matta Lopez, former drug lord with ties to the Medellín Cartel was born on January 12, 1945 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. In April of 1988, he was kidnapped from his Tegucigalpa home by United States Marshals, he was sent to trial in the United States and convicted among other things, for the kidnap and assassination of Enrique Camarena.

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The DEA first arrested Matta in 1970 at Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC with 54 pounds of cocaine, but that was in his small-time early days. After his escape from the Federal prison camp at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida where he had been serving a three-year sentence for passport violations and illegal entry into the United States, Matta was widely known as one of the key players in the establishment of the "Mexican Trampoline”… the bouncing of cocaine from the Medellín cartel into the United States via their base in Guadalajara, Mexico.

In 1978, it was rumored that Matta had become business partners with General Policarpo Paz García, and had directly financed the Honduran "Cocaine Coup" that brought Paz into power. It is thought that from this relationship, Matta became involved in the Nicaraguan Contra movement.

According to the "Selections from the Senate Committee Report on Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy chaired by Senator John F. Kerry", “the Honduran airline SETCO "was the principal company used by the Contras in Honduras to transport supplies and personnel for the FDN carrying at least a million rounds of ammunition, food, uniforms and other military supplies for the Contras from 1983 through 1985. SETCO received funds for Contra supply operations from the Contra accounts established by Oliver North.”

In a 1983 U.S. Customs Investigative Report found that “SETCO stands for Services Ejectutivos Turistas Commander and is headed by Juan Ramon Matta-Ballestros, a class I DEA violator.” The same report states that according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, “SETCO aviation is a corporation formed by American businessmen who are dealing with Matta and are smuggling narcotics into the United States.” Matta had been identified by the DEA in 1985 as the most important member of a consortium moving a major share (perhaps a third, perhaps more than half) of all the cocaine from Colombia to the United States. The DEA also believed that Matta was behind the kidnapping of a DEA agent in Mexico, Enrique Camarena, who was subsequently tortured and murdered.

It has since been learned in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra affair that Lt. Col. Oliver North had set up the bank accounts through which SETCO would be paid for services to the U.S. military. The July 9, 1984 entry in North's diary, obligingly published by Senator John Kerry, states, in North’s own handwritting, "wanted aircraft to go to Bolivia to pick up paste, want aircraft to pick up 1,500 kilos." The July 12, 1985 entry reads, "$14 million to finance [arms] Supermarket came from drugs." August 9, 1985: "Honduran DC-9 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into U.S." It is easy to see that when the local DEA office in Tegucigalpa, Honduras began to move against Matta in 1983, it was shut down.

The report went on to conclude that "the Colombian-Mexican relationship, developed by Juan Ramon Matta-Ballesteros, a Honduran with close ties to the Medellín groups, led to an explosion of cocaine shipments through Mexico, with cocaine seizures in that country rising from 2.3 tons in 1985 to 9.3 tons in 1987."

It's alleged that while en route to the US military base Palmerola where he was interrogated under torture (they burned him repeatedly with a high voltage stun gun). Later he was flown to the Dominican Republic were he was officially arrested for an outstanding warrant from 1971. From there, he was reprimanded to the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois.

Following his abduction, up to 2,000 protestors took to the streets of Tegucigalpa. U.S. Diplomats in Honduras said the riots were not in support of Mr. Matta, but in protest of the seizure of a Honduran citizen on criminal charges lodged by foreign governments, a direct violation of that country's Constitution. However, many said it was due to the fact that Matta was well-liked and seen as a "Robin Hood" figure in the poor Central American nation. In the end, some 6 people were killed and the annex to the U.S. Embassy was burned to the ground in protest.

Matta contested his arrest in 1988 on the grounds of violation of habeas corpus. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected his case. They found that “the circumstances surrounding Matta-Ballesteros's abduction, while disturbing to us and conduct we seek in no way to condone…” didn't violated the Ker-Frisbie Doctrine. However, Judge Noonan wrote “that the abductors were law enforcement officers of the United States, rather than some fanatic band, doubles the horror of their activity. If agents of the mightiest power on earth are unrestrained from kidnapping by legal authority -- or rather, in obedience to higher authority in the executive department, see themselves constrained to kidnap -- the freedom of individuals throughout the world is at the mercy of a decision made by an official of the United States Department of Justice."

Similarly, Matta's abduction was followed by that of Mexican Humberto Alvarez Machain accused of complicity, like Matta, in the Camarena case. Alvarez Machain fought his case on the illegality of the abduction. Alvarez Machain won and was returned to Mexico.

Following such notable players in the Camarena case, like Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo before him, Matta was eventually convicted as one of the masterminds behind the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of U.S. DEA Agent Enrique Camarena in Guadalajara, Mexico. Further, Matta was later convicted for operating an importation and cocaine distribution ring into Van Nuys, California.

Currently, Matta is serving 12 life sentences in the ADX Florence Super Maximum Security Penitentiary located outside of Pueblo in Florence, Colorado.