An American photographer stood trial Saturday on drug smuggling charges and testified that his only crime was being stupid enough to let a cocaine ring dupe him into doing its dirty work. The trial of 23-year-old Conan Owen, whose case has drawn the attention of Attorney General Edwin Meese III, began and ended Saturday. The three-judge panel that took testimony for 2{ hours wasn't expected to issue a verdict for about a week. The free-lance photographer from Annandale, Va., is charged with smuggling 4.13 pounds of cocaine into Spain in a suitcase on March 13, 1987. James Kibble, a special agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, testified that Owen was tricked by a drug trafficking ring into carrying the cocaine. Owen, he said, is ``innocent _ or stupid _ but innocent.'' The prosecution is asking for 10 years in prison on contraband charges and on charges Owen violated public health laws that prohibit the transport or sale of dangerous drugs. The defense contends Owen thought the suitcase only contained travel brochures, photographs and film. Owen, a 1986 graduate of Syracuse University and a former summer intern in Vice President George Bush's office, has spent the past year in Barcelona's 85-year-old Model Prison without possibility of bail. He told the court Saturday that he carried a suitcase to Barcelona from Santiago, Chile, for George Barahona, an Equadorean-born naturalized American who was living near Washington, D.C. Owen said Barahona represented himself as one of the owners of the Sorosa Travel Agency near Washington, D.C. and offered him $1,000 to take travel brochure pictures in Spain. Owen said Barahona gave him a suitcase to take with him, which he believed to contain the brochures and film. The suitcase contained $200,000 in cocaine. Owen told the court he had always obeyed the law and acknowledged he had been ``stupid _ but that is not a crime.'' Judge Jose Presencia Rubio, who heads a three-member panel hearing the case, refused to admit as evidence testimony about a polygraph test Owen took. Owen's lawyer, Ana Campa, said the test, administered by a DEA agent, indicates Owen was telling the truth when he said he knew nothing about the drug. Federal agents allege Barahona is part of a drug ring that moves cocaine from South America to Spain. On Feb. 5, Barahona pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to smuggle drugs in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. He received a two-year suspended sentence after providing information that led to the indictment of three Spaniards and three Bolivians in a conspiracy to smuggle illegal drugs. They remain at large. When Meese came to Spain to sign an annex to a 1970 extradition treaty Feb. 9, he handed over copies of Barahona's testimony to Spanish judicial authorities. Prosecutor Teresa Calvo called only two witnesses _ the paramilitary Civil Guard on duty at El Prat Airport who discovered the cocaine and the chemist who analyzed the drug as being 84 percent pure cocaine. Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Williams of Alexandria, Va., testified for the defense that statements obtained from Barahona following the plea-bargain arrangement indicated Owen had unwittingly taken the cocaine-laden suitcase to Spain. ``He (Barahona) specifically told us that Conan Owen had no knowledge that there was cocaine in the suitcase he carried into Barcelona airport March 13,'' Williams said. Kibble, also testifying for the defense, said he became interested in the Owen case because Owen was from the Washington, D.C. area and the DEA was investigating a cocaine-smuggling ring that operated out of northern Virginia. ``I have found that there is a group of people involved in sending drugs from South America to Spain using unsuspecting people as carriers,'' Kibble testified. ``The DEA was interested in the details Conan Owen had to tell for the conspiracy case we were working on,'' he said. Owen wore a gray suit and stood with his hands clasped behind his back when addressing the court. He spoke in Spanish with occasional assistance from a court-appointed interpreter. His parents Ernest and Raquel Owen of Annandale, Va., sat directly behind him. His 25-year-old brother Evan was also present. According to the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, as of last month there were 25 U.S. citizens in jail in Spain. Six are serving prison terms following conviction on drug-related charges, and another eight, not including Owen, are awaiting trial. There are no jury trials in Spain, and courts generally take about a week to issue verdicts.
