Fear haunts trial of cocaine baron labelled the Al Capone of Peru

But Zevallos, who has never been convicted of a crime, claims he has nothing to fear. "These people don’t have any proof against me. They just come talking nonsense," Zevallos said last week after court adjourned. "I sleep fine. My conscience is clear."

Fear does permeate his trial, though. "I have information that a price has been put on the heads of witnesses who have already testified and those who are going to testify," said Sonia Medina, Peru’s state attorney.

Ms Medina - who says she has been subject to constant death threats - took pains not to mention Zevallos by name, so as not to openly link him to the intimidation. "I can’t say who are the authors behind this, but one must conclude in some way that those affected by these statements are the ones interested in making sure these people simply don’t testify," she said.

Zevallos is the most prominent and powerful figure among more than a dozen defendants who for the past nine months have faced retrial in connection with the 1995 seizure of 3.3 tons of cocaine in the northern Peruvian city of Piura that broke up the "Nortenos" drug gang.

Peruvian media reported that in December the wife of one of the three judges hearing the case was grabbed by two men and told, "Tell your husband to ease off case 24" - the trial’s docket number.

A Peruvian police investigator confirmed the incident and said the woman was told if her husband didn’t heed the warning, their children would face the consequences.

But in the past two months, Zevallos has been hit with powerful testimony.

Last week, Oscar Benites, a convicted trafficker and professed drug informant, told the court that sometime about October 1994, Zevallos sent him to Miami’s Opa-locka Airport to pick up more than 835 pounds of cocaine from a plane. He said he made a full report to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Benites, 32, also testified that he had survived several attempts on his life in prison to prevent his allegations from reaching open court. He said he was stabbed in the chest and back by two inmates in November 2003. He fended off a similar attack on1 February, he said. That same day, former police informant Jose Maria Aguilar, was shot to death in a protected wing of his prison in the jungle city of Pucallpa, 300 miles northeast of Lima.

Aguilar, alias "Shushupe" - a type of deadly Peruvian snake - had offered testimony in Peru’s Congress identifying Zevallos as a major cocaine trafficker since the 1980s.

Shortly before returning to Washington in January, the US DEA’s outgoing chief in Peru, Terry Parham, likened Zevallos to Al Capone - an allusion to allegations that Zevallos rose to power by assassinating rivals, manipulating Peru’s media, courts and police and systematically silencing witnesses through intimidation, bribes and threats.

Zevallos challenged the kingpin designation, hiring a team of prominent US lawyers who argue the DEA paid and coerced unreliable prison informants to railroad an innocent man.