Ariz. man to Mexican cops: My wife isn't a drug mule

NOGALES, Mexico

- The husband of an Arizona mother locked up in a Mexican prison on a drug-smuggling charge said he is confident the charges will be dropped after court officials reviewed video yesterday that showed the couple boarding a bus with only blankets and bottles of water in hand.

Gary Maldonado said the video should exonerate he and his wife in the nightmare scenario that has prompted outrage in the U.S. among politicians and pitted the conservative Mormon family against a judicial system that has long struggled with corruption.

Gary Maldonado was arrested by the Mexican military last week after they found nearly 12 pounds of pot under his wife's bus seat on a commercial bus traveling from Mexico to Phoenix. After Yanira Maldonado, 42, begged the soldiers to allow her to come along to serve as her husband's translator, the military officials decided to release him and arrest her instead, he said.

The family's lawyer in Nogales, Jose Francisco Benitez Paz, told reporters outside the courthouse that he is "100 percent" confident Yanira Maldonado will be released after a judge reviewed the video from the bus company.

He noted that it was a fairly sophisticated smuggling effort that included packets of drugs attached to the seat bottoms with metal hooks - a task that would have been impossible for a passenger like Maldonado.

"All the evidence they have is the drug under the seat," he said.

The Maldonados were traveling home to the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear after attending her aunt's funeral in the city of Los Mochis. Yanira Maldonado is a naturalized U.S. citizen, born in Mexico.

Gary Maldonado said authorities originally demanded $5,000 for her release, but the bribe fell through. When the couple tried to defend themselves, military officials told them the court would sort it out, Gary Maldonado said.