Awesome news, and strike two booger eaters off the bounty list. Good on the guys down south for taking them down. –Matt
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Drug war strikes blow to Mexican economy in crisis
Apr 2, 2009
02 Apr 2009MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican police have captured a leading drug baron from the border city of Ciudad Juarez, the country’s most violent town in a turf war that killed 6,300 people last year.
Vicente Carrillo Leyva, a leader of the Juarez cartel, was seized while exercising in a park in an upscale residential district of Mexico City, police said on Thursday.
The Juarez cartel is locked in a bitter war with traffickers from the state of Sinaloa for control of smuggling routes into Texas. The fighting forced the government to send 5,000 extra troops into Ciudad Juarez last month.
Carrillo Leyva is the son of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, a late drug lord who flew jetliners full of cocaine into Mexico in the 1990s and was known as ‘Lord of the Skies’.
Mexico’s government put a $2 million reward on Carrillo Leyva’s head in a list of dozens of top drug smugglers released last month. He was one of two members of the Juarez cartel listed.
Carrillo Leyva had “roles of leadership and managing illicit resources in the organization,” senior prosecutor Marisela Morales told reporters.
The drugs war is the biggest challenge facing President Felipe Calderon and has scared off some investors.
U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Mexico this month, following a trip by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in March, and he is tightening security along the border to prevent the violence spreading into the United States.
(Editing by Kieran Murray)
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March 25, 2009
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) — The Mexican army has arrested a top drug cartel chief and four of his bodyguards, the government announced Wednesday.
Suspected drug kingpin Hector Huerta Rios faces members of the press Wednesday in Mexico City.
Hector Huerta Rios, also known as “La Burra” or “El Junior,” was arrested Tuesday in the city of San Pedro Garza Garcia in Nuevo Leon state, along Mexico’s border with the United States. The state-run Notimex news agency reported the announcement, citing a news conference held by the secretary of national defense and the attorney general’s office.
Huerta was flown to Mexico City on Tuesday night to face federal charges.
Federal officials showed the four suspects to the media in a news conference Wednesday. Video footage on CNN affiliate Televisa shows Huerta flanked on each side by two other suspects. He is looking straight ahead, a solemn countenance on his mustachioed face. Hooded soldiers are stationed to the sides and behind the suspects.
Huerta is a suspect in the September 2006 shooting death of Marcelo Garza y Garza, the head of the State Agency of Investigations, news reports said.
News of Huerta’s capture made the front pages of El Porvenir, La Prensa and El Milenio newspapers.
Huerta’s arrest came one day after Mexican authorities announced rewards of up to $2 million for information leading to the capture of top cartel operatives.
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