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TIJUANA – A special federal task force captured several men believed to be high-ranking members of the Arellano Felix cartel amid gunfire in a pre-dawn raid Friday, according the local Mexican military command. The suspects were gambling around 2 a.m. in a room at Caliente Casino, owned by former mayor Jorge Hank Rhon. Alfonso Duarte Mujica, local military commander, said at a press conference Friday morning that one of those captured was Pedro Ignacio Zazueta, known as “El Pit,” believed to be one of the leaders of the Arellano cartel. Zazueta is a lieutenant to Fernando Sanchez Arellano, known as...

By Lizbeth Diaz TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Seventeen Mexican drug gang members were killed near the U.S. border on Saturday, their bodies scattered along a road after one of the deadliest shootouts in Mexico's three-year narco-war. Rival factions of the Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border battled each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said. Fourteen bodies were lying in pools of blood on a road near assembly-for-export maquiladora plants on the city's eastern limits. The corpses were surrounded by hundreds of bullet casings and many of their...

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Drug hitmen have killed a popular Mexican singer along with his manager and assistant near the U.S. border, authorities said on Wednesday, the latest murder among musicians who sing "narcocorrido" ballads glorifying drug traffickers. The body of Jesus Rey David Alfaro, known as "The Little Rooster," was one of six that turned up tortured, murdered and pinned with threatening messages for Mexico's army last week in the border town of Tijuana near San Diego. "We believe Alfaro had links to the Arellano Felix cartel," said an official with the Baja California state attorney general's office who...

TIJUANA, Mexico – A key hitman for Mexico's Arellano Felix drug cartel was arrested on Saturday in this crime-ridden border city, in another coup for President Felipe Calderón's clampdown on traffickers. After an anonymous tip-off, soldiers stormed a house and arrested Alfredo Araujo Avila, also known as Popeye, Tijuana's military chief Gen. German Redondo told reporters. “He is considered one of the most dangerous hitmen of the Arellano Felix cartel,” Gen. Redondo said. Araujo Avila had dodged arrest for a decade in Tijuana, which is just over the U.S. border from San Diego. He is wanted in the United States...

Asking forgiveness in two nations, Mexican drug lord Francisco Javier Arellano Felix was sentenced Monday to life in prison for running a criminal enterprise and conspiring to launder money. In a letter, translated in English and read by his lawyer, Arrellano Felix asked people on both sides of the border to forgive his "wrongful decisions and criminal conduct."

MEXICO CITY - Mexico extradited accused drug kingpin Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix to the United States on Saturday, making him the first major Mexican drug lord to be sent north to face trial on drug charges. Mexico's extradition of the man who once ran the Arellano Felix drug clan was a victory for U.S. officials who have been pushing Mexico to send them more drug lords. After serving a 10-year sentence in Mexico, Arellano Felix was loaded into a helicopter to the Mexican border town of Matamoros, then flown across and handed over to Texas officials in Brownsville. He will...

Since their arrival in San Diego aboard a Coast Guard cutter two weeks ago, the accused head of the Arellano Félix drug cartel and six other men have been held in small cells on the fifth floor of a downtown jail. They can't use the phone, they can't exercise and they've only been allowed out of their cells for lawyer visits, court and a 15-minute shower once every three days, their lawyers said. “They're being treated more harshly than some of the worst convicted criminals we've had in this country,” said David Bartick, lawyer for Francisco Javier Arellano Félix, accused...

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's attorney general said the arrest a group of corrupt cops along the border with California is imminent. Daniel Cabeza de Vaca told a Mexico City news conference today the cops protected a Tijuana cartel, the Arellano Felix gang, which smuggled tons of pot, cocaine and meth into the United States. Two were already arrested Saturday and charged with taking bribes to protect the gang. The attorney general said they worked at the Rosarito police department just over the border from San Diego border. The two are accused of decapitating three of their fellow officers. The news...

Mexico's attorney general said Wednesday there will be a wave of arrests of corrupt police on the Mexico-California border following an investigation into a network of officials protecting the Arellano Felix drug trafficking gang, whose alleged leader awaits trial in the United States. Daniel Cabeza de Vaca told a news conference that the network protected the so-called Tijuana cartel as it smuggled tons of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine over the border to U.S. consumers. The corrupt officers also killed honest colleagues, decapitating three fellow officers in June, he said. "These criminal groups, especially the Tijuana cartel, depend on the support...

War On Drugs: While not the end of the tale, the crushing of the Javier Arellano Felix drug cartel is a victory that should be played up. By itself, the arrest is satisfying. Better still, it shows the U.S. can work with Mexico. That wasn't the case when Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, an agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, was murdered by drug traffickers in Guadalajara in 1985. Back then, Mexican authorities threw roadblocks at apprehending drug lord Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who was a leading member of the group that kidnapped, tortured and killed the agent. Mexican police told...

WASHINGTON Federal drug agents and the Coast Guard arrested Mexican drug lord Javier Arellano-Felix, a leader of a violent gang responsible for digging elaborate tunnels to smuggle drugs under the U.S. border, a Justice Department official said Wednesday. The official said the Arellano-Felix, 37, was apprehended off the Southern California coast. He is wanted in both the United States and Mexico for his role as a leader in the violent and sophisticated Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix gang, which includes seven brothers and four sisters from the Arellano family. The official requested anonymity because he spoke before the official announcement of the arrest....

Tijuana, Mexico, Jun 21 (EFE).- The decapitated bodies of four people, including three police officers, were found Wednesday in northern Mexico near the U.S. border, authorities said. The four individuals went missing Tuesday night and on Wednesday morning their bodies were found wrapped in blankets in the Pacific coast city of Rosarito and their heads in bags in Tijuana, said Rosarito police chief Valente Montijo. He identified the dead as police officers Ismael Arellano Torres, Jesus Hernandez and Adrian Ventura, and civilian Fernando Aguilar, a Mexican-American resident of Arizona. According to Montijo, the cops and the other man - who...

WASHINGTON - The Treasury Department, trying to block an elaborate money-laundering scheme, has announced that two Mexican cattle companies are fronts for drug-trafficking cartels. The action means that cattle sold by the companies to Texas ranchers after Friday's announcement are subject to seizure by the federal government, said a high-ranking Treasury official who asked not to be named. "Cattle already purchased and owned before the companies were identified as tied to the drug cartels are not going to suddenly be blocked," the official said. The Treasury Department plans to inform cattle associations and other groups later this week of the...

MEXICAN DRUG TRAFFICKERS: A BYPRODUCT OF POOR BORDER SECURITY By Jim Kouri MichNews.com Dec 21, 2004 In the United States-Mexico experience, there are relevant lessons for countries engaged in cooperative counter narcotics efforts. The primary lesson learned is that the illegal drug market has metastasized at the cost of thousands of lost lives and billions of dollars. A second lesson is that bilateral and multilateral efforts are key in the crusade against drugs. The costs that the illegal drug trade imposes on the United States have been estimated at a staggering $70 billion each year. Mexican drug traffickers are the...