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Mexico captures drug cartel kingpin
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (Reuters) -- Mexico troops on Friday captured a kingpin of the powerful Juarez drug cartel who was fighting a turf war to take control of another gang that was recently thrown into disarray with the arrest of its boss. Authorities said Arturo Hernandez Gonzalez, alias "El Chaqui," chief assassin for the Juarez cartel who liked to kill foes by burying them alive in oil drums filled with cement, was nabbed along with eight other cartel members in a series of unopposed predawn raids in seven Mexican states. The operation was the latest in a string of high-profile arrests in President Vicente Fox's increasingly successful campaign to crack down on Mexico's powerful drug gangs, who transport cocaine from South America to the United States. El Chaqui was the right hand man of Vicente Carrillo, who took over as head of the Juarez cartel from his brother Amado Carrillo who died in 1997 after plastic surgery went wrong. Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha told a news conference that El Chaqui, who tortured enemies by wrapping them in barbed wire and then giving them electric shocks, was trying to expand the Juarez gang's influence to control regions that have been in the hands of the Gulf cartel. The Gulf cartel was severely weakened three weeks ago when Mexican troops ambushed and captured its head Osiel Cardenas, one of the most wanted drug fugitives in the United States and Mexico. "El Chaqui wanted to control the area that Osiel Cardenas used to control," Macedo said in the joint news conference with Defense Minister Ricardo Clemente Vega. The Juarez cartel is named after and operates around the city of Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso in west Texas. The Gulf cartel is based in Tamaulipas state bordering east Texas and controls drug routes to the United States along the Gulf of Mexico. 'Main operator and executioner'On Wednesday, authorities found the bodies of eight men and a teenager shot to death execution style in Nuevo Laredo, in the Gulf state of Tamaulipas, in an apparent case of in-fighting among traffickers after Cardenas' arrest. Macedo said he suspected that El Chaqui, a former judicial police commander, and other Juarez cartel members could be behind the slayings. "The arrest of El Chaqui represents an important blow to the structure of the Carrillo organization, because he was its main operator and executioner," Macedo said. El Chaqui was arrested for alleged drug trafficking, money laundering and arms possession. "He was an extremely bloodthirsty man. He liked to bury opponents in cement, like was done with the death of Amado Carrillo," said Defense Minister Vega. "He would wind barbed wire around people, put them in water and then give them electric shocks." Surgeons who operated on Amado Carrillo, known as "The Lord of the Skies" for controlling air drug trafficking routes from Mexico into the United States, were found dead days later buried in cement inside oil drums. Copyright 2003 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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