HUNDREDS ARRESTED IN INTERNATION DRUG RAID

WASHINGTON -- Federal agents have arrested 268 people and seized cocaine,
marijuana and cash in an effort to breakup a smuggling operation that
brought narcotics from Colombia to at least a dozen U.S. cities.

The Drug Enforcement Administration, working with several other law
enforcement agencies and authorities in Mexico and Colombia, arrested 83
people Wednesday Previously, 185 were arrested as part of a crackdown
called "Operation Marquis."

Joseph Keefe, the DEA's chief of operations, described the bust as one of
the largest of its kind.

Arrests were conducted simultaneously during the early morning in l6
cities, the DEA said. It said that provisional arrest warrants naming 14
suspects in Mexico were being submitted to Mexican authorities.

Keefe said the operation has crippled an organization run by the brother of
drug lord Amado Carrillo-Fuentes, who died in 1997 after a botched plastic
surgery

Vincente Carrillo-Fuentes, Jose Albino Quintero-Meraz and sus-pected drug
kingpin Alcides Ramon Magana, arrested in the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco
earlier this month, are alleged to be the central players, Keefe said.

During the year-and-a-half investigation, agents seized 9,000 kilo-grams of
cocaine, 28,000 pounds of marijuana and $12.5 million,

DEA officials said drugs from Colombia were trucked or flown to Nuevo
Laredo, Mexico, on the U.S. border. In some cases, officials said, the
smugglers used special radar-evading planes.

From Nuevo Laredo, they said, the drugs were smuggled into the United
States, either in covert compartments on trucks or car passing through a
commercial border crossing in Laredo, Texas, or by individuals coming
across the border.

The drugs were then stored in local warehouses before being distributed to
cities across the United States, DEA officials said.

It said the organization shipped the drugs in tractor-trailers, with the
narcotics concealed by cover loads of produce and said cars with concealed
compartments also were used.

Arrests were made or planned in Laredo, San Antonio, Houston Dallas and
Austin, Texas; Little Rock, Ark; New York, Newark, NJ; Charlotte, N.C.;
Cleveland; St. Louis San Diego; Philadelphia, Ba1dmore, Nashville, and
Memphis, Tenn.