POLICE NAB MAJOR FIGURE IN MEXICAN COCAINE TRAFFICKING

MEXICO CITY - Police and soldiers captured a top Mexican drug suspect as he
used a pay phone, the government announced Wednesday, the same day U.S.
prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging that he and a governor moved
200 tons of cocaine through the Caribbean coast.

Authorities say Alcides Ramon Magana, described by the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration as "one of the most significant drug traffickers
in Mexico," was the chief drug runner in the Caribbean state of Quintana
Roo, allegedly aided by the state's former Gov. Mario Villanueva.

Both were named in the indictment unsealed Wednesday in New York's Southern
District Federal Court.

Police had been hunting Magana for years. He was using a pay phone in the
eastern city of Villahermosa on Tuesday when authorities surrounded him.

"As soon as he saw them, Magana took out a pistol. But when he realized he
was surrounded, he dropped it and surrendered," said a joint press
statement by Attorney General Rafael Macedo and Defense Secretary Ricardo Vega.

Witness Lilia Lemus told reporters that policemen shouted at Magana: "Drop
the gun, or we'll shoot."

"This is an important blow. The question is, what is their organization
going to do to replace Magana." said Luis Astorga, a sociologist at the
National Autonomous University who studies the drug trade.

Villanueva, who disappeared two years ago after police started tailing him,
was arrested May 24 in the Quintana Roo resort of Cancun.

"Should he (Magana) decide to talk, and break the drug traffickers' 'rule
of silence,' he could sink Mario Villanueva," Astorga said.

While U.S. prosecutors want to try Villanueva in the United States, there
is no current extradition request for Magana, known as "El Metro" - "The
Yard" - because of his bulky build.

The Mexican air force flew Magana to a top-security prison. He faces
charges in Mexico of organized crime, drug trafficking, illegal weapons
possession and money laundering. In the United States, he is charged with
conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine.

Investigators say Magana was a lieutenant of Ciudad Juarez drug lord Amado
Carrillo Fuentes, who died in 1997 after a plastic surgery operation to
change his appearance.

Magana allegedly set up operations on Mexico's Caribbean coast to move
cocaine through Mexico to the U.S. border. As authorities describe it,
Colombian cocaine was dropped from light planes into the shallow waters of
the Caribbean. The bales of drugs were picked up by speed boats, taken to
land and packed into trucks for the trip overland to the U.S. border.

According to U.S. prosecutors who filed drug trafficking charges against
Villanueva, Magana paid Villanueva protection money on each cocaine
shipment through his state, even using a state airplane to carry drugs on
at least one occasion.