MEXICO ARRESTS ALLEGED SONORA DRUG GANG BOSS

MEXICO CITY -- One of Mexico's most wanted drug trade suspects was
arrested in Sinaloa state Thursday, one of the biggest apprehensions
yet in President Vicente Fox's campaign to crack down on narcotics
trafficking.

Miguel Caro Quintero is the alleged boss of the so-called Sonora drug
gang, one of the four largest cocaine- and marijuana-smuggling
operations along the U.S.-Mexican border. Arrested in Los Mochis along
Sinaloa's coast, he will be extradited to the United States, Mexican
officials said. He has been indicted on drug charges in Arizona and
Colorado.

The capture of Caro Quintero was made possible by U.S.-Mexican law
enforcement cooperation, Mario Estuardo Bermudez, a prosecutor with
the Mexican attorney general's office, said at a news conference
Thursday night. The arrest came on the same day that the U.S. Congress
suspended for one year the annual "certification" process by which
Mexico had to prove a good-faith effort in combating drug crime, a
process Mexican officials found humiliating. Countries not certified
face a variety of sanctions, including loss of foreign aid and U.S.
opposition to loans from international banks.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has said that the Caro
Quintero gang and three others control 60% of the cocaine and 14% of
the heroin consumed in the United States. Caro Quintero's brother
Rafael is jailed on charges of kidnapping and killing DEA agent
Enrique Camarena in 1985.

Caro Quintero, 38, took over the operation from his brother. He is on
the U.S. State Department's list of most wanted criminals, and a
reward of $2 million had been offered by Washington for information
leading to his arrest. It was not clear Thursday night whether the
bounty would be paid or to whom.

In addition to the Sonora gang, other powerful cartels include the
Arellano-Felix mafia based in Tijuana, the Gulf cartel led by Osiel
Cardenas, and the Juarez gang headed by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

On ABC's "Nightline" in 1999, former DEA chief Thomas A. Constantine
described the Caro Quintero gang and others like it as "more powerful
than the government."

"They make hundreds of millions of dollars, they kill hundreds of
people, they are charged time and time again in U.S. courts, and they
are never arrested," Constantine said.