AN OVERDUE VICTORY

Mexico Scores An Important Drug-War Win

The arrest by Mexican police and soldiers last week of Ismael Higuera
Guerrero, reputedly the operations director for the Tijuana-based
Arellano-Felix organization, represents a potentially spectacular success
in a drug war the traffickers have been winning for years.

We say potentially because the Mexican government must still make its case
against Higuera stick through a judicial process deeply corrupted by the
drug cartels. Higuera, a k a "El Mayel" and a string of other aliases,
already has slipped through the Mexican government's hands once. He was
arrested in 1994 on suspicion of murder in the death of a federal police
commander but was then released by a corrupt prosecutor.

Nothing like that must be allowed to happen again. Higuera must be held to
full account for a decade of reported crimes committed in the service of
the Arellano's criminal syndicate. Mexican authorities say those crimes
include drug smuggling on a vast scale, plus the torture and murder of
numerous victims of the Arellanos. The latter counts may well include
responsibility for the three Mexican narcotics agents kidnapped, tortured
and murdered by the traffickers last month. The three agents had been
cooperating with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI against
the Arellanos.

Then there is the U.S. government's own extensive case against Higuera. His
arrest last week prompted the U.S. Attorney's office in San Diego to unseal
Friday a federal grand jury's indictment charging Higuera with four counts
of cocaine trafficking, conspiracy, money laundering and participation in a
criminal enterprise.

Surely there doesn't appear to be any shortage of evidence on either side
of the border to convict Higuera, imprison him and throw away the key. U.S.
law-enforcement officials describe "El Mayel" as the day-to-day operations
manager for the Arellano brothers' cartel, perhaps the largest and
certainly the most violent in Mexico.

As such, Higuera presumably at least shares guilt for scores if not
hundreds of murders, plus the illegal smuggling of literally tons of
cocaine, marijuana and other illicit narcotics into the United States over
an 11-year period.

The U.S. Department of Justice shouldn't hesitate to press aggressively for
Higuera's extradition from Mexico, even if he is tried, convicted and
imprisoned there. On the evidence, Higuera stands credibly accused of being
an international criminal whose felony offenses against the United States,
as detailed in the indictment unsealed Friday, cover a decade of drug
trafficking and attendant criminal conduct.

Senior Mexican officials say Higuera's arrest, together with the recent
apprehension of the Arellanos' alleged financial manager, Jesus "Chuy"
Labra Aviles, marks an all-out offensive against the cartel. We hope so.
But we cannot help wondering why it's taken so many years to mobilize
against a blood-soaked criminal organization that threatens Mexico even
more than it does the United States.