MEXICO ARRESTS ALLEGED NO. 3 IN VIOLENT COCAINE CARTEL

Capture Announced As ''Major Victory' In Drug-trafficking Fight

WASHINGTON -- Mexican authorities have arrested the third-highest-ranked
member of the most violent drug cartel in the Western Hemisphere, U.S.
officials said Thursday.

Ismael Higuera Guerrero and eight others were picked up in a raid late
Wednesday. He is charged with drug trafficking and the murder of a Mexican
police officer. He was being held in a maximum-security prison.

Higuera Guerrero is considered the chief operating officer of the Arellano
Felix Organization, which is based primarily in Tijuana.

Mexican and U.S. officials say that about half the 60 tons of cocaine
seized along the Pacific corridor since last June came through the
organization. U.S. government officials familiar with drug trafficking
along the U.S.-Mexican border estimate that more than a quarter of the
cocaine that makes it to the streets of the USA comes through the organization.

The cartel is considered one of the most powerful trafficking organizations
in Mexico and is believed responsible for as many as 100 murders in the
Mexican states of Baja California Norte and Sur, Sinaloa, Jalisco,
Michoacan and Chiapas.

Several prominent law enforcement officials in the region, including the
Tijuana police chief, have been killed while investigating the cartel. One
of the most high-profile killings involved Mexican federal prosecutor Jose
Patino Moreno.

Patino Moreno and two drug agents were found dead in April in a car in a
mountain ravine. They had been beaten and tortured. According to the
autopsy, all the bones in Patino Moreno's face had been fractured during
the beating, and he had tire tracks on his back from a vehicle estimated to
have weighed more than 6,000 pounds.

Patino Moreno, 48, was investigating the whereabouts of the cartel's
leaders, brothers Ramon and Benjamin Arellano Felix, when he was killed.

Patino Moreno's death raised concerns about the safety of drug-enforcement
officers on both sides of the border. At one point the Drug Enforcement
Administration considered removing its agents from the area because of the
security concerns. The DEA eventually decided not to pull agents from the
region.

Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor, Mariano Herran Salvatti, said that
Higuera Guerrero's arrest marks a major crack in the gang's armor.

DEA acting Administrator Donnie Marshall said it was ''a major victory for
both Mexican and U.S. law enforcement.''

''We hope that the government of Mexico will be able to capitalize on this
successful investigation . . . to further disrupt these violent criminal
groups,'' he said.